Alabama Crumpets

In August, after two decades saying she would quit in the following week, my gorgeous wife Julie retired from her career in human resources.  Concern about dealing with the foreseeable problems in the unfolding of Obamacare from a corporate level probably was the final straw, although as it turned out, deferral of the employer mandate for large companies did put off most of the mess for her last employer by a year.  Still, she has never looked back. 

Her retirement led to her taking over many of my household chores, including planning meals.  As you may have noticed, my method of menu preparation usually involved finding something on sale at whatever market I happened to visit on any given day.  Lack of the proper ingredients proved to be the mother of invention.  Julie has continued the quick-clean cuisine impetus on easy clean-up, but she tends to take more of a Santa Claus approach, making a list and checking it twice to prepare exactly what we had on some prior occasion that she enjoyed.

Between that lifestyle change, a great vacation in Scotland/Northern Ireland in September and other life events like my brother-in-law's heart failure that brought us to San Diego for extended trips, I managed to go over four months without posting a new recipe. 

If you've been waiting to know what to cook next, you must be starving.

In a trip to New York City recently, our stay at our daughter Gina's still had someone else preparing most of the meals, but on the last morning, as we were leaving to bid adieu to youngest daughter Amy, who lives a few subways station rides away, Julie suggested we pick up breakfast at Dunkin Donuts to bring to Amy's. 

I certainly appreciate a good donut.  When Julie lived in Seal Beach during our dating days, I would stop for an apple fritter and coffee at an independent Electric Avenue donut shop on my way to work, but at that age, a donut didn't immediately impact my pant size as it does now.

In addition, the previous evening I had purchased Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies for a special last night in New York for our granddaughter Emma, and most of the Family Sized pack had gone uneaten.  Is a donut really a more nutritious breakfast than a cookie?  I'd say no.  And as cheap as I am, I didn't want to buy a donut when I could eat a free cookie.

However, I didn't want to be frowned upon by the Manhattan elite who might be spying on Amy's apartment kitchen with binoculars from one of the nearby historic Harlem Hamilton Heights rooftops, so I asked myself what I could do to make eating a cookie acceptable to such highbrow snoops?

I thought back to our trip to London, where we were unable to find a crumpet, which the Brits dismissed as nothing to get excited about.  Why not call a cookie a crumpet?  After all, it is flour and other ingredients in a circular shape, like a crumpet, I presume, although I have never actually seen a real crumpet.

Earlier in the trip, I bought a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter, somewhat intentionally ignoring the fact that Gina's family prefers the "natural" peanut butter where you stir the oil into the peanut putty and then refrigerate it, hoping it will stay mixed and not harden into a form of adobe brick.  Don't hate me because I love beautiful Skippy, so smooth, so creamy (except when it is Super Chunky), so aromatic, so perfect from the first knife blade skimming the top to the final remnants scraped off the inner wall of the plastic jar with a spoon.  I saw that jar of Skippy next to the Chips Ahoy, and Eureka!

Alabama Crumpets.

George Washington Carver, one of the greatest men in history for convincing farmers in the south to grow peanuts and then coming up with dozens of uses for the product, which had formerly been primarily used for lifestock feed, did not invent the peanut or peanut butter (a widely held misconception), but he did love peanuts, and his groundbreaking research brought international acclaim to the Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama.  Who knows if peanut butter would have caught on without him?

The recipe is simple.  Spread peanut butter on a cookie and put another cookie on top like a Cool-A-Coo with a think layer of peanut butter where the ice cream would go.  Would a Cool-A-Coo for breakfast be the equivalent of a donut and milk?  Doubtful, but I digress.

While I used Chips Ahoy and Skippy, you could use all natural peanut butter and granola bars, oatmeal cookies and Jif, or whatever floats your boat.

I have to say that Chips Ahoy and Skippy tastes terrific.  Clean up?  Wash the plate and knife.

By the way, this is a great "to go" meal, but I'd suggest stacking them inside foil rather than using a Baggie, which ended up getting kind of slimy with peanut butter during our subway ride.

