All posts by Annette

Food, The Challenge

The Challenge: Day Twenty-Five

Thought I’d given up on the last of The Challenge, eh?

Fat chance. I do try to finish the things I start, after all.

Today I was to start the paperwork for prequalifying for a loan so I can find a house – or, rather, so when the right house finds me, I’ll be prepared. My uncle’s cousin is doing this for me, so of course we decided to feed him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

Our trip to Savannah interrupted my lawn mowing schedule, so some of the weedier grass was coming up around my kneecaps, and it was time, as they say. I felt pretty good about it this morning, too: it only took just over an hour for me to cut the lawn (with a break), and then another 20 minutes or so to trim (after about a 40 minute rest, that is). According to the weather dork, today was supposed to be cooler. Ha! By the time I finished with the lawn just after noon, it was already in the mid-90s. We ended up at 96 today. There’s nothing like Florida in the summer. Or winter. Or spring or fall.

Anyhow, after I rested a bit and showered, it was time to head to the NOC to set up a couple of servers that arrived late yesterday. The newest – and last, for this cage – rack is now in place and waiting. That’s a good thing, because racks eight and nine are almost filled. This will give us room for another 24 or so servers. I’m hoping that the NOC guys get our new cage built quickly. At the rate we’re adding servers lately, this rack will be full before too long. It’s strange looking at all the gear in the cage and thinking back to when my then business partner and I started the company. At the time, we figured if we had a server or two and they paid for themselves, that would be enough. After two months, we were already so busy that she became the first fulltime employee of the company and quit her day job. And now, here we are, over 200 servers later. The partner is gone, off to pursue non-techie interests, and the past couple of years have been interesting (in the Chinese curse sense), but I wouldn’t trade any of it for a regular job working for someone else.

Since I had to make a stop at PetSmart after leaving the NOC to pick up some hairball gel for the little furry ones, I decided to cruise by Yoshi’s (or at least where Yoshi’s used to be) to see what was going on with that space. The sign that was up about some sushi place coming soon is gone, but I do see that there is work going on inside to renovate the place. There is another sushi place across Baymeadows as well – it’s been there for some time, even while Yoshi’s was open – so it’s a little surprising that one sushi place would close with another poised to take its place rather than the space turning into a restaurant offering another type of cuisine.

For dinner we elected to have shrimp, rice pilaf, broccoli, and sliced tomatoes. Simple, summery, and nothing too elaborate because yours truly is dead tired from all the physical labor today. I’m hoping that one day I’ll get my energy stores back in order so that typical activities don’t wear me out quite so much.

The shrimp was marinated in lemon juice, soy, honey, red pepper flakes, grated fresh ginger, garlic, and a bit of olive oil. I let that sit for awhile as I prepped everything else, then sauteed them in three batches in a touch of olive oil. “Batches?” you ask. “We don’ need no steekin’ batches!” Well, you do, really. Sauteeing the shrimp – or any food, for that matter – in batches allows you to maintain a steady temperature in your pan. In addition, overcrowding certain types of food in your pan will result in steaming that food rather than sauteeing it. This is fine, if steaming is what you’re after, or if you don’t mind how soggy some foods can get (or how mushy shrimp can get). But it wasn’t, in this case, what we were after, and the sauteed shrimp turned out quite well. The rice was once again pilaf with shallots and parmesan, as the people who are eating it around here have decided they really like that version.

So what’s our breakdown?

Shrimp, 2 pounds: 13.40
Broccoli, on sale at Publix: 1.99
Rice: 1.50
Tomatoes, vine-ripe: 1.50

Total meal: 18.39
Total per diner (4): 4.60

I will also add that the meal was very nutritious, with almost no saturated fat and the entire meal was low in calories. It also tasted quite good, from what I could taste. Admittedly, my portions were kiddie-sized and I had some formula afterward, but the other folks enjoyed it and ate the rest of my servings.

Food

Is organic worth it?

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I’ve been seeing articles here and there of late about organic food and whether going organic is worth it or not.

In an ideal world, of course eating organic would likely be better in the long run. The problem for most people – myself included – is that going organic is an expensive proposition. Very expensive. Case in point: this afternoon, my mom and I headed over to Native Sun, a certified organic market here in town (soon to be two markets, as they have built a new market out toward Costco, if you’re familiar with the area). This particular store is quite busy. It’s also quite expensive: boneless, skinless chicken breasts run a whopping 5.69/pound. The fruits and vegetables are likewise quite costly, sometimes running three times the price in a regular grocery like Publix, and five to six times the price you’d pay at the farmer’s market. Naturally, the organic items at Publix are also more expensive than their non-certified counterparts.

