Posted on 03/16/2017 4:00:27 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
In recent years the pineapple has superseded peaches to become my favorite fruit – perhaps partly because it’s so much easier to find very good pineapples in my area. But getting at the fruit inside a pineapple is a real project!
I’ve often been tempted to buy one of those pineapple-coring gadgets, but I always turned it down – I thought it would be hard for my small hands to use, and it seemed like the kind of ‘unitasker’ (channeling Alton Brown, here) that would take up space and hardly be used.
A few weeks ago, I saw one of them on the half-price rack at the grocery store, in perfect condition except that the packaging had been damaged; so I gave in and scooped it up, still thinking that I'd probably have to enlist the Husband Unit's man-hands, to make it work.
But this thing is amazing! It isn’t hard to use at all, even for my small and not very strong hands; and it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. There are a lot of them out there, but the one I purchased is from Farberware. When I think back to all my ugly, butchered pineapples, I wish I had gotten this gizmo sooner. (And when it’s all done, you have a nice hollow pineapple to use for a centerpiece "vase".)
Pineapple is especially nice as a snack when dehydrated – it doesn’t require pre-treatment, and the corer does a very good job of making uniform slices that will dry evenly (if you don't have a dehydrator, this link also includes directions for drying in the oven):
http://www.ehow.com/how_4792892_dehydrate-pineapple.html
And of course, there’s the beloved of many, Pineapple Upside Down Cake:
Another use for pineapple that I’ve always liked, is Carrot-Raisin-Pineapple Salad, which is usually made with mayonnaise; but I first made it while low-fat dieting many years ago, and still prefer it with yogurt, instead:
http://www.food.com/recipe/no-fat-carrot-raisin-salad-68514
-JT
It was raised with no insecticides and my only problem was the larvae that get in the silk ends. I'm not a natural fanatic, but I don't use insecticide if I don't have to. I used fertilizer throughout. It worked out well.
Surprising to me, I had little trouble with deer, coons, and squirrels. They've been a plague in the past in the garden. I wonder if the lack of sugar in the ears made the odor less attractive compared to the supersweet sweet corn of today.
I saved well over 1000 seeds since heirloom breeds true.
I got tired of pancakes but I cheated and used a store brand mix with water, mixed some corn meal in, added the water until I could tell it was where I wanted it and fried them, real big ones in my 7-inch skillet. A lot easier than my mom's corn-meal pancake recipe. I love corn meal and now this more yellow coarser polenta I use interchangeably except for corn bread. I use Jiffy for that.
Now when I cook up some fish I've been saving, I'm going to roll it in corn meal, flour and cracker crumbs and bake it in the oven (first pass it through melted butter). I think the only way my mom cooked fish unless I did it on the charcoal outside was dipping it in corn meal and frying it, except broiling the steaks like swordfish and maybe halibut? She never baked it, and I do that all the time, so easy and delicious.
The msn.com gallery of the nation’s Best Restaurants listed Canlis in Seattle. The food has to be good b/c it's been open for 50 years. Amazingly, the Canlis web site publishes the recipe for their world-famous salad.
The Canlis Salad / (serves 4-6)
SALAD ING - 1 large head Romaine hearts, cut into 1” squares (Wash individual leaves in warm water, drain and dry in colander and refrigerate.) - 10 cherry tomatoes, halved - ½ cup thinly sliced green onion - ¾ cup freshly grated Romano cheese - ¾ cup chopped bacon, cooked - ½ cup thinly sliced fresh mint* - 2 tablespoons thinly sliced oregano leaves - ½ cup croutons* - salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
DRESSING ING ½ cup olive oil - 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice - ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper - 1 teaspoon salt - 1 coddled egg*
Canlis Ingredient notes
Mint: You can’t use too much mint! Experiment for yourself. Coddled Egg: Pour boiling water into a cup and put a whole egg (in the shell) into the hot water. Let sit for 1 minute then remove from the water. You may substitute with pasteurized egg mixture (found in the dairy section in cartons). Croutons: It's fun to make your own: cubed baguette, butter and minced herbs.
DRESSING put the salt, pepper, lemon juice, oil, and coddled egg in a bowl and whisk vigorously, then reserve.
SALAD In a salad bowl, add the prepared romaine, green onion, cheese, bacon, croutons, oregano, and mint. Pour dressing over salad and toss thoroughly. Arrange the salad on chilled salad plates and finish with cherry tomatoes.
Great memories you’ve shared. I agree about corn meal mush. Don’t know if you’ve tried it, but left over mush fried in a pan with bacon grease is another great country breakfast.
Fried fish breaded with corn meal is how we always had it when I was a kid. Flavor and texture are a great reward. Battered fish is good. Sure. But older ways are a treasure too. Those folks liked flavor just as much as we do.
Belgian endive is a quirky looking salad green.
Eaten raw it's a bit sweet and has a nice crunch for lo-carbers missing the cheese/cracker routine.
