Okay, so where the hell have I been for 2 months? Like this; I took a new job at the company I currently work for (hopefully, not for long, but that is a tale for another time) so for almost 4 months I have been in a constant state of stress. Why? Well...it turns out that I am training myself.
Like this. When this job came open I expressed interest in taking it over. It is a problem area for the company and I thought that my 30 years of management experience would serve to turn this area around and solve some of the problems we have traditionally encountered. Since my predecessor was already out of the picture, I began doing the job in a limited way assuming that a) my employer would make some sort of official job offer to me and that b) I would have to have some training before I could fully assume the position. Since then, I have HAD to take over the job full-time. It is a labor intensive position that simply can't be performed in conjuction with other work. I have yet to have anyone tell me that I officially have the job. Instead, I find out in an internal list of employee contact info. There it is, my name and contact information alongside my new title. No raise, no official promotion. Worse...no training.
Look, I realize that most people would look at this as a blessing in disguise. I mean, after all, who wants to hang out with their boss for a few hours every day for some unknown period of time. My primary complaint is that I am treated as if I have had 160 hours of formal training on this job. I am held accountable, I am expected to perform at a high level of competence and I am summarily called on the carpet when mistakes are made. Okay but, the stress is killing me!
I don't mean to bitch but I have just been too damned tired to enjoy any of my favorite pursuits, one of which is posting to this blog.
So, forgive me if I don't post as much as I would like but I come home every day feeling like I have been rode hard and put up wet.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
My Seafood Ain't No Race Car or What's This Crap In My Shrimp?
Living near the coast as I do, you would think that I could get my hands on some pretty decent seafood, right? Well, it ain't necessarily so! Over the last few years I have noted with growing dismay that the shrimp and scallops that I am able to get just don't have the same flavor that they used to. In fact...they are, in most cases, piteously bland and, in some cases, downright nasty. Being an inquisitive sort, I started asking my friends in the seafood business some fairly pointed questions. Like, what the hell is going on with the seafood?
Slowly, a grim picture began to emerge. It is a picture of greed, deception and downright lack of concern for the taste buds (and wallet) of the average working stiff all for the sake of increased profits. It seems that it is almost impossible these days to buy pure unadulterated shrimp or scallops regardless of where you live! Even this close (they bring it in to a dock that is literally a 10 minute boat ride from my house) all the shrimp I am able to buy has been soaked in a chemical with the distinctly unappetizing name of Sodium Tripolyphosphate. This dastardly chemical is also known as STP. That's right, it has the same name as the performance additive that we used to put in our old clinkers trying to turn them into high-performance race cars. Though it is NOT the same chemical, it is my considered opinion that it probably tastes similar.
The stated purpose of this chemical is to preserve the seafood in question without freezing it so as to allow the fisherman more time at sea between off-loadings. Sounds harmless enough. There are (as you might suspect) a few dark sides to this supposedly innocuous concoction.
First, in the marketing material I was able to find for this product (ain't the internet great) it was pointed out with more than a little glee that this chemical, in fact, also allows the foods treated in it to absorb and retain more water than they otherwise would. This would not normally be objectionable except for the fact that since I am paying for this stuff by weight this means that now the weight has been increased by a significant margin of water. Now, don't get me wrong. Water is fine stuff...but I don't want to pay 16 bucks a pound for it! (Let's put that in perpective...1 gallon of water equals 8 lbs. At $16 per pound that would make water $128 per gallon...and you thought gas was high!)
Another problem with this stuff is this. It completely destroys the flavor of whatever it is used to "preserve". Shrimp is supposed to be sweet with a touch of brininess. Scallops should be even sweeter, but they're not once they have been treated. Shrimp lose all their sweetness and thus become flavors lumps in ones mouth. Treated scallops actually (to my palate anyway) take on some of the flavor of the chemical itself thus rendering them unfit for consumption at any price. Much less the $12-18 a pound they usually go for.
Now, I did some research on this stuff as I am a firm believer that voluntarily eating chemicals that are a principal ingredient in concrete cleaner (go to your local home improvement store and check) is ill-advised at best. In checking I found the official material safety data sheet put out by the US government on this stuff. It advises the following cautions on using this material.