Now, in and of itself, this is not a bad thing. After all, they have to make their money after paying whoever provides these goods. However, because the cost per unit is so much higher, it prices a lot of people out of the market. The question then becomes not if organic is worth it – it is – but how to better bring organic items to the end user without creating the need for them to take a second mortgage on their house to afford it.

We then come to a double-edged sword. Wal-Mart is going organic, sort of: they’ll be carrying some organics, just as Target does now to a small extent. Not everyone is pleased about Wal-Mat’s foray into the field (so to speak), because of the effect Wal-Mart has on markets. I hope never to have to step foot into a Wal-Mart again in my lifetime, so I know I will not be buying whatever they’re selling. But, if it helps people who could otherwise not afford it to buy at least some of their food organic, can it be all bad? It can be partially bad, or even mostly bad for some people, especially for the producers, but does the end user, the consumer, ever stop to think about that?

It’s a conundrum that is not easily solved, I’m afraid. For me, while most things at Native Sun are things I will skip, they do have a good selection of bulk flours, sugars, salts, beans, and nuts that are organic and reasonably priced (because they are not packaged), and these are things that I can readily use in the food I create for others. And I hope to use those things soon, as I work out my schedule issues.

Life in general

Public service announcement: It’s damn hot

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Once again, out looking at houses. This time, we went back to the top two on our list (thus far) and had a closer look, took some photos, talked over the pros and cons. After a brief stop back at the homestead, we decided to go drive around a bit and see what else was out there in the same neighborhoods.

The answer: a lot. There are an absolute ton of houses around here for sale, some that we wouldn’t touch, and one that I’d love to have but that is likely out of my price range even with the most creative of brokers.

And it’s hot out there. Nothing around here has burst into flames just yet, but the heat just sucks the life out of you. And with the way yours truly has been failing to take in a good amount of calories per day, the heat just makes me feel like I’m dragging my ass.

Speaking of eating, it’s been ages since I had Popeye’s chicken – over a year, to be sure, and probably a bit longer than that. Always liked their spicy chicken with some faux mashed potatoes as a junk food treat. We stopped by on the way back from our tour of homes and picked up some chicken and potatoes. Alas, since I spent so long not eating and then eating only bland-type foods, the spicy chicken really puts a burn in my mouth although I had never thought of it as particularly spicy. Even the rehydrated potatoes with whatever that gravy is have a little kick to them. That’s really, really sad to me, a bonafide chilehead, and isn’t doing much to make the frustration level abate.

So here I sit, debating whether to continue my quest to try and eat an entire real meal (such as it is: a thigh and a blob of potatoes) or just give up and go back to some formula. I can confidently say that one of the pros about formula is that it’s fast. Down the tube, chase it with some water, and presto! The meal is over. Maybe I can convince one of the girls to run up and get me some Lactaid so I can have some ice cream later. In the meantime, I guess I’ll struggle a little further with the chicken until I can’t stand it any longer. Not haute cuisine by any means, I know, and not low fat. Cheap, though, I have to say that, and that’s a problem with fast food relative to the obesity issue: fast food is cheap and there’s plenty of it. Think about Taco Bell. You could feed a small country for about five bucks, and it’s not exactly the best thing for you. I watched SuperSize Me a couple of times, and I have Spurlock’s book in this pile of books that I’m reading. Quite interesting, I must say, and fits a theory I had developed quite some time ago about obesity and cost factors.

Now I’m rambling, though. It must be the drugs. We delivered a few things to Gabs (my sister with the migraine the other day), and her dog – a rottweiler that weighs as much as I do – managed not only to jump up on me but managed to put one big fat paw square on where my feeding tube enters the hole in my abdomen. That, my dear and faithful readers, is painful.

Cancer

The Body Politik

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I never used to think my body would betray me until I was quite old and the pieces started aging beyond their ability to repair themselves. Then, of course, this cancer business started and I realized that sometimes it isn’t just age alone that causes your body to rebel against you. As we wound our way through treatment, I thought perhaps I might be able to recover as quickly as I’d always recovered from the dings, scrapes, scratches, sprains, and other assorted mishaps I’d experienced over the years – the result of an active life. Unfortunately, this has not turned out to be the case. As one of my ENTs puts it, it’s a major medical trauma, and the rational part of my mind agrees and understands this. The other part of me gets frustrated because of the physical limitations and the inability I have now to accurately (100%) predict how my body is going to react to something: anything from picking up a bottle of dishwasher fluid with my left arm to eating ice cream I’ve made. I did both of these last night. The former caused pain to shoot up from my shoulder to my head and I nearly dropped the entire bottle. The latter caused me to wake up at 3 in the morning with a bad stomachache (no burning, thank you Prevacid) and a feeling like someone had punched me right in the sternum, so I suppose I need to add Lactaid to my drug cocktails. That caused me not to do much of anything beyond take some drugs for nausea and try to sleep until it went away around 2 this afternoon.