Just cut off the root end and remove the leaves singly.
Suggested serving. Accommodates an assortment of flavors.
It had to be fried with syrup on it. And I needed a whole panful just for me ;-) Maybe not quite a whole pan but it was molded in a loaf pan and sliced about 3/8" thick.
I did learn to dredge it in flour so it wouldn't stick to the pan (used my big alum skillet) but cast iron and today's non-stick ones would be ok. The flour made it brown and crisp up faster. I don't think my mom or my grandma did it though.
I settled for a mixture of butter and margarine, but bacon grease was THE best!
My ex came from a German background, and one of the few things I ever did that pleased him was cook him fried "grits". That's what they called it. I guessed from what he described what to do. Cook up some steel-cut oats with raisins in it. Then chill and just plop in a heated pan with hot grease and spread it out, didn't have to be even or fancy. Just get some of it browned. Then he ate it with syrup on it.
I got so I liked a bowl of the oats as a change from oatmeal, also mixed with corn meal, with milk and sugar, but I never did care for the "grits" with syrup although it was pleasant tasting enough.
Yes, memories. That old coffee mill or one like it ended up in the haymow of one of the farms. My granddaughter took a nice photo of it in 2005 but I don't think it's on this computer. OMG, I found it.
My sister ended up with that farm, so I don't know what became of the mill. I would have liked it but no good way to display/keep/store it and I never would have wanted to sell it.
I will never understand why people put syrup on grits! Butter, salt, and pepper - lots of pepper!
(Of course, I don’t understand why people sweeten oatmeal, either - it makes it like the Pablum we ate as toddlers, that our nanny loaded with sugar ;-)
They changed it all and I wouldn't eat it. It could be good in an emergency if you are really sick though to get some nutrition that is easy to eat.
I guess it's what you get used to. I hated oatmeal as a kid, then ate it (sweetened) for quite a few years. Now I'm sick of it and a fresh box just sits there. I do make Ranger cookies I need it for. And I do like oatmeal cinnamon cookies but am too lazy to make them.
Now my latest problem. I made some macaroni and cheese. I like the large elbows because the sauce gets up in the tubes better, also just like the texture better.
I made a real nice cheese sauce with the roux. For a whole box of macaroni I used 5:5 tbsp flour to butter, dumped in milk and cream til it "looked" right. Then I took off the heat and added 8 oz grated sharp cheddar, 8+ oz Deli Deluxe American slices cut up (I hate the kind wrapped in plastic wrap) and grated in a little of my Gruyere.
I baked it just a tad too long (the sides got a little too hot, I guess you will curdle it if you heat it too much, just heat through and brown the top.
It was perfect though, silky and creamy. Then so much left over. It was so sticky to put in a pie plate in the oven covered loosely with foil at 300 for 30 min or so. I flattened it down the first night. It was thick and sticky, lost the nice creamy part of it.
The rest of it for a few nights, I cut a wedge (it made a huge batch), and it was a little creamier. But it was always more stuck together than the first night. It was a little stuck together, but loosely with lots of creamy cheese sauce.
So cook a smaller batch? I can't use my microwave safely any more. I don't think there is a good solution. The sauce soaks further in when it's kept (covered) in the fridge I think.
And thanks for the kind words.
I would cook a smaller batch. Or maybe you could freeze it in portion-size batches? I haven’t frozen home made mac and cheese, but lasagna always seems to freeze well.
Now lasagna sounds delicious and it would freeze better my instincts tell me. I was thinking about it the other day; maybe I'll make some soon. I make my own sauce, sometimes using a jar of spaghetti or what they call marinara now, stirring in some browned ground beef, drained or made from scratch. The noodles. I like to use a ricotta with egg but sometimes large curd cottage cheese.
When I first had it, the Italian lady who cooked it put in Greek olives, have some of those, would put them in. She also put in hard boiled eggs, think I'll skip that.
And mozarella cheese, maybe another kind as well. Darn Chef John has just the right pan for everything.
I guarantee you if I make lasagna - gotta have mushrooms too - and it turns out halfway well (I don't think I ever failed with that), my daughter will help eat that until it's all gone so I probably wouldn't have to freeze leftovers.
Speaking of freezing. I do freeze pizza. I get a large just for myself and just fold or cut to size or something, the slices in quart zip lock freezer bags, always get three bags. But I eat that all up within a week.
Take out frozen, pry it apart carefully, put on pizza or whatever pan, and heat frozen at 400 until it's hot enough, you can tell. To me it's just as good or better than the first night out of the box. We have a great pizza place that uses the special puffy mozzarella cheese, guess you have to buy it special, 3% milk or full fat. Not that skim stuff. It's the texture the way it melts and gets little bubbles of brown and "pillowy" the only way I can describe it. I can't find that around here anywhere, could call one wholesale place that sells to the general public.