Now you have a quick breakfast alternative to pop tarts on your way to after Christmas sales, but lest we get ahead of ourselves, Merry Christmas!

Redondo Chuck Swiss Steak



Granddaughter Emma on the threshold of a new discovery.

What we lack often goads us to serendipitous delights.



I bought a pound and a half of chuck steak on sale at Ralph's yesterday, but I failed to buy beef broth, which I usually use in any pot roast type of dish.

I did find some boxed beef stock in the cupboard, but the date code indicated it should have been used six months earlier, so I tossed it out.  I found some canned diced tomatoes with green peppers, which triggered fond memories of my Mom's Swiss Steak (though I don't know that she used that ingredient), but I knew Julie disdains any trace of peppers.

I decided to instead use fresh Roma tomatoes and mushrooms, which I had in the vegetable crisper drawer, and with some seasonings, this became a new favorite recipe.

Start by mixing about a half cup of flour with a tablespoon of seasoned salt and a tablespoon of pepper, and spread the mixture out on a large piece of wax paper.

That Can-Do Attitude demonstrated by Amy.

Most likely your chuck steak will come in a Styrofoam tray, which works well as a disposable area for trimming the chuck steak.  Remove as much fat as you can, including the thin ribbons along the edges. This is time consuming but worth it, because chuck steak fat is inedible as far as most people are concerned. There are veins of fat marbling chuck steak, so this will result in several smaller pieces, and it might not even be a bad idea to cut the larger pieces down to smaller ones, based on how Julie and I preferred the smaller pieces.  By the time it is trimmed, you will have a little over a pound of steak left, which is perfect for two carnivores.

Put the trimmed pieces of steak one at a time into the flour mix to coat both sides. 

With the stovetop burner set to medium, heat two table spoons of olive oil in a deep pan or pot.  Mom used to use one of those seasoned cast-iron pans, which she could stick in the oven, but I just use a Teflon-coated pot that had almost exactly the right surface area for a pound of trimmed chuck steak.

Once all the beef is sizzling, sprinkle the top generously with onion flakes.  Most chefs would cook a couple of diced onions instead of dried flakes, and that would be delicious, but living in a small condo, Julie (and most likely our neighbors) wouldn't appreciate the lingering aroma. 

Also lightly sprinkle on cinnamon, which in addition to adding a sweetness and complexity to meat flavors enhances health.


Jay and Wes fishing for a compliment?

After about five minutes, turn the meat over and repeat sprinkling on onion flakes and cinnamon for that side.

While the meat is braising, line a glass baking dish with pan lining paper and preheat the oven to 225 degrees (or if you use a convection oven, 200 degrees). 

Dice three Roma tomatoes (about 2 cups), and slice six to eight mushrooms (about 1 cup).  I don't actually use a measuring cup, and you will find that dicing tomatoes on a cutting board makes a mess.  Instead, just cut the vegetables up in a bowl big enough to hold them all.  This also saves the tomato juice, which you can pour onto the steak, and cleaning the bowl is easy.

Put the braised steak into the lined baking dish.  Cover the steak with diced tomatoes, and then put sliced mushrooms on top of that.  Sprinkle with garlic salt.  Then, put aluminum foil on top as  a lid so that steam is kept in the dish.

Bake for an hour and a half at 225 degrees (80 minutes at 200 degrees for convection oven).

Wes and Gina ready to welcome guests.

Admittedly, when this came out it didn't look much like Swiss Steak, so I probably should call it Redondo Chuck or something, but it did turn out to be delicious.

 

While cleaning the braising pan could be avoided by simply roasting this dish, braising adds so much flavor that it is worth it.  At least you can wash that pan long before the meal is served, so that after throwing away the wax paper on which you floured the steak your kitchen isn't a mess for the afternoon.  By the way, you can braise the meat and assemble the dish a couple of hours before actually cooking it.

 

You can wrap any leftovers in the foil you used to top the dish, but in any case, final clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and washing your plates.

Arriba, Arriba, Andale, Andouille!

