An Invalid's Breakfast of Fried Rice and Poached Egg

This particular creation will not have a picture until the next time I make it. What happened was the floppy disk that records pictures in my Sony FD Mavica crapped out. Lost a bunch of neato pictures too. With that apology out of the way, I will continue with the latest Spirited Recipe.

I’m still emerging from a cold. It’s been over a week and I still feel the last bits of it holding onto me. I’m not quite sick, but I’m also not all the way better, hence, our invalid’s breakfast of this morning.

It’s actually quite simple, but again, not something I would ever have thought to make. I was pleased when one of the Guides suggested I make it this morning.

What you want is some left-over pork fried rice either home made or from the last time you had Chinese take-out. My preference is Chinese take-out from one of our local restaurants seeing as how I’ve never quite gotten the knack of making my own fried rice that tastes very good.

Put the left-over rice in a bowl and dot with a little bit of butter. Set it aside while you poach up some eggs. You can make them either yolk hard or yolk soft, whichever is your preference. Mine ended up at 3 minutes to be sort of in-between. I’ve got this fantastic egg poacher sauce pan with four little cups that sit in it. I’ve never been very good at making my own poached eggs just by slipping them into a swirling bath of hot water, so I’ve been having a ball using my special pan. Oh, and I buttered each cup before I put an egg in. You could also use spray Pam on it, but I think it’s simpler just to scoop out a little I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter from the tub to slick up each cup.

Nuke the rice for a minute to heat it up and slip a couple of the poached eggs on top. It was perfect as an invalid’s breakfast.

One of the guides suggested a shot of Tabasco. I suggested a spoonful of salsa, but didn’t get any encouragement from Spirit on that one. I think they must have liked the idea of Tabasco better.

Ritz Crackers, Butter and Cinnamon Sugar

Okay, this one was almost a no brainer, but I was astonished all the same. I’m in the kitchen. I’ve just made us a pasta salad and it’s chilling in the fridge. But, it is hot outside. It is almost too hot to eat and certainly too hot for a regular big old dinner.

So, I thought, “Hey, what about some cheese and crackers?” I did up a few and they weren’t exactly exciting, but they were something to nosh on and to tide us over until it gets a heck of a lot cooler and we can actually consider dinner.

That’s when the guides told me to get out the butter and the cinnamon sugar and dress up a Ritz cracker.

That’s it. Butter and cinnamon sugar on a Ritz Cracker. Never, in the 52 years I’ve been on this planet have I ever thought that might work.

It’s absolutely delicious and has been elevated to a family favorite in our house.

Where We Make a Couple of Chicken Pot Pies

This recipe utilized the chicken I made last night in the crock pot. We love pot pies and chicken is one of my personal favorites. There was enough to make 2 pies, one for us and one for our neighbor Phil.

I began with making the pie dough. I decided to make a doubled recipe out of my Joy of Cooking cookbook: 3 cups of flour, 1½ teaspoons of salt, 2/3 and half of a third measure of Crisco, 4 tablespoons of butter.

Using the pastry blender I worked this until it looked sort of lumpy. Folks in recipes say it should look like coarse corn meal. I don't know about that. I've never seen corn meal look like what I always do with my pie dough. Maybe I've led a sheltered life.

The next step was to fork in the ice water. The recipe called for 6 Tablespoons, but I always use more. In this instance I think it was more along the lines of 8 or perhaps even 10. I sort of lost count. Work it in until the dough doesn't want to fall apart anymore.

I had a friend once who used to win blue ribbons with her pies. She told me the secret was to handle the dough with your hands as little as possible and to use ice water.

Usually I just start in rolling dough at this point, but today I divided it into 2 equal parts, wrapped it up in plastic wrap and put it into the fridge while I prepared the chicken part of the pot pie.

I cut the chicken away from the bones, gave a rather large helping to our cat Captain Jack who wouldn't leave me alone and ended up with 4 cups diced to use in the pies. Then, I debated whether to use the veggies from the crock pot which were sort of on the mushy side, but the guides said to throw them in. Why I'm getting a visual picture of some guide holding his nose I don't know unless they didn't actually urge me to do that. Could be I forgot. I did complain to them as we were preparing this dish that I probably wasn't going to be able to remember all the stuff they said. They said they'd help me out when it came time to write it up.

I measured out 2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables to add to the veggies left over from last night and then began preparing the white sauce.

And, as the guides said this is where they stepped in to help.

