Showing posts with label Cookbooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cookbooks. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I got a few things done this weekend before I had to get back on the road. I Installed a new range hood Saturday afternoon. We had a range hood but it was old and the knobs didn't work so it was just useless sitting there above the stove for the last three years. They are not that expensive so I am ashamed that it took me this long to get to it. We looked all over town, well at the two places in town that would have them, and only found white and almond. Our kitchen is crimson, white and gray. Alabama Crimson Tide Colors, so almond is out and white is to bright. What we really wanted was black but that one is hard to find for some reason. So we headed north 18 miles to Greenville, stopped off at the Huddle House and had some lunch then headed to Buchheit's. Wow do we love this place! If I was a farmer I would be in heaven in there. Wait, I am in heaven in there. They had a stainless hood for around a hundred bucks and was pretty easy to put in. Now I will be able to have better pictures when I get to taking them while we are cooking.
That white shelf above the stove has to go though. when you are standing there cooking and you want something from the shelf you have to stoop to get it as the shelf part is too high up. I need one where the shelf is on the bottom of the backing not the top. I thought of hanging this one upside down but then the hearts would be upside down and that would be silly. It will have to do for now.

One other thing that I got done was I built my first cold frame and set it out. I planted just two short rows of iceberg lettuce in it since it was kinda small. It is only about 34 inches by,,well,,I Don't remember. Its small. I was a little off with my measurements so there is a a small gap in one end but I built it with screws so I can take it apart and square it up when I have time. The old window is just sitting on the top of it for now, once I square it up I will hinge the window and create some sort of prop system to prop the window open during warm days.
 By the way, that little heater that we bought to use in the plant incubator didn't work out. It would cut off at the right temperature but would not come back on. I think that it was getting over heated in there. We put one of our bigger heaters in there that just has a dial and a high low button on it. I found a better thermometer and set the heater on low. Then adjusted the dial until I had around 78 degrees constant. It seems to be working well. There are no seedlings up yet so I hope that the little heater's problem didn't cause me to lose what I planted. I should see something this weekend I hope.

Things to look forward to? I was at a hospital auxiliary book sale last weekend and found the cook book section right off. They had a sale on Hardbacks for a dollar and after 3 P.M. they were half off so I got a mess of them for fifty cents. I bought a bunch of cook books there. I am mostly into the older ones from the fifties and sixties along with anything older. I have some great ones now from that sale. Look for some cool stuff from that as soon as I get time to go through them. I'll get to it sooner or later, remember that I am an over the road truck driver trapped in this occupation and have to drive to make a living. I'll someday be out of this truck and into the kitchen full time but until then trucking is eating up all my time. Stay tuned.

Tim

Thursday, February 2, 2012

THE FLAVOR BIBLE

well what can I say, here I am still in this truck driving my life away instead of cooking and gardening. I am in Wisconsin at the moment waiting on Walmart to get me unloaded, then I will head to Appleton and reload headed to St. Louis. From there I hope I am going home for the weekend. It is SuperBowl Sunday but I don't really care about that. I do however hope that the Giants whip the stuffin out of the Patriots.

In food news My daughter gave me a book for Christmas!

This is an amazing book! It has all kinds of secrets from chefs around the world in it. It is really a manual on how food flavor profiles work together. In this book the vast majority of the pages are filled with a flavor table of sorts. It lists the ingredient and then lists the tyoe of flavor it is, for instance whether or not it is salty, sweet, bitter, etc. then the strength of the flavor, the heaviness of the item itself (dense, light, etc)  and the season that it is at its peak flavor. After that brief introduction you get a listing of the other flavors or ingredients that it goes well with. There are bolt typed ingredients that are highly recommended by the experts and then there are bold typed with an * symbol, these are the " Holy Grail " of that ingredient's flavor profile. For instance, Tomato's and Basil are a holy grail.

I have read through this book to about the half way point and have not found many holy grails, those that I have found made perfect sense to me. I look forward to inventing through this book in the future. Gotta go they just called me on the radio to tell me that my trailer is empty.

More on this book later and I have news on the garden front as well. We have a new member in the family in the cultivating category.


peace
Tim