1) It is a caustic material.
2) You should not breathe it in.
3) You should avoid prolonged skin contact.
4) It should not be ingested.
Being a simple country boy, I realize that I do not know everything and that some things are above me, but do not ingest means we shouldn't eat it, right? So why are they soaking our food in this crap?
The US shrimp industry (and in particular the North Carolina shrimpers) have recently made a big deal of trying to get us to buy "fresh, local, wild grown" shrimp. This has been due to the high volume of imported shrimp of various types that have hit the grocery shelves at extremely good price levels in the last few years. These imports have driven the cost of shrimp down to very affordable levels (you can typically now buy a pound of shrimp for less than you can a pound of flounder!) The US seafood industry has been hit pretty hard by this so they have elected to a) increase their expenses by doing a lot of TV advertising slamming foreign shrimp, b) gone to our elected representatives and asked for restrictions on the importing of foreign shrimp and c) added this little jewel of a chemical to their products in an effort to increase their profits which they need as they are spending so much on television advertising.
Hey! I have an idea! Why not stop all that crap and just quit soaking my food in concrete cleaner? I will buy the "fresh, local, wild-grown shrimp" if I know it will taste better than the (substantially) cheaper foreign stuff! Then, instead of trying to get our poor, overworked, tired legislators (notice the facetiousness here?) to pass legislation protecting you from legitimate free-market competition, have them pass the laws you are fighting against now. You know, the ones where you have to label your seafood as chemically treated. This solution probably makes too much sense for any American company but I have noticed that people will happily pay more for organic, chemical free food products. I know I would.
Slowly, a grim picture began to emerge. It is a picture of greed, deception and downright lack of concern for the taste buds (and wallet) of the average working stiff all for the sake of increased profits. It seems that it is almost impossible these days to buy pure unadulterated shrimp or scallops regardless of where you live! Even this close (they bring it in to a dock that is literally a 10 minute boat ride from my house) all the shrimp I am able to buy has been soaked in a chemical with the distinctly unappetizing name of Sodium Tripolyphosphate. This dastardly chemical is also known as STP. That's right, it has the same name as the performance additive that we used to put in our old clinkers trying to turn them into high-performance race cars. Though it is NOT the same chemical, it is my considered opinion that it probably tastes similar.
The stated purpose of this chemical is to preserve the seafood in question without freezing it so as to allow the fisherman more time at sea between off-loadings. Sounds harmless enough. There are (as you might suspect) a few dark sides to this supposedly innocuous concoction.
First, in the marketing material I was able to find for this product (ain't the internet great) it was pointed out with more than a little glee that this chemical, in fact, also allows the foods treated in it to absorb and retain more water than they otherwise would. This would not normally be objectionable except for the fact that since I am paying for this stuff by weight this means that now the weight has been increased by a significant margin of water. Now, don't get me wrong. Water is fine stuff...but I don't want to pay 16 bucks a pound for it! (Let's put that in perpective...1 gallon of water equals 8 lbs. At $16 per pound that would make water $128 per gallon...and you thought gas was high!)
Another problem with this stuff is this. It completely destroys the flavor of whatever it is used to "preserve". Shrimp is supposed to be sweet with a touch of brininess. Scallops should be even sweeter, but they're not once they have been treated. Shrimp lose all their sweetness and thus become flavors lumps in ones mouth. Treated scallops actually (to my palate anyway) take on some of the flavor of the chemical itself thus rendering them unfit for consumption at any price. Much less the $12-18 a pound they usually go for.
Now, I did some research on this stuff as I am a firm believer that voluntarily eating chemicals that are a principal ingredient in concrete cleaner (go to your local home improvement store and check) is ill-advised at best. In checking I found the official material safety data sheet put out by the US government on this stuff. It advises the following cautions on using this material.
1) It is a caustic material.
2) You should not breathe it in.
3) You should avoid prolonged skin contact.
4) It should not be ingested.