Cajun and Mexican cuisine have each earned reputations for spicy deliciousness, so when my sister combined some leftover refried beans and rice from our Mexican dinner with hot sausage, spinach and some secret ingredients, it's not surprising that it turned out to be fantastic, tasting similar to jambalaya or gumbo.  The next day when I scooped some of Darlene's Cajun fusion stew into a tortilla, it was so good that I contemplated opening a chain of "Cajun Eat Dos" fast food restaurants.

Teddy, Darlene and Emma in Montana.

While that bright idea soon faded, when Julie and I arrived home from Montana, we found son Jay had left some Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage in the refrigerator.  He had planned to barbecue it on the 4th of July, when he came over to view the Redondo Beach fireworks from our condo, but the absence of a barbecue forced him to abort that idea.

Cooking over open fire has been instinctive behavior for men since Fred Flintstone was a boy, but as I have lamented in the past, we don't have room for an outdoor grill alongside our reclining veranda seats at our condo in Redondo.

Thus faced with the dilemma of how to eat hot sausages without flames to grill them over, I read the  label, and among the choices was to bake them for 14 minutes.

Recognizing my preference for well-done, I decided to cook them in my convection oven at 375 degrees for 18 minutes, which is about the equivalent of a standard oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  After setting the oven to pre-heat, I lined a small casserole dish with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper, which by now you should've noted is a key for making many recipes into Quick-Clean Cuisine.  I quickly opened the four pack of sausages and put them into the lined dish.

I didn't wait for the oven to finish pre-heating before putting the dish in the oven, so I could immediately go upstairs to work on my computer until I heard the oven chime marking the end of the designated time.  By the way, if you don't use timers for cooking, you are making it unnecessarily difficult.

Soon, I heard the chime and headed down to find the sausages had browned a bit, with a slot opening almost as if they had been grilled.  I ate one with barbecue sauce and one with mustard, and both ways were great, either with or without bread. 

If I had some red beans and rice or leftover Mexican side dishes around, I might have tried to make a variation of Darlene's concoction, but for today, just know that baked sausages taste surprisingly great, if you cook them about a third longer than recommended by the manufacturer.  Clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and quickly rinsing the casserole dish after it has cooled.

Yogurt and Crunchies

Granddaughter Emma came met us for a vacation in Montana, bringing her loving parents Gina and Laszlo in tow.

We enjoyed lots of fun activities, from hiking to Ousel Falls and the Blue Moon Bakery to watching Team Umizoomi, from flying a kite to playing Dominoes, from chasing a Pomeranian she affectionately called Little Teddy to making homemade noodles, dancing on stage or bouncing on a giant frog at the park.  From swimming at the Yellowstone Club to playing croquet out back.

One of my favorite moments was when she asked me to play the guitar so she could dance, but insisting she and her mom first needed to put on a dancing dresses.  Once they were dolled up for a nice meal out (hot dogs at the Bunker), I played Fish and a Whistle on my guitar, and they danced beautifully.  Afterwards, Emma repeated a phrase she said the first time she danced as I played it earlier in the trip: "That's a nice song!"

So much fun had we that I just realized you must be starving, if you've been waiting for a new quick-clean cuisine recipe.

Easy solution?  How about one of Emma's favorite dishes: Yogurt and Crunchies.  For New Yorker Emma, that means scoop some plain, nonfat Greek Yogurt into a bowl and stir in Grape Nuts, because she doesn't like anything too sweet. My son Jay on the other coast in Los Angeles loves Greek yogurt with granola stirred in. Even McDonald's gets into the act with its Fruit and Yogurt Parfait, which is surprisingly tasty, cheap and delicious on the go.

Some might call it ridiculous to have a Q-CC version of this ubiquitous treat, but here is my twist on it.

First, I like low carb foods whenever possible, and I'm very cheap, so I usually get Kroger Carbmaster, which is high in protein and low in carbs without losing flavor. I especially like the Black Forest Cake flavor, but there are all the usual great fruit flavors, too, at a price of around 50 cents each. Then again, you can substitute whichever yogurt you like.

