Saturday, March 22, 2008

Food Frenzy
My wife was out of town for work last week. Had the experience of being a single dad for 4 kids (11,9,6,4) for a limited time (I knew she was coming back on Sunday). There was some kid related excitement (training wheels taken off the 6 yr old's bike, 4 yr old thinks he can cross the street by himself), but that is not what this post is about.

Amid the stress, I found myself taking comfort in food projects:

I made dulce de leche after watching the milk episode of Good Eats - fantasic on ice cream!

I scraped the hershey's chocolate off mini Heath bars and re-coated them with dark chocolate (call me unrefined, but I like the Heath or Skor toffee!- I've never been able to match it from scratch) - It was good, but I need to experiment to get the proper thickness of chocolate for balance. I will keep that in mind next time I make truffles, and make up extra coating chocolate.

I smoked half of a corned beef brisket hunk for pastrami, and boiled the other half, purely to be able to make chunky corned beef hash the next morning.
corned beef hash

Since the smoker was running I threw a hunk of un-corned brisket on there for my 9 yr old who loves brisket.

I also threw in a couple hunks of pork shoulder that had been rolled in a cha-siu glaze from a jar. The goal was to make som fatty pork to be able to slice and toss in a bowl of ramen.
P3130078
I found a good refrigerator case ramen packet at a local market- it used to be called Di-Ho, but has changed it's name to Whole Grain Market or something.
P3090070
I have been unsucessful in locating shinachiku (pickled bamboo shoots, I believe). The things I thought were picked (labelled 'sour') have so far been unsatisfyingly bland.
mexican coke

As I was leaving something caught my eye- it was bottles of Coke , with Hecho en Mexico on the side. I grabbed some of those as well.

3 comments:

Steve said...

Nice, Mr. Mom! : )

If I was in charge, we would have carry outs, and that is not good...

Sherry said...

Great. I'm hungry now.

mikep said...

Steve- I did do a lot of convenience foods for the kids- they don't like the stuff I make for myself.

Sorry Sherry, I should have put a warning at the beginning, "May not be suitable for younger or more peckish veiwers"