Category: Food

Cheese Prep & Mint Plants

Wolsey1 Comment

When we went grocery shopping on Thursday, we also hit Trader Joes. They have better snacks and frozen ready-made foods with less ingredients I question, and for a pretty good price.

I bought a mint plant because my teeny tiny mint is barely there, and I planted it in the 2 foot planter with my mint seedlings. Mint is generally a contagious plant that overtakes everything, so I am hoping either the seedlings or the plant overtake that planter.

I also got on with the cheese prep. I had a 5 pound Costco log of sharp cheddar and another 5 pounds of pepper jack, and a couple frozen squares of similar items from last time we went to Costco that needed shredded.

That flat of peaches in the back is for my wife. She’s making peach cobbler this weekend, and she will make it all into cobbler filling, and will freeze any she doesn’t immediately use.

I use a kitchenmaid attachment I bought off Amazon for shredding. I don’t have a food processor. I have a Ninja blender food processor bowl, but it doesn’t have a shredder or slicer attachment. I absolutely will NOT shred this much cheese with a box grater, so this was a good solution for under $30.

My original plan, 6 months ago, was to cut it into squares, then shred it once it was thawed, however, while it does work, it’s not my favorite. You can see the texture difference below. The big bowl on the left is fresh grated cheese, but the small Tupperware is the stuff I froze, then grated after thawing. It still uses the same, but I think it impacts my nacho game with how it melts.

Fresh cheese in big bowl versus previously froze cheese in the small bowl.

I ended up with a lot of cheese.

I started doing this because the cost of cheese was insultingly high, but then I discovered that the cheese I was buying in the grocery store proper wasn’t as good. The sharp cheddar wasn’t as sharp, and the pepper jack was just bland as hell.

Don’t even get me started on the pre-shredded cheese. It’s just wrong. Like it doesn’t melt right, and tastes, I dunno? Dusty? Because of the anti clumping agents. It was just crap.

I did a quick cost analysis. If I paid Fred Meyers prices for the Sharp Cheddar? I’d have paid $39.95. I’d have paid $22.48 for the Pepper Jack. I did not take into account the Ziplock bags. That would add a few cents per package.

While that is not a lot over the course of 4-6 months in differences, it’s still aggravating. Especially for a product that tastes worse. Plus I can buy it once, pack my freezer, and not have to go back to the store or pay MORE when the corporate grocery pricing fiasco reduces the size of the package to give me less for the same price.

I think my next step will be a vacuum sealer. That will definitely help prolong the life of my food, and I suspect if I get one, I can buy the bags in bulk, reducing prices.

Groceries, Breakfast, and Transgender in Public

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Yesterday we went to a business/restaurant supply Costco. You can use your normal membership to go to the business/restaurant supply Costco. It’s just a Costco that doesn’t have all the electronics, clothing, and home goods, and instead has the food in bigger quantities, and restaurant supply stuff. The reason we went is it opens at 7am and is practically empty, with easy parking. We get up really early, and hate crowds so it’s super nice.

We spent a lot at Costco, and filled our chest freezer with restaurant quality crinkle fries, salami, lunch meat, hot dog sausages, a sliced cheeses, and corn dogs. Just about everything you could need for the next six months when you have non-cooking days.

While I like to cook everything from scratch, I am not always physically up and running. On those days, I like a quick and dirty meal and ready made food is a part of that. As my condition progresses, I have had to make peace with the fact that while I have the skills and prefer 100% from scratch cooking, concessions will have to be made. I focus on those items I really love to make, and make do with store bought for the rest.

Arguably, the best greasy spoon on the west coast.

We then went out to eat at one of the best kept secret diners in our area. The staff is amazing. The food is 110% Americana diner food that is well made, affordable, and with portions that are bigger than I ever eat.

However, going out in public these days is always risky. When my wife went to pee, some lady complained to staff about a “man” in the bathroom. My wife looked damn good in her little floral skirt, doc marten’s and top. She has boobs larger than my head, and her hair color was killing it. To call her a man at this point in her life is just literally being a bigot. She may be identifiable as transgender, but she looks NOTHING like a man.