I melted 4 tablespoons of butter in my skillet and then threw in 4 heaping Tablespoons of flour. I may have put too much in because later on I had to keep adding more and more liquid to get the sauce to the right consistency. Anyway, however you do the flour you can start after it's had time to ball up in the skillet and cook through a little bit by adding 2 cups of milk. I also sprinkled on a good teaspoon of chicken bouillon. I have the powdered kind right now, so that worked out well. Had I used a cube I would have nuked it in a little water to dissolve it.

After it cooked I began adding a bit of seasoning. A little salt and pepper, a bit of chevril just because I like it and some Beau Monde in honor of my mother who used to use it in all sorts of things.

Then, I went out onto our patio and raided the kitchen garden and stripped off some oregano and a few sprigs of parsley. Added that all in and as it cooked and got really gluey and stiff began adding in the extra liquids. I started with milk, but the guides stepped in and said, "You'll be sorry." You know how they say that too: "You'll be soooorrrrrryyy." I don't know so much as how I'd be sorry adding more milk unless I'm going to need it for something else down the road or if water was just the better choice. In any case, it is a guide tactic to really get my attention and to get it quickly when they say, "You'll be sooorrrryyy." like they do. So, I stopped with the extra milk to thin out the mixture and switched to water.

Rolling out the pie dough was uneventful other than the fact that I don't have enough counter space. So, with a bit of grumbling that commenced. Then, I sprayed Pam into the pie tins and loaded them with the chicken mixture. Topped both pies with their lid. I didn't use pie dough underneath this time simply because there wasn't enough.



Then the roses for the tops. Roll out your left over dough and trace out a petal sort of shape. Work it with your fingers until the edge looks like you think a flower petal might look like. Roll it gently into the middle of the flower and add on another petal. I used 3 petals for these pies. Usually I use more, but today I did quickie flowers. Position the flower by gouging out a good sized circle that it can sit in.

Then, you make the leaves. By now you'll need to ball up the dough you've been making petals out of because there won't be anymore room to cut out the leaves and roll it out again. It doesn't matter how many times you ball it up and roll it out because this is not really going to be eaten. It's for decoration. However, DeeDude always claims the rose and says he likes it, so I guess he doesn't mind it being sort of tough.

Once you have a leaf shape drape it over the tip of your finger and gently, very gently use your knife to score in the veins. Dip the end in some water to use as glue and artfully drape and arrange it around the flower.
Cut some slits into the top of the pies to let the steam out. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for about 50 minutes. Or so.

And, since it's done now and my stomach is growling, I think we can eat.

DeeDude

So you know who I'm talking about when I refer to DeeDude, this is the him. He's my husband of 32 years. In this picture he is enjoying a dish of ice cream. He is a writer and had written several books. You can read more about what he's doing at his website www.evanosky.info

Where We Cook Chicken in a Crock Pot

After making the tapioca yesterday I figured I might as well do something else in the crock pot with the chicken I’d purchased at Luckys that day. $3.97 for the whole thing and you can’t get a better price than the 68¢ a pound they were charging. It's not often I get the crock pot out, so I figured I'd use it again.

So, here’s what happened. I peeked at some other recipes to get a bit of guidance. I’m still a little rusty channeling recipes, though as you will see reading further in this entry I had lots of help.

So, here I am chopping up vegetables and we begin to have an argument about the red pepper. I was for chopping stuff up into uniform sized chunks. We had onions, celery and carrots to work with. Except DeeDude hollered from the other room that I should add green and red pepper. Not my first choice, but hey, he was going to be eating it too, so I grabbed what was left of them from the crisper drawer. Here’s where the arguing began:

Guides: Slice that into long slivers.
Me: What? No. That’s going to be different than the other stuff. It all needs to be diced.
Guides: (Insisting) Slices. Long.
Me: You really want this?
Guides: This is what comes from too many cooks in the kitchen.
Me: Okay, okay. We’ll do it your way.

As I finish up with the red pepper and move on to the green pepper I began to do the same sort of slicing action except this time they said it was okay to slice the green slivers in half. So, we had red peppers the about 4 inches long and the green slices 2 inches long. The carrots I cut into coins and the onions into chop.

The recipe I had read had you putting all the veggies on the bottom of the crock pot, layering chicken pieces on top, slapping the lid on and cooking on high for 4 hours.

I stood there looking at the prepared food dubiously thinking there was something wrong with not adding a bit of liquid. So, I added in half a cup of water. About half way through the cooking process it looked dry so I opened up a little can (lunch box size) of V-8 and poured that on top.

And, so it cooked. When it was pretty much done I realized there was a boat load of liquid collected, so I siphoned off 2 ¼ cups with my bulb baster to use in cooking the cup of raw Uncle Ben’s rice I planned to use as a side dish.

I made the mistake of adding a little bit of cayenne pepper to the rice, but DeeDude liked it. I won’t do that next time, though, because it was too hot for my tastes.