Which means that I did not do any of the things I had planned to do this morning: mow the lawn, make some bread, try my hand at some pasta, and I’m not cooking tonight. It’s disappointing to be hostage to the unknown manner the body will react. I’m hoping that, as all the doctors say, time will help with all of this. And I hope I can remain patient enough with myself to get through it without going slowly insane.

Life in general

Another day, another round of houses

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Yesterday afternoon, we went out and looked at half a dozen houses. This afternoon, we looked at half a dozen more. There are a couple that we really liked, a couple that were really, really odd either because of the layout or what the homeowners had done with the house. The rest just received a shrug as they didn’t really grab me.

There really was no cooking today, since the bulk of the day was spent working and the afternoon spent viewing houses and then picking up my sister’s car (as she had a migraine and my mom had picked her up earlier). Soup, ice cream, and cappuccino for me today, plus formula earlier. Still not enough calories, I do believe, but that’s the way it goes.

My other sister – the one sans migraine today – wanted me to plan a menu for her to cook for a group of her girlfriends. She wanted things that could be prepped as much as possible beforehand and then transported to her friend’s house out at the beach. I told her this would be a good catering puzzle. We decided on chicken breasts stuffed with asparagus spears and feta and roasted on a bed of sun-dried tomatoes, garlic-parsley potatoes, salad, rolls, and creme brulee for dessert. It sounds pretty good to me.

Someone asked me how we came up with the name of the company I own. A serendipitous misspelling, I say, courtesy of my mom. We haven’t stumbled across anything like that thus far for the food business. Not yet, anyway.

Time to head to the NOC in the dead of night to clean up the cage a bit, set up a new server, repair the power supply on another. This doesn’t do anything good for my schedule, but it will free up my morning to get the yard mowed (maybe) and get some bread going.

Cancer, Life in general, The Challenge

A do-nothing day

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Last night, after our fabulous dinner party, I took a friend back to her place – her car-ma was apparently not good Monday, as she had both a flat and something preventing the car from actually starting, so we’d sent Gabrielle to fetch her for dinner (because people have to eat, and especially eat my cooking!), and we couldn’t very well make her walk home. When I returned to the homestead, my mom informed me that she’d made an executive decision: no mowing the lawn for me on Tuesday, and no cooking either. Tuesday was to be a rest day for me. I objected a bit, but I was plenty tired, and when Tuesday rolled up, even more tired. The exertion over the weekend and into Monday night caught up with me.

So I did a bunch of “real” work, some paperwork, and generally tried to relax. But I felt (and feel) antsy, for some reason that I can’t quite touch. I think that it’s probably because my brain is working away like a frenzied, overcaffeinated squirrel. This makes both my sleep and my waking hours restless, as it’s difficult to turn things off and veg out.

What’s on my mind? All sorts of things.

Italy. For some reason, Italy has moved into the first spot of places I want to visit. It has been in the back of my mind for years (I used to think my ex and I would be going), but recently moved into the forefront. Maybe it was the brush with mortality, maybe it was just the general thought of it, or maybe it’s something else, like leftovers from watching the World Cup finals, but I’ve set a tentative date of 2009. We’ll see how that works out.

Business(es). I have two more brands that I want to launch, in the same arena as my main business. One site is about ready to shove out the front door, and the other needs just a little tweaking and it’s done. Really, the only thing left to do is set up a merchant account for each and make the sites/ordering systems active, as I’m sure they’ll eventually reach the level of the flagship brand with a little pushing. I’m not sure why I just haven’t finished this yet, but I should probably set a firm date for those, to get them going. After all, diversifying is what I always preached to people when I was a stockbroker, and the same rules apply here, too.