We live in such a blue area that this was a non starter with the staff. The staff member cleaning the bathroom completely blew her off. When my wife left the bathroom the lady had gotten her husband to come stand with her by the door to the women’s room. Apparently, not content to just wait and come back after my wife, she wanted a man person to come menace my wife.

I should remind everyone my wife is 6’2″ tall. This apparently matters to the cis men she towers over. He couldn’t look her in the eyes when she smiled and waved at them both, and came back the the booth. This has been happening more and more. The amount of times my wife has been challenged by some lady in the bathroom, who then goes and gets a man to come help her threaten my wife with either implied or overt violence is just insane.

To be fair, the silver lining to this madness is the number of cis dudes that completely look out of their depth and back down when my wife shows up. Size really matters to cis dudes when height and threats come into play.

Oh, and can I be petty? My wife looked more feminine, had better fashion sense, and was just factually more beautiful than the nasty tired old lady freaking out?

The real challenge of this all was actually just being in public. My wife can’t leave the house without something happening right now. Those bigots seem thrilled there is a minority they can unabashedly attack because they feel they finally found a socially acceptable victim. Don’t be mistaken, these same people are probably racist antisemites, too. They just found a new group that isn’t fully protected by social convention and are gleefully on the attack. The Venn diagram for transphobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms, is pretty much a circle.

The most insidious situation is the picture taking. People will just take my wife’s picture like they saw Bigfoot. They are not as discrete as they think when they even try to be sneaky. Some assholes use it as a way to harass her by outright getting in her face to do it.

I live in a large city. My wife, is legit not even the weirdest thing I see driving to get donuts at sunrise just last week. Have you seen a meth head wearing a feather boa and nothing else at a bus stop dancing? I have! This is not a really rare occurrence because we live in a city that has a rep for that kind of drug use.

I mean, there are so many more pronounced situations going down at any one time in my limited time outside my home, that to pick my slightly gothy transgender wife to target for photos is just people being assholes.

It’s a risk whenever we go out these days, and while I am a transgender man who can “pass” as cis, my wife cannot. I worry for her safety a lot these days because the uptick in violence is very real, and you never know if you are going to run into someone that has been wound up by the media and is just foaming at the mouth to hate crime someone.

I truly wish this wasn’t a concern we had to work with just to go get breakfast and groceries.

Post-Surgery Food Roundup

Wolsey2 Comments

My wife had surgery on the 9th. It wasn’t a huge surgery. She’s had, I think 9 of them in the last 4 years for her transition from female to male. She’s one of the craziest strongest recoveries I have ever seen for surgery. When I was a nurse, in my first career, I did medicare units with post surgical recovery on and off, and so seeing my wife recover this strong is impressive to me.

For instance, she didn’t take anything much for pain the last couple days. She never does. She hates narcotic pain medication, so she switches over to Tylenol or something over the counter really quickly.

I think part of the issue is my wife has ADHD, and I am not sure if it’s related, but meds just hit her different. Stimulants put her to sleep. Every time she has general anesthesia she is incredibly busy until it wears off in a day or two. The night I brought her home, she was so chatty I had to tell her to be quiet at midnight so I could sleep. She was happy and up, but I was exhausted from getting her to Seattle and back and getting all the details taken care of.

For the bigger surgeries, she is more out of is and sleeps, but every little one like this? She practically doesn’t notice.

Wife in her housecoat I made for her out of my grandmothers quilt, being stalked by Tally the cat. This is a general picture of them, as I didn’t think to snap pics of my wife yesterday. Plus she’s so busy, it’s hard to chase her around.

Anyways, on to food. My wife always wants Dick’s Cheeseburgers and jelly beans after surgery. I don’t know what the anesthetic does to her, but it’s pretty reliable. Once, years ago before her transition, she had a vasectomy in a town an hour away, and on the ride home, she was so insistent I get her jelly beans I had to pull off and go into a Fred Meyer to buy her a pound of bulk candy.