With the next post you’ll see the chicken pot pie I’m making for tonight’s dinner.

Where We Make Tapioca

Okay, so the plan was to make tapioca. I remember tapioca from when I was a kid and it was a favorite. It's been years since I made any and the other day when I was in the Food Mill on MacArthur Blvd in Oakland, I bought some from the bulk bins. It was pretty white pearl tapioca, larger than I seem to remember, but the sign said tapioca. It was a whole 74¢ for the bag and I thought, "What a deal."

So, last night I figured we could do a channeled recipe. And, I began channeling. Except, right away I'm thinking, "This doesn't sound right". So, I went online and all the recipes said: Stir for 2 hours. Oh, crap. Like I'm going to stand over the stove stirring for 2 hours. I'm sort of bummed out by that, but upon further searching I found a recipe by Alton Brown who said to use a slow cooker.

So, that's what we did.

I've linked to his recipe above and written what we finally ended up doing below. It isn't exactly a channeled recipe, but the guides where right there with me as I cooked, so I figure I can include it here with no qualms at all.

Tapioca Pudding based on Alton Brown's Recipe

1 ¼ cup of pearl tapioca (not the quick cooking stuff in the box)

Soak in 4 or 5 cups of cold water overnight

In the morning drain the water away from the little tapiocas and put them into your slow cooker. Stir in a cup of heavy cream, 5 cups of whole milk and a pinch of salt. Cook on high for 2 hours stirring occasionally.

Whisk together 2 egg yolks and 2/3 cup of sugar. It's going to be all clumped up. Start stirring and spooning in the tapioca mixture a little bit at a time into the egg and sugar mixture until you've gotten a good cup in there. Once that's nicely stirred together mix it all back into the slow cooker with the rest of the tapioca. Add the zest of one lemon and a tsp of vanilla. Let it cook another 15 minutes.

Eat some and put the rest of it in a container in the refrigerator. This stuff is absolutely fabulous.

Where I Buy Stuff

Yesterday I went shopping for vegetables across the street at House of Produce. It’s a small Asian market with vegetables that are not normally found at the larger Luckys grocery store also across from where I live. Anyway, I figured we could maybe start on some of the channeled recipes for this blog.

The first ding donged thing that happens as I walk in the door wanting to find some Marukan Rice Vinegar that I really like is somebody in Spirit directs me, quite forcefully I might add, to purchase some chili paste. I knew this stuff was going to be hot. The name is Sambal Oelek and is advertised on the label as ground fresh chili paste. If you are interested it is made in California by Huy Fong Foods. Last night I opened it up and stuck my finger in….for the first and last time. I walked out into the living room with my tongue hanging out into the air trying to cool it off and offered the jar to DeeDude. He stuck his finger in too to taste it. While his eyes were watering he said, “Yum”. Right, well he can have it. No way, no how am I going to be putting any of that into these recipes. If you will notice in the picture Miss Sheba is out of focus in the background sitting on DeeDude’s computer chair.

While I was in the store I also found some Kikkoman Mirin style sweet cooking seasoning. It’s right next to the rice vinegar in the picture. I’m not sure what I’ll be using it for. Probably I’ll use it instead of sugar in stir fry recipes. I do like my stir fry sauces with a bit of sweet to them.

I purchased the usual things…green and red peppers, a double handful of bean sprouts, some of those baby bananas that have a nutty flavor, an onion, some green onions, a shallot, some little white potatoes and some bok sum. I’d never actually had bok sum before. Baby bok choi I know about and have used often, but bok sum? No. It didn’t have the smooth curved surface that the baby bok choi has. It was sort of straight edged with tiny yellow flowers on it. Unfortunately, we don’t have a picture just now…so, I’ll try to find something on the internet or since I’m getting a chorus of no’s right now from Spirit might be making a trip back to the store to purchase some more of each kind later on today.

The lady in the store told me that she will sometimes make a salad out of bean sprouts, sliced tomato, green onions and white vinegar. I asked her if the rice vinegar I was purchasing would do and she said no, she used white vinegar. I asked if she cooks the bean sprouts and she said no, she uses them raw. So, I might try that.

The making of our dinner last night, though not technically a channeled recipe, was in fact well attended throughout the making of it by Folks in Spirit. They are quite helpful when I cook in the kitchen making all sorts of suggestions. Like last night I decided to use a box of Rice a Roni wild grain rice mix. As I was putting the stuff into the skillet they said I should add an additional cup of water and half a cup of my Uncle Ben’s rice. I’ve never done that before. I checked to make sure the cooking time would be okay and it all worked out fine.