Being a simple country boy, I realize that I do not know everything and that some things are above me, but do not ingest means we shouldn't eat it, right? So why are they soaking our food in this crap?
The US shrimp industry (and in particular the North Carolina shrimpers) have recently made a big deal of trying to get us to buy "fresh, local, wild grown" shrimp. This has been due to the high volume of imported shrimp of various types that have hit the grocery shelves at extremely good price levels in the last few years. These imports have driven the cost of shrimp down to very affordable levels (you can typically now buy a pound of shrimp for less than you can a pound of flounder!) The US seafood industry has been hit pretty hard by this so they have elected to a) increase their expenses by doing a lot of TV advertising slamming foreign shrimp, b) gone to our elected representatives and asked for restrictions on the importing of foreign shrimp and c) added this little jewel of a chemical to their products in an effort to increase their profits which they need as they are spending so much on television advertising.
Hey! I have an idea! Why not stop all that crap and just quit soaking my food in concrete cleaner? I will buy the "fresh, local, wild-grown shrimp" if I know it will taste better than the (substantially) cheaper foreign stuff! Then, instead of trying to get our poor, overworked, tired legislators (notice the facetiousness here?) to pass legislation protecting you from legitimate free-market competition, have them pass the laws you are fighting against now. You know, the ones where you have to label your seafood as chemically treated. This solution probably makes too much sense for any American company but I have noticed that people will happily pay more for organic, chemical free food products. I know I would.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Winter, Johhny Cash and the Zen of Making Stock
I hate winter. It's too cold to enjoy the outdoors, the fish that I normally pursue have all either moved south or have retreated to deep water far offshore. Granted, living where I do I am (to a large extent) spared the worst that winter has to offer but, somehow, I find no comfort in this knowledge. I am subjected to worse than I would like to experience. What makes it even worse is the newcomers to our area who have fooled themselves into thinking that they have left the winter behind them and during those admittedly brief bitter cold snaps that we receive accost us with the statement "I thought it didn't get this cold here."
It does. It always has and, I suspect, it always will. Being forced to spend more and more time indoors, it becomes necessary to find other, less adventuresome ways to spend ones time. I cook, I write and I read. While these are all things I enjoy, being forced to spend more time reading carries with it certain inconveniences. For example, you will soon run out of books you know you will enjoy and are sometimes placed in the position of reaching way back among the shelves and grabbing that book that a well-meaning friend gave you to read but, you were hoping you would never have to. Such was the position I found myself in the other day when I reached for a book given to me as a gift with the words "I know you like to read and I know you like music so I saw this and thought you might like it."
NOTE: These words, or words very much like them, strike fear into the heart of the avid reader. As a group we are extraordinarily picky and the thought of trying to plow our way through a book picked out for us by someone else is greeted with the same warm enthusiasm with which we might greet the prospect of an impending tax audit.
That said, I was even less enthusiastic than that as I was convinced that the book in question would be impossibly boring. For, in this case, I can't stand the particular style of music (country) and this artist was one of my least favorite within that genre. I decided to give it a try as I find the process of crafting a song fascinating and besides, the nearest bookstore is almost 15 miles from my house and it was bitterly cold outside (26 degrees!).
The book is titled Cash and it is, of course, about Johnny Cash. In fact, it was written by the Man in Black himself, along with Patrick Carr. To my surprise, it is a very interesting read. It is my strong suspicion that Mr. Carrs contribution was more along the lines of taking random notes and tape recorded dictations from Johnny and putting them into a chronological and cohesive form. The book sounds like Johnny talking. I became so engrossed that I read for over an hour non-stop and got through about 80 pages. More importantly, I learned something; it is not necessary to like a persons music in order to like the person. I like Mr. Cash. I wish I could have known him.
This same day I had promised my family that I would make them some home-made Beef and Barley soup. Normally this would entail pulling a few quarts of stock from the freezer, slicing a few mushrooms (baby Portabellas, sometimes sold as Crimini mushrooms) dicing onions, garlic and carrots, searing off some beef already cut and trimmed for the purpose and firing up the stove. No big deal and wonderfully warming on a cold winters eve. Except this day. I had no stock in the freezer and would have to make some.
