Whoa. Wow. Awesome!
Nick looks like my nephew.
Today I mentioned to Deena that my food-related site suddenly went bonkers. It had been doing well then dropped dramatically at Thanksgiving to only a hundred a day, then suddenly zoomed back up to 11 hundred views. And the stupidest posts are getting the most attention, they stick out like brightly painted thumbs, 500 and more among a column of 20s like eggs and bacon with thyme, and egg McMuffin, and bacon and eggs with beans, sweet potato rolls, weird simple stupid things that do not deserve any attention while other rare spectacular discoveries go unappreciated like yesterday, iceberg lettuce matched with rare balsamic, an incredibly lame ingredient with an exclusive ingredient, (who does that?) and raw tuna, a strange combination, because it's what I had on hand, and shockingly delicious. I sat there amazed how spectacular that combination goes together. And I'm the only one on Earth who knows it due to the weird ingredients that I happened to have. It doesn't even sound good. But it is. Why haven't the world-class chefs picked up on this before me? It's a genuine mystery to me.
Nick looks like my nephew.
Today I mentioned to Deena that my food-related site suddenly went bonkers. It had been doing well then dropped dramatically at Thanksgiving to only a hundred a day, then suddenly zoomed back up to 11 hundred views. And the stupidest posts are getting the most attention, they stick out like brightly painted thumbs, 500 and more among a column of 20s like eggs and bacon with thyme, and egg McMuffin, and bacon and eggs with beans, sweet potato rolls, weird simple stupid things that do not deserve any attention while other rare spectacular discoveries go unappreciated like yesterday, iceberg lettuce matched with rare balsamic, an incredibly lame ingredient with an exclusive ingredient, (who does that?) and raw tuna, a strange combination, because it's what I had on hand, and shockingly delicious. I sat there amazed how spectacular that combination goes together. And I'm the only one on Earth who knows it due to the weird ingredients that I happened to have. It doesn't even sound good. But it is. Why haven't the world-class chefs picked up on this before me? It's a genuine mystery to me.
Deena said flatly, "I don't have any creativity. None. *looks downward, shakes her head negatively* I simply cannot imagine anything."
I couldn't quite process the confession I was hearing.
Discovery amounts to desperation. Its born of laziness. I don't want to go shopping. I have things in the pantry, things that I thought at the time that I'd like in the future, things that seemed potentially useful, and a few frozen things, but hardly anything fresh. Need demands something be put together. Some leftover must be paired with something else on hand, like old meatballs with breakfast, and tinned beans. The possibilities are not unlimited. There's nothing creative about it, nothing artistic to it. Nothing. Discovery amounts to willingness to accept failure, it sort of expects failure. Like eating an actual dog's breakfast.
She made me sad.
If the bottom plate of the waffle iron will cook without being clamped shut then you could do a lot more things like fry eggs without smashing them. I just now watched a lot of videos of people smashing eggs in waffle irons.
They did not cook bacon in the video above. I saw the prosciutto (that shouldn't be cooked to crispiness). Did I miss them waffling chocolate chip cookies? None of the videos I've seen tried oatmeal cookies. That sounds good, Did I miss them smashing prepared cinnamon rolls? Hashed brown potatoes? Did they smash and waffle a corn dog?
* collard stuffed cornbread waffles with chipotle syrup
* spiral cut sweet potatoes with pumpkin spice waffles
* waffled polenta
* paleo pepperoni pizza waffles
* caribbean shrimp stuffed waffle pops w/ mango cilantro dipping sauce
* mashed potato, cheddar and chive waffles
* 3-minute churros
And many more, 27 altogether. The best list that I saw tonight. There are hundreds of videos on this subject and many more lists, but most that I've seen say the same things.
Know what the weird thing is? Everything comes out in this odd checkerboard embossed pattern.
I just now bought a waffle iron. Cuisineart has one for $26 reduced from $55. It's rated 4 stars with 494 reviews.
But I bought a smaller space-saving model, Pesto FlipSide Belgian waffle maker for $36. It's rated 4.5 stars with 3,754 reviews and that was the deciding factor.
This is strange, other vendors on Amazon offer the same model at twice the cost.
I was directed to these two models from this site posting the 5 best models of waffle makers, Lifehacker.com. There are other lists too that claim other models are best.
10 comments:
I had an ordinary everyday video of a tractor working a field that suddenly got 4000 views instead of my usual 3, and youtube removed it as a violation of terms of service with a warning that if I did it again, they'd close my account.
A complete mystery all around.