When we got to the house, 20 minutes later, she once again got insanely insistent, so I asked where her jelly beans went. Turns out, little miss post-anesthesia ate the entire pound of jelly beans without remembering. It made her a bit queasy too, so after that I was much more careful with her demands, and I only got her a small bag of jelly beans, and vetoed Dick’s Cheeseburgers on the way back until I could be sure she wasn’t going to be nauseated from eating.

Sweet and Sour vegetables and rice.

For the first night I wanted to go easy on her stomach, so I made the above, sweet and sour rice and vegetables. I made the sweet and sour sauce from scratch and the green onions are from my garden.

I wanted her to have a good protein-rich set of meals for recovery. We don’t normally eat steak and red meat that much. The costs are prohibitive and we just don’t miss it, but I splurged to make sure she had good recovery food. I should note, I was so tired from the night before, that I got the groceries delivered, and the steaks I wanted were replaced with flank steak. Which is fine, but they looked like they’d been through it. I am a little pickier on my meat selection, so I just cooked them up in the pan with butter, salt and peppers and sliced them across the grain.

Steak, country mashers, candied carrots and Hawaiian rolls. This is my plate so it has all the fat and gristle bits, because I like that.

She woke up well, and I made her a late lunch, early supper with flank steak, country mashers with some leftover potatoes in the fridge, and carrots glazed in honey. She loves rolls, so I bought Hawaiian rolls. Normally they are a bit sweet for our tastes, but it was what was available for delivery.

Later that evening we were both hungry, so I used leftover steak to make burritos with steak, rice (leftover), cabbage, green onion, and cheese. I used some light sour cream for sauce in them. I forgot to get pictures of that one.

Steak, mushroom, green onion, and cheese frittattas with Trader Joes polenta broiled with parmesan cheese.

I made a nice frittata and used it to use up leftovers in the fridge. I used up the leftover polenta as well, broiled with parmesan.

The cheese in the polenta is pepper jack, and cheddar. The only place I buy cheese these days is Costco, in large blocks, and grate myself using a KitchenAid grater attachment. I swear the pepper jack tastes like pepper jack. Some grocery store versions are very bland and not remotely spicy.

I might do more sweet and sour vegetables for dinner. I need to get more veggies into her.

However, she’s been doing super well, and maybe now that she’s good, I can finally relax.

Canning Costs

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Okay, so since I do a bit of data analysis for a living, I was curious as to how things broke out on my recent canning adventure price-wise.

It turns out, it’s cheaper to can your own jams. This is probably because I like Bonne Maman preserves, so I was comparing it to that, and not the cheapest available option in the grocery store.

I had assumed it might be more expensive. I ended up quite a bit cheaper, due to the recent inflation.

Start up costs were not taken into account. I bought a cheap canning kit off Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BC5FKBHX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

As well as three Ball brand canning cookbooks. They were free due to that e-credit Amazon gives you for being patient on your deliveries.

I also bought two cases of canning jars, three if you count the Verones ones that I disliked.

I’d estimate in start up costs I paid around $100 all said and done, but I ket to keep all that to continue using going forward, so I am considering that an investment and a sunk cost. I just didn’t feel like depreciating that over the life of the canning equipment.

I think, this outcome would not have been the same pre-pandemic and pre-corporate greed fiasco. Every product on the market is showing what happens when corporate greed goes unfettered. This makes making my own jam several dollars cheaper for 8 oz container. If companies weren’t shitty capitalist nightmares, I would have broken even at best.

Lawn Terrorism & Other plant and food updates

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-Originally posted on Tumblr

My lawn was destroyed this winter. Part fo the reason is they used garbage fill dirt to level the yard, front and back. This means the dirt is filled with roofing shingles, plastic, metal nails, bear bottles, and ripped up beer cans.

Add to this, that we had a couple feral cats decide the front lawn was thier litter box, and I swear they dug up half the front lawn before I figured out what was up.