Business(es), the food version. I’ve been trying to come up with a good name for a food business, and I’ve started researching the requirements for packaging food here in Florida. One of the first things I need to do is take the Food Manager Certification test, to get that out of the way. The certification is good for five years, and someone is required to hold that certification for just about any business that deals with producing food other people will be eating. All the other rules and regs I’ll have to research and then I’ll have to put together all the paperwork that goes along with starting a business, of course, but I don’t mind that sort of thing. I keep wondering just how some of these people who open restaurants get the money to do the renovations and keep themselves going while they build their business. I also wonder why so many restaurants tend to serve the same type of menu if they’re aimed toward the middle class market. I notice this here, but also in other cities I happen to visit, like Savannah.

Food, in general. Speaking of restaurants, and skipping over (for now) the wisp of desire I can feel deep down to open one, why is it that the serving portions are so damned huge these days at most restaurants? People are getting fatter, and at least part of that is because of the portion sizes when eating out and the fact that most people were lectured when they were growing up to clean their plates. There’s no reason to be part of the clean your plate club. Now, in my time BC (before cancer), I could have stood to lose about 10 pounds or so, but I can honestly say that even then I was usually unable to finish most of the dishes I was served when dining out because they were just so freaking large. What we really need is something between the plate-big-as-your-head restaurant and the look-we’re-so-stylish-and-classy-our-portions-are-the-size of-your-pinky restaurant. And if that sort of place could serve something that wasn’t the same as any other restaurant, so much the better.

Food, selling it. One of the issues I have at the moment is that I really don’t measure anything except when baking. this means that I’m going to have to experiment a bit and write down whatever is going into the mixing bowl or pot so we can find the best combination and so it can be recreated consistently for sale. For the pulled pork I made, I did actually write down the ratios, and that turned out pretty well. Of course, there will have to be successive tastings by my core group of tasters, and I imagine I’ll need to farm out some of that to other people to have as many opinions as possible while narrowing down the choices to whichever one winds up with the most fans. Then it will be time to find a commercial kitchen (since you can’t package food for sale in your home kitchen in Florida) or a copacker (a business that will take your recipes and pack them for you, in their own commercial grade facilities so you don’t have to have any), have a lab verify the ingredients and give the nutrional value, and so on.

Food, cooking it. I’d really like to get my schedule sot of back on track so I can consistently do the things I’d like to do in addition to working, like baking bread on a regular basis, experimenting with making pastas, making sausages, doing some canning, and so on. I also need to really work on making menus in advance so I can ensure I have things on hand for at least a couple of meals. After all, we don’t live in the days where a daily trip to the market is required, and with a little planning, this would save me some time, not wreck my schedule during the day, and would allow me to be more productive with all the things I’d like to be doing in addition to the day job. I have to admit all of this is probably going to be the most difficult for me, because of my incredibly odd sleeping habits and my tendency to decide at the last minute what the menu will be. Right now, for instance, I have no idea what’s going to be on the menu for Wednesday – today, as I type this – but I should. In fact, I should know what’s on the menu for Wednesday through Saturday. But I don’t. When I think of it, I’ll let you know.

There are some other things floating by, as well. I’ve another PET scan scheduled for the end of August. I’m almost able to open my mouth widely enough to get the Therabite in so I can start using that to help stretch my jaw muscles. I need to do some laundry. I feel a bit sick to my stomach right this instant. I need to increase my calorie intake in a serious way – I weighed in at 107 before the Savannah trip, weighed in at 106 this evening when I went to Publix for some heavy cream so I could make some ice cream, and won’t be able to make it through mowing the lawn if I don’t have enough in me. The problem is that most of the time when I eat, I feel sick. At least I don’t have that horrible reflux as long as I take the Prevacid. I need to find a house to buy, as I won’t be buying the one we’re in right now. I need to head to Costco to replenish the bulk items. I need to finish the remainder of the quarterly paperwork and get it out the door. I have a couple of servers coming in that need to be set up, and I need to order up some gear for our expansion at the NOC. And so on. A million things make their way through the rivers of my brain…

Food, The Challenge

The Challenge: Day Twenty-Four

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In the throes of temporary insanity – no doubt caused by excessive physical exertion and exposure to sunlight over the weekend – I decided it would be a fine idea to cook for people on Monday night after we returned from Savannah. At first, it was supposed to just be a couple of friends of the family. That expanded to include our landlords from the old place, my uncle’s cousin, my sister and her boyfriend, my other sister and her boyfriend, and I talked another friend into coming as well. The boyfriends didn’t show, but we still had ten people here for dinner.

As a refresher, the menu.

Citrus tilapia with a quartet of salsas
Lemon steamed broccoli
Roma tomatoes stuffed with zucchini, criminis, and gruyere
Salad
Creme brulee with fresh fruit

The bread did not make the party, as I simply ran out of time between having to run out to the farmer’s market and then run out to Publix. But that wound up being ok.