I've been cooking in my head again. Found my recipe for banana flips. Want to make that pineapple angel food cake. And I found a recipe for lemon bars with canned lemon filling (reviewers rate Wilderness and Lucky Leaf both very high) and angelfood cake mix or one said white cake mix. What to do?
So I don't have anything made and my daughter is off to get me some chicken soft shell tacos supreme, and I really want to try a crockpot fajita chicken recipe that sounds delish. But to be really good it needs guacamole and other "condiments". I usually have sour cream on hand.
I would love steak fajitas but can't chew steak. I was trying to think of a way to do it but want the meat browned some but not dry. Calls for flank or skirt. Why can't I use sirloin unless I can get the other from the butcher?
Whew I talk too much. Sorry about that. It's worse when I'm hungry.
LOL! It’s not good to read this thread when you’re hungry ;-)
(It’s also not a good idea to go grocery shopping with an empty stomach. I learned that the expensive, over-buying way...)
I'm stuffed now, so you are in luck! I'll be quiet. For now.
I make my own malts, the thick style like the ice cream store. Gobs of vanilla ice cream in a largish bowl I can grasp easily or an enamelware saucepan with a sturdy comfortable handle.
Put in about 1 to 2 tsp malt powder. Dump in some chocolate syrup, not too much. A couple pumps at the expensive ice cream store.
Oh and I do use premium ice cream, Blue Bunny Blue Ribbon regular vanilla, used to have a cheap brand that tasted good but don't carry it any more. I'm real picky about vanilla ice cream.
Now it sounds hard but goes quicker than you would expect. I have a soup spoon, sturdy, with a thick, comfortable plastic, red handle. First I chop up the ice cream, then I smash it against the sides of the bowl, then I start the stirring until you can't see any streaks (or just before, I like a couple white spots left). You can always freeze some of it but I don't. I love it when it just starts to melt around the sides.
If you want to fool somebody, put it in some fancier glass. I eat it out of the pan. Yum. I don't think I could tell the difference between what i make and the ice cream store (Whitey's).
Well now what have you done? You gave me an idea. Or inspired me to get one from my idea cloud. I have 6 or more clean ice cream containers, can't bring myself to put in recycling, and often have a good use for one. But not that many.
So I think why can't I burn some holes in the bottoms and make little herb gardens in them? Even though I have some nice pots and window boxes; these would be super easy to handle and just the right amount of soil and handles. It's too late for winter sowing but some herb seeds you can just plant any time. Some I can grow indoors in my sunroom.
Then I can set them up on the lids to drain better. Or not, depends. Line them up all neatly by a flower bed or in a sunny spot as close to the door as possible.
I'm going to start shopping for herb seeds now. Chef John always springs some fancy green stuff on me, and I hate it that even the store doesn't have it.
I could end up with a whole herb farm. And I can't really do any real gardening any more. Some you have to plant about every couple or three months or they get old; it will say on the package.
I have to buy a rosemary plant though. And I had to look up corn salad. Almazan Kitchen used that. Now if I can just find some pointy sweet red peppers like AlmazanKitchen. I did find some Italian ones but I wish they weren't quite so long and a little fatter at the top. They will do though. But I could only grow really small peppers in ice cream containers.
ping Jamestown1630. Can't keep me quiet for long sometimes.
Where are the seeds in a pineapple? >>> they look like seeds little black seeds that look like balck sesame seeds. they seem to be very close tot he outside skin. if you trim the skin really close i think you can see them where the little horns stick out.
After I asked you, I looked it up and I think I saw them in a video; but I would never have thought those were seeds.
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I LOVE fresh and crunchy pineapple cores. I wish they would can them too!>> you are not alone. It is like eating a tree with juice.
Mmmm I love malts!
My dad used to make chocolate malts
Note to self: put malt powder on the shopping list!
You won't regret it, may take a couple tries to get the right amts. Too much powder doesn't add anything and too much syrup spoils the delicate chocolate flavor (I can tell by the color if I got too much or not enough). 3 to 5 minutes tops. Wooden spoon would work.
It's easier than the way they do it at the malt shop, hard on their arms, whole row of mixers, and scraping so much hard ice cream with their scoops. A food processor or blender might work but this goes fast and not much scraping and cleanup a breeze.
I used to put a little milk in them until I saw the ice cream store doesn't do that which is why they come out so thick you have to start with a spoon to eat them, the way I grew up only starting with Iowana Farms malts. They give you a straw but they have to melt quite a bit before you'll get anywhere with that.
It's so much cheaper, too! Large is $4.49 for plain, added candy, etc., $5.49.
I make chocolate sodas, too, when the mood strikes with club soda. And lately I don't think I've been eating as much as it might sound. I eat only one meal a day which sometimes isn't much and two cups of my special coffee.
http://www.whiteysicecream.com/Page/Whiteys_Ice_Cream_Menu.aspx?nt=39
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