I make a lot of stock. Chicken stock, shrimp stock, vegetable stock and beef. During the cooler months my kitchen is redolent with the aroma of these stocks and other less common like court boullion or glace de veau, the classic French veal stock reduction. I discovered many years ago that the one thing that seperates the home kitchen from a good restaurant kitchen is stock. Soups, stews, gravies and sauces all benefit from being made with a truly rich and delicious stock. Having a few stocks on hand can elevate the most basic meals from simply good to wonderfully sublime. Stocks are one of my favorite things to make.
Fortunately, I had everything I needed to make a truly delicious beef stock. The super-mega mart had provided me with absolutely beautiful beef bones the day before. This, these days, can be the most difficult part of the process. Long gone are the days when the meat market at your grocer did any real meat cutting. Those days, you could ask for bones any day of the week and be assured that there would be at least a few available. After all, the store employed real butchers who actually cut meat all day long. There were bones-a-plenty. These days, you must be lucky enough to have in place a market manager with enough foresight to order bones at the same time he orders his meat. The actual butchering has been conveniently done for him buy a processing plant a couple of hundred miles away.
This day I had bones in hand and was ready to go. I lined a commercial half-sheet pan with foil and pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven heated up (8 minutes on mine...every time) I spread 4 pounds of bones on the pan and gathered the rest of the stock ingredients. The classic mirepoix of French cuisine; 2 parts onion, 1 part celery, 1 part carrots all chopped, 6 cloves of garlic, bay leaves (please use the imported...California bay tastes too much like medicine) and thyme. I put the bones into the oven and began to prep my other ingredients in a wonderfully leisurely manner. Stock bones take a minimum of 2 1/2 hours to cook. You've got plenty of time.
With all this time on my hands, I totally immersed myself in the process of not only prepping the ingredients for the stock itself but also prepping those I would need for the soup. There were no distractions of any sort and it wasn't long before I was happily lost in the process. The only sounds disturbing the quiet of the house were the wondeful sounds made by the knife as it cut through the fresh, crisp vegetables and hit the old-fashioned wooden cutting board that I prefer for vegetables. I know most people wouldn't pay attention to these sounds but, to my ear, it is very nearly a music all its own. I peeled and chopped onions (save the skins...they add a nice color to the stock) carrots, celery and garlic for the stock and set them aside in small glass bowls I use just for that purpose. The French have assigned the term mise en place to this. To me...it's just common sense. From there, I prepped the ingredients for the soup itself. More onions, garlic and carrots were peeled and chopped. Mushrooms were cleaned, stemmed and sliced. More bowls were called into service, barley was measured out and set aside. The beef was pulled from the fridge, trimmed of excess fat and cut into bite size cubes.
All the while that this work was going on, the kitchen began to fill with the wondeful, beefy smell of those bones roasting away. Between the sounds and smells of the vegetables being prepped and the rich scent of roasting bones, I soon entered a state of complete relaxation and total comfort. These were the smells and sounds of home.
Promptly on schedule the bones were done. Now the stock must be put together. In days gone by, I would have put the accumulated beef fat from the marrow into my stockpot, added the vegetables and begun the process of sweating them in the beef fat. I have now reached the age where I try not to overburden my system with too much fat, no matter how tasty that fat might be. So I put some olive oil in instead (extra-virgin, if you please) added the veg and turned the burner to medium. When making a stock, you want to sweat the vegetables. We are after maximum flavor extraction here not color. I added kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper and cooked until the onions turned clear. Once this was done I added 1 cup of Cabernet Sauvignon and cooked until the liquid reduced by half. I then added the bones, 8 quarts of water, 4 bay leaves and about 1 tsp. of dried thyme. I left the burner on medium and walked away for 30 minutes. I opened a lovely bottle of Flying Dog Barleywine, put on my heavy coat and went outside. By the time I was thoroughlly chilled, the stock was boiling so I turned the heat down to a simmer and skimmed the foamy impurities (mostly coagulated proteins) off the stock. My work here was almost done and a day that began as nasty and cold had become warm and relaxing. Thanks to Johnny Cash and the Zen of making stock.
