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.


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.

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.

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.


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.