The account accusation was that I was paying for clicks to increase ad revenue, but I don't have ads. youtube said it didn't matter you can't do it. Do what I asked. No reply.
The views are a mystery. Maybe a chinese google linked to it for some reason one day, random video of the week or something.
Anyway the internet monitors are watching and you never know about rabbit holes.
When I was a substitute teacher I would take all assignments. I was wanting to learn practical skills. I was called in to teach a home economics class. It happened to be waffle day. Now, I know how to cook, but have never used a waffle iron so I had no advice. I should have paired up girls w/ boys because the boys just had batter everywhere.
There's probably some movie where a waffle iron is used as an instrument of torture.
I don't want to see it.
LOL! I could see Joe Pesci or Dennis Hopper using a waffle iron for nefarious purposes.
Brilliant! I'm hungry. I do worry about the coating on the iron, though.
I loved Home Ec. The first thing we ever made was to slice a grapefruit in half, put a maraschino cherry in the center, sprinkle with brown sugar, and broil it. I wish to this day I still had the sugar cookie recipe we made.
I have done savory things with waffle irons. Sometimes thing burn, so it is hit and miss. I have done latkes with various meats and cheeses. But when it works, it works well.
I was trying to look up Sourdough bread on your site and only two posts came up, and that can't be right.
I wanted to see how to store the cultures because sourdough is scary because you're supposed to keep your culture going.
Or maybe find the post on how to start a culture from the local air.
But I made "artisan" bread and it didn't work so well because I was too worried about baking it too long and didn't bake it long enough. And I didn't do the overnight yeast growth with a cup of whole wheat flour like it said but I don't know if that matters. And I didn't have bread flour. And I ran out of flour when I was adding it and had to run to the store and the yeast took over and gooey bubbly bread stuff was all over the place.
But I'm going to try again.
Good for you. This is going to fun.
And unbelievably rewarding.
Dedicated sourdough bakers keep their starters fed and replenished. They say feed it at least once a week, but I have one languishing in the refrigerator for over a month. When I rejuvenate it then it will take longer to come back to full life, possibly a few days.
I have several starters frozen in flake form. The flakes were created while the starter was running full blast at maximum activity, spread onto a plastic sheet and allowed to dry out. Denver is fantastic for drying.
I also have flakes stored the same way unfrozen.
So that's storing.
Cultures are not scary, they're child's play. Literally. They're cave man, they're ancient Egypt when nobody knew anything about organisms responsible for bread and beer and wine.
To collect, make mud and neglect it. Indoors or out. Actually, a loose slurry from flour and water. That's it. It will work closed tightly in a jar or open to the air. So long as the surface is wet.
The longer you collect outdoors then the more organisms are shoved into your slurry by wind. If it's snowed on or rained on that's great because then you have organisms delivered to your slurry from the sky. You know raindrops form around a tiny airborne organism. (along with other particulates). Collecting in cold weather is fantastic because the organisms collected survived those harsh conditions. Your starter will be so fierce that cold storage, fermentation of prepared bread dough a few days in the refrigerator to build up the sourdough flavor, hardly affects it all all. Then after three days fermenting and removed from the refrigerator and having grown in there BANG it takes off in room temperature while it's still cold. Whoa. Wow. Awesome.
Before all that try this trick. It's how Italians make rustic bread.
Use half the amount of intended water and a little less than half the intended amount of four. 1/4 tsp dry yeast. Mix carelessly, cover and forget about over night. In fact, do this right now!
This is your biga.
The next day, that's tomorrow, combine the remaining water and flour and 1 tsp of dry yeast. (not necessary actually because the biga is going full blast) You grew yeast overnight. Then finally salt. Mix to dough. Knead to your satisfaction. Fashion a loaf or use a bread pan, allow to rise covered and bake.
Here, watch this to change your attitude.
YouTube [NYT no knead bread]
Now watch this [no knead bread revisited]
Observe: Mark Bittman for all his palling around with great world-class cooks, for all his intuition on approach to technique that he shows in is books, for all his capabilities otherwise, is a complete dope.
He tells Jim Lahey that he has a bright idea to shortcut the whole idea, to do this same thing more quickly and by doing so exposes he hasn't internalized the WHOLE F'K'N point! Lahey has emphasized that TIME is the chief ingredient, TIME is the key to his whole approach and Bitteman seeks to eliminate time. I honestly couldn't believe what I heard when he said that. Surely he was joking. Testing somehow. Devil's advocate or whatever. He cannot possibly be that thick. Not after having it explained so thoroughly. I lost respect. Like this
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........\ X BONK!
Thanks Chip. You're the best. :)
Waffle falafel!
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