Tag: Cooking

Most Underrated Kitchen Appliance – Instant Hot Water

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This picture is my homemade instant hot cocoa mix in front of my wife and my coffee and tea set up. The white jar is for loose sugar for my wife, the dark blue one is for instant coffee, and the teal one is for sugar cubes for me.

This is not a sponsored post. I don’t have affiliate links. This is just me, in my first home, marveling at the small upgrades I can make in order for my life to be a billion times better. I just like to document and link things.

My incinerator. Ignore the gap between the backsplash and the counter. I have to fix that. It’s relatively mild here, but is like a 1/4 inch as it creeps larger at the end of the counter. I haven’t sealed it yet because I am waiting to fix it.

This is an Insinkerator. That’s the brand name of my infant hot water system. What it does, is deliver water hot enough to make tea out of. You can increase of lower the temperature to fit your needs.

In my home, my wife prefers instant coffee. That is probably horrifying to folks, but she grew up on it, and prefers it. Over our 30+ years of marriage we have had normal coffee makers, high end espresso machines, you name it. She always goes back to instant. This actually frees up a lot of counter space, and reduces waste from Keurig and espresso machines, presses and coffee makers.

I am a hot cocoa and tea drinker because I am a very high energy person, and caffeine takes me into the arena of damn annoying real quick, so I stick to my caffeine-free tea, and my hot cocoa. What little caffeine I get from the cocoa is about all I should ever have.

In the apartments we have been in, we were in a constant hot water kettle search. We would burn through one every year or so, because between the two of us, we would have tea, cocoa, and coffee all day long. We just killed them from over use. I was even considering one of those massive zojirushi how water dispensers.

Add to this, my wife has ADHD, and she would always come start the kettle, then leave, and an hour later come back to start the process all over. Just waiting for the water to heat was enough time in ADHD for her to end up distracted and not get her coffee. Some mornings she would realize she’d have related the task endlessly and never gotten her morning coffee.

With this in mind, one of the first items I bought for the house was a hot water on demand system. It’s like a mini on demand system that holds a gallon or so of water for your use. The Amazon listing says 3 gallons, but that’s wrong. I think it’s closer to 2/3 of a gallon.

This is like a $250 luxury. I can get my cocoa in the morning instantly. My wife no longer circles the kitchen in a remember & forget coffee dance.

I think this is the single most amazing item we have in our home. I had no idea when we put it in that it would help my wife so much. This was worth every penny. When or if it dies, I am replacing it immediately.

Being able to modify my home in such a tiny way, to help make our lives easier? I really want this for everyone. We were so lucky to get out of the rental racket, and into a home, and I just really want this for everyone.

It’s just so shocking to me that with such a relatively small purchase I can make such a huge impact on my enjoyment of my home.

Cheese Prep & Mint Plants

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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.

Post-Surgery Food Roundup

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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.

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.