It does. It always has and, I suspect, it always will. Being forced to spend more and more time indoors, it becomes necessary to find other, less adventuresome ways to spend ones time. I cook, I write and I read. While these are all things I enjoy, being forced to spend more time reading carries with it certain inconveniences. For example, you will soon run out of books you know you will enjoy and are sometimes placed in the position of reaching way back among the shelves and grabbing that book that a well-meaning friend gave you to read but, you were hoping you would never have to. Such was the position I found myself in the other day when I reached for a book given to me as a gift with the words "I know you like to read and I know you like music so I saw this and thought you might like it."
NOTE: These words, or words very much like them, strike fear into the heart of the avid reader. As a group we are extraordinarily picky and the thought of trying to plow our way through a book picked out for us by someone else is greeted with the same warm enthusiasm with which we might greet the prospect of an impending tax audit.
That said, I was even less enthusiastic than that as I was convinced that the book in question would be impossibly boring. For, in this case, I can't stand the particular style of music (country) and this artist was one of my least favorite within that genre. I decided to give it a try as I find the process of crafting a song fascinating and besides, the nearest bookstore is almost 15 miles from my house and it was bitterly cold outside (26 degrees!).
The book is titled Cash and it is, of course, about Johnny Cash. In fact, it was written by the Man in Black himself, along with Patrick Carr. To my surprise, it is a very interesting read. It is my strong suspicion that Mr. Carrs contribution was more along the lines of taking random notes and tape recorded dictations from Johnny and putting them into a chronological and cohesive form. The book sounds like Johnny talking. I became so engrossed that I read for over an hour non-stop and got through about 80 pages. More importantly, I learned something; it is not necessary to like a persons music in order to like the person. I like Mr. Cash. I wish I could have known him.
This same day I had promised my family that I would make them some home-made Beef and Barley soup. Normally this would entail pulling a few quarts of stock from the freezer, slicing a few mushrooms (baby Portabellas, sometimes sold as Crimini mushrooms) dicing onions, garlic and carrots, searing off some beef already cut and trimmed for the purpose and firing up the stove. No big deal and wonderfully warming on a cold winters eve. Except this day. I had no stock in the freezer and would have to make some.
I make a lot of stock. Chicken stock, shrimp stock, vegetable stock and beef. During the cooler months my kitchen is redolent with the aroma of these stocks and other less common like court boullion or glace de veau, the classic French veal stock reduction. I discovered many years ago that the one thing that seperates the home kitchen from a good restaurant kitchen is stock. Soups, stews, gravies and sauces all benefit from being made with a truly rich and delicious stock. Having a few stocks on hand can elevate the most basic meals from simply good to wonderfully sublime. Stocks are one of my favorite things to make.
Fortunately, I had everything I needed to make a truly delicious beef stock. The super-mega mart had provided me with absolutely beautiful beef bones the day before. This, these days, can be the most difficult part of the process. Long gone are the days when the meat market at your grocer did any real meat cutting. Those days, you could ask for bones any day of the week and be assured that there would be at least a few available. After all, the store employed real butchers who actually cut meat all day long. There were bones-a-plenty. These days, you must be lucky enough to have in place a market manager with enough foresight to order bones at the same time he orders his meat. The actual butchering has been conveniently done for him buy a processing plant a couple of hundred miles away.
This day I had bones in hand and was ready to go. I lined a commercial half-sheet pan with foil and pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven heated up (8 minutes on mine...every time) I spread 4 pounds of bones on the pan and gathered the rest of the stock ingredients. The classic mirepoix of French cuisine; 2 parts onion, 1 part celery, 1 part carrots all chopped, 6 cloves of garlic, bay leaves (please use the imported...California bay tastes too much like medicine) and thyme. I put the bones into the oven and began to prep my other ingredients in a wonderfully leisurely manner. Stock bones take a minimum of 2 1/2 hours to cook. You've got plenty of time.
