Category Archives: Food

Aaron’s Limeade Recipe

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This is done with a Vitamix VM0178 blender in the 40-oz. to-go cup. I still intend to scale it up to a pitcher for additional servings.

Ingredients:
Two cubes of ice.
One cup of cold, filtered water.
Two tablespoons of sugar.
Two tablespoons of Santa Cruz organic lime juice.
1/8 tsp of xanthan gum

Pour all this stuff into the 40-oz. to-go cup. Screw in the teeth. Shake briefly. Place the cup on the Vitamix. Blend until all gredients are incorporated.

You can also throw in a few ounces of tequila just for fun.

Weird secret ingredient for a perfect home frappucino…

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Xanthan gum.

Seriously. I’ve been rescuing leftover coffee lately by making a nice blended iced coffee, hoping to emulate the results you get from a Starbucks’. I had some good luck with a half-cup of coffee, a half-cup of milk, ice cubes, and a tablespoon of sugar, given the old Vitamix treatment. And indeed. It was delicious.

But I’d read this tip on the Internet about xanthan gum, which acts as thickening agent, emulsifier, and stabilizer. In an iced coffee, it was suggested, you add a bit to keep the ingredients from separating.

Only after reading this tip did I notice a failing of my recipe: Halfway through the drink, the yummy froth and the liquid tended to separate, and since the liquid is heavier than the yummy froth, you’re just not getting the full yummy of the thing. So, I ordered some xanthan gum.

A quarter teaspoon of the stuff improved this consistency issue remarkably. All yummy froth. Down to the bottom of the tumbler.

It’s What’s For Dinner

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I often have an internal debate on if cooking sous vide is worth the effort. I mean, you season the meat, then you gotta vacuum seal it, which uses a lot of plastic, then you gotta dunk it in water and ensure that it’s weighed down, and then you gotta throw it in a hot pan for a minute so it doesn’t look quite so ugly.

I have to say, though, these days, I’m leaning toward “worth it.”

Meanwhile, how about that Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?

I have to say, I am not a fan of exposition. It’s lazy. In television, please don’t tell me, NCIS. It’s a visual medium. Show me.

But in the case of S5 Ep6, I mean, exposition was the point, and it was used smartly to bulldoze the story forward. It was couched within a story, within the event of our girl getting the honor of a lifetime, a Friar’s Club roast (this really needed a Jeff Ross cameo but okay) but I think this episode was the most talky-talk episode in the whole thing.

Yet, it was done so well, couched within a context, exposition without a wet towel smacking you in the temples, that you really didn’t notice you were being talkie-talked to. So good, and man, they moved mountains with gigantic excavators when it came to advancing this story in one simple episode.

I hope Susie gets to answer and/or make that call. Peace in our time, and tits up.

Things One Wonders at 1 a.m.

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What is that weird white thing in my egg?

Via Yahoo! Sports:

That string is called a chalaza—pronounced kuh-LAY-zuh. According to the American Egg Board, eggs actually have two chalazae inside their shell. The chalazae are “twisted, cordlike strands of egg white” that anchor the yolk from the top and bottom of the shell membrane, keeping the yolk from getting busted before you crack the egg. In a fresh egg, the chalazae will be especially visible—so don’t feel like you need to remove them.

Aaron Make Soup

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I had made a full jar of bone broth from ten spent drumsticks. This is easy with an Instant Pot. You put the bones in the pot with water up to the line, and you turn it on for 120 minutes, and it pulverizes the bones and mines all the good stuff from within. So this big jar of schmaltz was just there in my refrigerator, teasing me, I either gotta use it or freeze it. But it’s chicken noodle soup season so let’s go for it.

Three chicken breasts got seasoned and cooked in a slightly-greased cast iron skillet, three minutes a side on the stove top, then 7 minutes a side in a 400-degree oven. I’d go more like five minutes next time as the meat is still a little stringy.

Deglazed the pan with most of a can of store-bought chicken broth and some white wine, this gave me two more cups of flavorful liquid. Stuck the pan bqck in the oven to dry, then brought it out to cool and chopped five carrots and two celery stalks plus all the leaves, all chopping besides the leaves done on the bias. These went into a mixing bowl tossed with salt and rested for ten minutes, then tossed with a bit of oil and into the cast iron skillet, into the oven at 400 for 20 minutes to roast.

As many egg noodles and schmaltzy liquid that would go to the fill line went into the instant pot, and cooked for two minutes. A small amount of noodles did not fit. I just boiled those.

I like noodles via pressure-cook with some flavorful liquid. Rather than boiling with water, you are pressure cooking with salty yummy liquid, hopefully blasting that flavor into the noodles. Plus, it is quicker and there is no draining.

Now all ingredients into the pot. The noodles with the schmaltzy liquid, the roasted vegetables, the carved chicken breast, any other leftover liquidy yems, stir, and enjoy.