Here's the Quick-Clean tip.  Peel off the foil top and toss it out, then just add some of your favorite crunchies to the small space at the top.  I usually have bran flakes in the house, and they work, but of course Grape Nuts or granola both add a lot more crunch.

After you eat a few spoonfuls, add some more crunchies.  When the little yogurt tub is empty, you can just throw the container away and have only a spoon to wash.

Who says you don't have time for a nutritious breakfast?

Holiday Ham

Two of the world’s great religions prohibit eating pork products as "unclean." The week before the Christian holiday of Easter, however, most big grocery chains put ham on sale.

Easter in Westminster

On a key holiday that differentiates our religion from those of similar theological pedigree, we as Christians not only have a savior who died for our sins, paving the way for us to go to heaven, but we also get to enjoy that sweet meat forbidden by Jewish and Muslim traditions. And at reduced prices.  Vive la différence!

Ham works great for large groups on holidays other than Easter, including the 4th of July, except for those with religious objections and vegetarians. I personally think the religious ban of ham is based on health concerns from long ago, possibly following a pig sushi fad or some similarly misguided pork preparation, or maybe an ancient swine flu outbreak. As for vegetarians, let them eat cake, because most likely tofu won't go over big.

I am not forcing anyone to prepare or eat ham. I’m simply sharing a delicious food.



While spiral cut hams are convenient for serving, it is usually the shank ham with bone-in that is on sale, and it is just as delicious. Some people swear that you have to go through some elaborate preparation of coating it with brown sugar and exotic spices and then tacking on some pineapple rings and Maraschino cherries. If you want to do that, knock yourself out, but hams have so much flavor that to me all that window dressing is overkill.

The cooking time varies by the size and type of ham. If it doesn’t tell you how long to cook it on the wrapper, you can find that info online. The big Q-CC tip is to cover your cooking pan with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper before putting the ham in.


While ham can be the main course for a large family meal, it is the leftovers that we enjoy the most. By slicing it up and storing it in Tupperware, you can prepare subsequent meals quickly and easily. Because it is cured, ham has a pretty long refrigerator shelf life, and it tastes so good that you should have no trouble eating it all in that time frame.

4th of July in New York

We threw away the bone including quite a bit of meat still on it, but boiling this in water makes a great base for bean or split pea soup, if you enjoy the smell of those soups cooking.

For breakfast, dice the ham and add it to enhance scrambled eggs instead of having a side of bacon. When I have company, I like to heat the diced ham in the frying pan first to carmelize it a bit, mixing eggs with grated cheese separately to add to the pan to scramble in with the ham, but this morning I just combined everything in the large frying pan, saving the step of cleaning the mixing bowl, and it tasted just as good. I use about a cup of ham with four eggs and a quarter cup of grated cheese, but you can adjust the recipe to suit your taste. Just keep stirring the concoction over medium heat until it looks ideally done to you (probably about three to five minutes), and then plate it. You don’t need to add any salt, because the ham and cheese have plenty in them. It really doesn’t need pepper either, because the ham has so much flavor.

To make a ham and cheese omelet instead of scrambled eggs, just stop scrambling the mixture once it looks uniform. Let it sit until the eggs start firming up. You should be able to lift one side with a spatula without the omelet breaking apart. Once it has that consistency, add as much grated cheese as you like as filling, then fold it over. If the outside of the omelet looks golden or brown already, just plate it. If not, you can cook it a bit more or serve it yellow. The grated cheese will melt quickly once surrounded by that hot folded omelet.

Ham, of course, is also great for lunch. You can use diced ham in a chef’s salad, but to me salads frequently don’t seem filling, and the salad dressing makes chef salads among the most high calorie items on fast food menus, if you ever take the time to read that info.




Typical urbanite dining out.

I prefer ham sandwiches. Sandwiches can go from mediocre to awesome just by taking time to think about what would taste good in them. Any time you have an avocado around, that is a treat in a ham sandwich, but I didn’t have one on hand yesterday. I did have lettuce, tomato and a toaster. I toasted the low carb bread to give it a little more structural integrity, and then put light mayonnaise on one piece. I sliced a Roma tomato directly onto the mayo-coated toast, peppered it, added Romaine lettuce and then piled on sliced ham. I put honey Dijon mustard on the other piece of bread and closed it up with the toast's dry side out (if that isn’t obvious, then perhaps you should not be preparing meals at home with a sharp object).  Fantastic sandwich!