I love cats, so I just go out every time I see them in the lawns and since they are feral and the neighbors across the street are taking care of them, they have stuck to that side of the street lately.

To fix this, my wife and I bought 5 pounds of white clover seeds. I don’t like grass. It’s ecologically crappy, grows fast, and requires a lot of mowing. I hate mowing. Clover is also good for the soil, and returns nitrogen to it.

Planting clover is like ecological terrorism because I am sure my neighbors with nice manicured lawns are not going to be happy if it takes hold and spreads.

I am a shit neighbor, because I just planted it out. I have hated grass, to a weird spectrum-y level for as long as I remember. It’s creepy. It’s ecologically a poor idea. I am going to be shit neighbor and grow clover.

My raspberry jam worked out except for one 4 oz jar. We will just eat that first. I am on to strawberry jam today. I have to make some berry pancake syrup but I will plan that out and do that next time. Also, QFC did not have corn syrup which my recipe called for and I am not searching all over town for it.

I swear, I feel like I live in a 3rd world country. I can’t get tater tots or hash brown patties. Tahini is gone, and now corn syrup. I never know what product is going to be unavailable week to week. Hell, I have only seen oyster mushrooms in grocery stores once since the whole pandemic began.

Once my garden is established I should figure out mushrooms.

This is my broccoli. I planted it way too late in the season, but we will see how it goes!

My red cabbage is peaking out too. It was also planted way too late in the season, so I am watching it as well.

I bought some strawberry shoots off Etsy. I literally know nobody in my area, so I could not bum a shoot or two off of anyone. I bought 10, and they gave me 12, and they are already starting to perk up after 24 hours. Here’s hoping next year I have a good strawberry crop. I am glad I got the Etsy ones.

My green onions are not coming up yet, so I planted my grocery store green onions. I saw a video where someone did that and it worked out really well, so I am just going to do that with the last bunch I have in the fridge when I cut them down, and we will see how it goes.

Still no sign of life from my tomatoes. I am worried about them. If nothing happens in a week or so, I will buy some tomato starts from a nursery.

In all, this is going really really well. Buying a home has opened a whole world for me that I could not image being a part of. I am still angry that not everyone gets this chance.

Being able to garden, and having kitchen big enough to can? I think some folks don’t understand the incredible privilege it is to have that kind of space. I could not have done this in my last 564 square foot apartment. I couldn’t even afford to store canning materials I was only going to use once a year do to space constraints.

I am so grateful I can do this. I don’t think I will ever take this for granted.

Gendered Canning

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See my first strawberry jam attempt? Turns out, like the raspberry jam, it tastes far better than any jam I have ever had from the store in the last decade.

I ended up making some gender based observations this weekend. My goal was to can up some raspberry and strawberry jam this weekend, and yesterday I went ahead and bought a stupid amount of raspberries and strawberries to do it.

I am new at this, and wasn’t sure what constituted 5 crushed cups of fruit, so this saw me in the check out line with six containers of strawberries and four of raspberries.

The cashier was a bit odd about it, and asked what I was doing with so much fruit, and I said I was canning.

I am a 51 year old, heavily tattooed man. I am also transgender, but she would not know that to look at me.

Instead she was completely bewildered that I was canning jam. She nosed around why, and I said becuase it tastes better than anything store bought, and you can’t even buy some of the flavors.

Then she asked if I was doing it as a gift with someone, presumably a wife or mother, by implication of her wording. I said nope. Just me, canning jam for the year for my wife and I.

I then stopped at a regular grocery store for sugar, and bought a single 10 pound bag. I was asked why I was buying so much sugar by the clerk and the bagger, and I said I was canning jam.

The bagger, a young man, was completely gobsmacked. He was like why? Did you pick a bunch of berries? I said it was too early in the season for that, but I was making a years worth this weekend.

Before I transitioned 11 years ago, I don’t recall anyone caring at all what I bought for food, and being a weird quasi-foodie that does a lot of odd ball things from scratch? I have purchased some empirically odd food combinations in really large crazy amounts before. Nobody has ever said a word.