The farmer’s market was the first stop, as I needed quite a number of things: tomatoes, zucchini, jalapenos, red and green bell peppers, mangoes, pineapple, limes, lemons, and peaches. All told, the haul from the farmer’s market was about fifteen bucks – because we bought an entire box of mangoes for six bucks! I needed more ramekins for the creme brulee, since I’d never needed to make brulee for a dozen people before, and it simply would not do to have someone go without. So I took myself out, picked those up, and then stopped at Publix for the rest of what I needed: tilapia (picked up 11 filets), red onions, romaine, carrots, eggs, cream, milk, broccoli, cheese, and a couple of other things that I’m no doubt forgetting. The bill there was $51. Our total bill for all the food for ten was $61.

The tilapia. The red stuff is sweet (not smoked) paprika.

Two of the four salsas. This is, on the left and right respectively, pineapple and mango.

The other two. On the left and right respectively, we have peach and orange.

The makings for salad.

The tomatoes, stuffed, and just out from under the broiler.

Everyone ate – some going back for seconds – and we had a few filets left over that went home (along with some of each of the salsas) with a couple of the guests, since no one around here will eat leftover fish.

And then it was time to make some coffee (capuccino for some) and break out the brulees. I had directed my mom to make the custards while I was working on the salsas earlier: a vanilla bean brulee, with the scraped vanilla bean cooking with the custard ingredients, then fished out before the custard was ladled into ramekins for baking. They’d been chilling out for awhile, and made their entrance after dinner. Here, the sugar sprinkled atop each one is being caramelized with a hand torch by yours truly. My sister Gabrielle took the remaining photos that appear here.

Aubrey, acting as my sous chef, sprinkled powdered sugar on each ramekin after I stopped playing with fire.

We then topped each brulee with a sliced and fanned strawberry, a few blueberries, and a sprig of mint.

Gabrielle told me to pose with one, so I did.

She then managed a very arty self-portrait.

We then passed them out, and people seemed to be enjoying them.

As well as the capuccino.

Just chilling. Aren’t they cute? They just had an anniversary last week, 25 or 26 years together.

All in all, another very successful dinner engagement. My only wish – and this is something I’ll be looking for as I hunt for a house – is that we had a larger dining space to put a bunch of people.

As I noted above, the total cost for this meal was $61, which brings our per-diner amount to just $6.10. We would have dropped down a bit further had the other people who should have been there shown up. The most expensive ingredients were the cheese (Gruyere), and the eggs and cream needed for the brulee. Still, not a bad total for a meal with a salad, a main and two sides, and a dessert.

Food, Life in general, Restaurants

Savannah: An Interlude, Day Three

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Sunday was our last day in Savannah. Saturday night, after a day of touring, walking, and eating, the girls went right to sleep when we reached the hotel. I stayed up a bit later, as I was too restless to sleep. Eventually, I managed to go to sleep myself, only to be awakened between 5 and 6 AM by a couple of servers needing attention. Those issues addressed, I debated staying up until the girls awoke, but I was freezing in the artic air my mom insisted should be the norm, and crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up over my ears.

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Food, Life in general, Restaurants

Savannah: An Interlude, Day Two, Part Two

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We had some time on our hands between the end of the Paula Deen tour and our reservations at The Lady and Sons. There were a couple of things we wanted to see: the Colonial Cemetery, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, and the Mercer House (also known as the Mercer-Williams House). All of these places are at the southern end of the historic district, so, with our comfy shoes on, water in hand, we started walking.

As we walked, I snapped some photos of a few buildings along the route. The architecture of these buildings is amazing to me, as is the fact that many of them are relatively unchanged, structurally, from their original designs.

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Food, Life in general, Restaurants

Savannah: An Interlude, Day Two, Part One

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A note about Saturday’s Interlude: this entry deals specifically with the Paula Deen tour and our dinner that same night at The Lady and Sons restaurant. Part two deals with our activities between the end of the tour in the morning and dinner that evening.

Saturday dawned bright, clear, and hot, as summer mornings are wont to do in the South. While the girls went downstairs to grab some coffee and tea, I stayed upstairs and poured some formula down the tube. I had no idea when we would be eating, or if I would be able to eat any of it, and the heat takes its toll on you when you’re out and about. I finished that, redid the dressing around my tube, and went downstairs to join the girls and await the bus or trolley that was to pick us up for the tour.

Continue reading Savannah: An Interlude, Day Two, Part One →