None of this seems particularly groundbreaking, but when you realize that similar food with a soft drink runs $10 or more in a restaurant, you should recognize that learning how to cook a $10 ham and then utilize the leftovers will save you big bucks.

If you’re going to spend big money for a HoneyBaked Ham or some similar expensively processed product, the savings quickly evaporate. Yes, buying a pre-cooked ham or meal in a restaurant saves you the trouble of cleaning up, but you’ll note that the Quick-Clean Cuisine method means minimal clean-up time.

And for my Jewish friends (and other non-pork eating, non-vegetarians), there's always tri-tip.

Barbecued Beef Sandwich

I know, BBQ sauce is high in sugar, but that doesn't stop us from ordering meat dripping in that sweet molasses and spices goodness when we go out, even if there is Atkins-Friendly Grouper on the menu.  At least at home you can control the amount you use, and it makes it easier to opt for the healthier choices when you go out.

Because Smart & Final had trimmed tri-tip on sale for $3.99/pound on Monday when I went to buy something for dinner, and it seemed like the best deal going without walking to another store, Julie and I had tri-tip that evening.

If you buy a 2 to 3 pound tri-tip for two people, you should expect to have leftovers, even if you do painstakingly trim off as much extra fat as you can before cooking it.

We had well over a pound of meat left after dinner.  Rather than just wrapping it up and refrigerating it as is, I like to cut it into bite-sized pieces that can be stir-fried with vegetables or used to make barbecued beef.  After all, I already have the cooking dish and knife out, and using them to cut the remaining meat won't add anything to the clean-up time. 

As I've mentioned before, we don't like to eat the fat, so even though the tri-tip had been trimmed by the butcher and by me before cooking, as I trimmed and discarded any fat from the edge or rippled into the meat as I cut it up.  This is easy after the meat has cooled following dinner, and it means a lot less prep work when it comes time to transform the leftovers with Q-CC magic.

When I pulled the bag out of the refrigerator, I tried to decide if I should use it for two meals or one.  I decided to just cook it all in barbecue sauce rather than saving half to stir-fry.  Based on the amount we ate, this proved to be a good decision.

The recipe is really simple and obvious.  Add enough barbecue sauce to cover about a third of the meat. Add about the same amount of water as sauce, and stir it up.  The more barbecue sauce you use, the higher in calories the dish will be.  I'd say about a third of a cup of BBQ sauce and of water per pound of meat is right, but use your own judgment.  Keep in mind that some of the liquid will evaporate while cooking.

Does it matter exactly which barbecue sauce you use?

Perhaps it does to you, and feel free to use that special bottle you bought at Bar 3 or Hula Grill, but as long as you didn't mistakenly buy some really terrible brand from a bargain bin, whatever you have in your refrigerator or pantry should be okay.  I buy about any name brand (except Kraft, which I tried because it was cheap and didn't like) I happen to see on sale.  I already had a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's open, but it was down to the point where I had it sitting upside down in the fridge so as to allow the rest of its contents to drip down by the time I used it, so there was only enough for about a third of the meat.  I also had an open bottle of Bull's-Eye Texas-Style sauce, but knowing Julie finds that one a little spicy, I added only the same amount of that as the Sweet Baby Ray's so as not to overpower it.  For the final third of barbecue sauce, I added KC Masterpiece Original.  For those of you who consider region more than brand name, that would be 1/3 Chicago, 1/3 Texas and 1/3 Kansas City.  It wasn't necessary to bring one all the way from Memphis.

Put it on medium heat until it is boiling, then cover and reduce it to simmer for a couple of hours or more.  You can taste the meat every twenty minutes or so, and you'll see that what starts as beef dunked in barbecue sauce grows more tender as it is cooked, eventually becoming very tender, barbecue-flavored beef in sauce.