Now that I am read as a man? It’s like my very existence beyond buying beer and snacks is read as odd, and worth further questioning.

It reminds me of the first weekend of the pandemic. I was in the grocery store with my wife stocking up on things, and being the primary cooks I had the cart stocked. The lines were stupid, so I sent my wife with the cart to the line while I grabbed a loaf of bread and some beer.

A middle aged gal saw me walking back to the line juggling a loaf of bread and several IPA’s, and just made eye contact and smirked at me. I knew instantly she thought we were in the middle of a national emergency, and this dumb dude was buying nothing more than bread and beer. She was laughing, and I am sure I presented a hilarious picture in the half panicked grocery store.

It’s such a weird gendered construct that men can’t cook or or take care of the home.

I find I also get questioned a lot more in fabric and craft stores. I still sew, and make clothing for my wife and I, and now I get questioned a lot more in fabric stores. I think there is a social construct for the gay designer archetype, so if I look competent they immediately shoot me into the expert category. It’s like there is no middle ground in perception. I am a dumb man who is invading women’s spaces or I am a gay expert. The truth is I am a confident middle of the road seamster, that is bi/pan, and is married to a woman.

Conversely, I am treated way better at Lowe’s Hardware, and any of the other hardware stores I end up in. People just assume I can do the work I am asking about. They start from an assumption of competence first, then back up if I tell them I need more information.

This is in stark contrast from when I looked like a woman. I have literally had hardware store guys argue with me over basic information I was 100% correct about, because they assumed anything that came out of my feminine mouth must be wrong.

I just find it interesting what people seem to expect is so gendered. Maybe we could just abolish useless gendering of activities, and I think we’d all be better off.

I had forgotten the flavor of Raspberry jam

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-Originally posted to Tumblr.

I was running out of raspberry jam, and I was thinking the stuff I buy at the grocery store was kind of meh. This was all it took for me to decid to can my own, now that I have a kitchen big enough to do it.

First, I did a lot of reading. I have never done it before, so I bought three Ball cookbooks on canning. I had some of those Amazon credits for slower delivery options, so that was nice. I got them for free.

I was not prepared for the sheer options in canning. Just in what you could make. The flavor options for jams were really cool. Like stuff you will never find in a grocery store for any price.

Second, I bought some jars and supplies on Amazon. I have discovered my mix of Verones and Ball came out with me really liking the Ball jars better. They pop when they come out, and are easier to work with in my opinion. This is important because the rings are not the same exact size between brands, which is annoying.

Third, I went to the grocery store and got raspberries and strawberries. I should have stuck with one, but I got excited.

Finally, today I got everything together and I made the Berry or Black Currant jam recipe on page 29 of the Ball Complete Book of Home preserving.

All my cans are sitting and cooling now, but as I licked the utensils and my cans are cooling?

I had completely forgotten what raspberry tasted like. You know, I have been eating raspberry jam 3, 4, 5 times a week since I was a kid. It’s my go-to comfort food, and some things I just don’t change up much.

The raspberry jam from the store, any of them because I switch it up often looking for a good one, don’t taste like this. Yet, I remember this flavor because when I was a kid, the jams we bought from the store tasted like this.

I think this is yet another 10th of a cent corporation issue. It goes like this, the company board wants to save money, so they work out that they can save a 10th of a cent on every product if they just use less great ingredients, or save costs on packaging, or use a cheaper option somewhere.

This goes on for years, slowly the product has no real comparison to the one you ate 30 years ago.

I think this is what’s happened to all the jams I used to eat.

When I licked the spoon when I was done? It was like a memory from childhood back when raspberry jam was raspberry flavored, and not a red artificially over sweet jam that tastes like it had sat next to a raspberry at some point in it’s life.

I think this is a metaphor for capitalism and corporations making money at the expense of there own products, and now we live in a world were we have little choice in the matter but to take what few products there are, because most companies are owned by very few corporations at the top.

In any case, I am ecstatic at the success of my jam, and shocked at the loss of raspberry flavor in my store bought jams.