With all this time on my hands, I totally immersed myself in the process of not only prepping the ingredients for the stock itself but also prepping those I would need for the soup. There were no distractions of any sort and it wasn't long before I was happily lost in the process. The only sounds disturbing the quiet of the house were the wondeful sounds made by the knife as it cut through the fresh, crisp vegetables and hit the old-fashioned wooden cutting board that I prefer for vegetables. I know most people wouldn't pay attention to these sounds but, to my ear, it is very nearly a music all its own. I peeled and chopped onions (save the skins...they add a nice color to the stock) carrots, celery and garlic for the stock and set them aside in small glass bowls I use just for that purpose. The French have assigned the term mise en place to this. To me...it's just common sense. From there, I prepped the ingredients for the soup itself. More onions, garlic and carrots were peeled and chopped. Mushrooms were cleaned, stemmed and sliced. More bowls were called into service, barley was measured out and set aside. The beef was pulled from the fridge, trimmed of excess fat and cut into bite size cubes.
All the while that this work was going on, the kitchen began to fill with the wondeful, beefy smell of those bones roasting away. Between the sounds and smells of the vegetables being prepped and the rich scent of roasting bones, I soon entered a state of complete relaxation and total comfort. These were the smells and sounds of home.
Promptly on schedule the bones were done. Now the stock must be put together. In days gone by, I would have put the accumulated beef fat from the marrow into my stockpot, added the vegetables and begun the process of sweating them in the beef fat. I have now reached the age where I try not to overburden my system with too much fat, no matter how tasty that fat might be. So I put some olive oil in instead (extra-virgin, if you please) added the veg and turned the burner to medium. When making a stock, you want to sweat the vegetables. We are after maximum flavor extraction here not color. I added kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper and cooked until the onions turned clear. Once this was done I added 1 cup of Cabernet Sauvignon and cooked until the liquid reduced by half. I then added the bones, 8 quarts of water, 4 bay leaves and about 1 tsp. of dried thyme. I left the burner on medium and walked away for 30 minutes. I opened a lovely bottle of Flying Dog Barleywine, put on my heavy coat and went outside. By the time I was thoroughlly chilled, the stock was boiling so I turned the heat down to a simmer and skimmed the foamy impurities (mostly coagulated proteins) off the stock. My work here was almost done and a day that began as nasty and cold had become warm and relaxing. Thanks to Johnny Cash and the Zen of making stock.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Upon Entering the World of Blogging
You are (at least I hope) reading the first of my blogs. Nothing here of earth shattering importance...at least not yet. Just a space for me to note those things that are on my mind. My interests are many and varied and from time to time you will see my ponderings on such subjects as cooking (one of my true and enduring passions), politics, gardening, music (another passion) and maybe even the occasional fish tale or two.
Truthfully, I am amazed at the possibility of this relatively new and burgeoning form of communication. First, the mere fact that I can do this and that anyone who wishes to...anywhere in the world can read and comment on it is mind blowing to me. I was born in 1957 and have seen a lot of technological advances but nothing has emotionally prepared me for this awesome method of communication. Secondly, I am grateful for the hundreds of dollars this will save me on journals, legal pads, steno books and notebook paper that would normally serve as the repository for my senseless meanderings. Hell! I don't even have to worry about taking up space on my own hard-drive!
For now, I am going away to enjoy a lovely adult beverage and consider the implications of this new toy, but I will be back soon!
Truthfully, I am amazed at the possibility of this relatively new and burgeoning form of communication. First, the mere fact that I can do this and that anyone who wishes to...anywhere in the world can read and comment on it is mind blowing to me. I was born in 1957 and have seen a lot of technological advances but nothing has emotionally prepared me for this awesome method of communication. Secondly, I am grateful for the hundreds of dollars this will save me on journals, legal pads, steno books and notebook paper that would normally serve as the repository for my senseless meanderings. Hell! I don't even have to worry about taking up space on my own hard-drive!
For now, I am going away to enjoy a lovely adult beverage and consider the implications of this new toy, but I will be back soon!
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