The better the bread you use, the better the sandwich will be.  You can add things like pickles or coleslaw to get some veggies in the meal.  We ate it on Sara Lee Delightful sliced bread, which is low in carbs but definitely not as stable or tasty as a crusty sourdough roll.  Julie toasted hers so it would have enough strength to hold together as a sandwich, but I ate mine open-faced with a fork, which had the added benefits of allowing me to use twice the meat as a regular sandwich would use. 

We ate on the balcony looking at the ocean for a great summer-evening al fresco meal.  Kona Longboard Lager proved to be the perfect accompanying drink pairing.

Is this a groundbreaking recipe?  No.  But it does make a tasty meal with an easy clean-up.

Grapefruit Done Right

Okay, preparing grapefruit isn't a big mystery, although I do know someone who peels and eats grapefruit like an orange, which seems wrong to me.

Wes, Dad and Mom

When I was a little boy, my mom would cut a Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit in half, and then run her knife between the rind and the edible part.  For many people, including chefs at diners and in cruise ship buffet lines, that is the end of the prep work, and most start with an inferior grapefruit variety, so it isn't at all surprising to me that little kids don't generally like grapefruit. 

Kids put their spoons into that fruit and sting their eyes when citrus juice inevitably squirts upwards.  They lean back, turn away and put the spoon in again, squirting juice onto the kitchen table.

Depending on how persistent they are, they can make quite a mess, which m uoms are unlikely to reward as a good efforts.  And what's the payoff if they manage to dislodge a mouthful and taste it?

A sour piece of fruit that's only a half step above eating a lemon.  Yeah, the comedic value of the expression at first taste entertains everyone else, but those kids may never try that healthy fruit again.

There is a better way.

The other day, I walked over to the farmer's market to buy some veggies.  With my asparagus and squash in the bag, I was heading for the exit, when I saw...could it be?...a bin of ripe, Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit.

I had been conditioned for several years to avoid grapefruit, because a sky-high triglycerides count had resulted in me being put on statins by a doctor at one point, and the one specific directive was to never eat grapefruit. I don't think it would have killed me, so I assume grapefruit must interfere with the helpful properties of the drug.

After a couple of years substituting low-carb meals for boxes of oatmeal cookies and Nutty Bars, I was able to stop taking the statins, or at least that's what I told myself, and just recently a new blood test confirmed that, which means I can now eat grapefruit again.

I picked one blushed redder than an Iowan librarian in the Caribbean, and yesterday I finally cut it open (the grapefruit, not the Iowan librarian).

Perhaps I should mention that there's a navel on top through which the grapefruit received nutrients from the tree before being picked.  Consider that navel as its north pole, and cut it in half along its equator.  That is as hard to describe clearly as it is obvious to anyone who has ever eaten a grapefruit (except that guy who eats it like an orange).  Put one half in a soup bowl and cut around the inside of the rind. 

To take it to the next level like my Mom, cut along the white radius lines you'll see in the fruit.  That way, you can easily scoop out a bite-sized triangles with a spoon. 

For some reason, I remember one day when my mom forgot to cut one line, making a double piece, and I chided her for missing it.  When I was little, I must have taken the fact that she did so much for me to mean that she was my personal servant.  That's another apology I owe Mom, and it's a tribute to what a great job she did that missing one cut on a piece of grapefruit was her most egregious error in my childhood.

When I tasted my grapefruit, it was unusually sweet, so I ate the first half, and then quickly followed by preparing and eating the other half. 

Sometimes, however, no matter how carefully you select your grapefruit, it might not be sweet enough.  Mom used to sprinkle sugar on for me, and she usually put a Maraschino Cherry in the middle. 

These days, Splenda is a great choice that won't spike your triglycerides, but now that I think of it, maybe I should keep a jar of Maraschino Cherries around to dress up food and drinks.

Grapefruit is an easy breakfast in every way, although if you're like me you might want to follow it up with some toast or bacon and eggs.  Grabbing a dozen Dunkin Donuts instead on the way to the office will most likely result in being banned from grapefruit eventually, and you don't want that.