Cooking In General

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@BTA: I find both Coolwhip and Dreamwhip to have an "off" taste, and to leave a filmy residue behind in the mouth. There's something odd about the texture, too, IMO. Also, since real whipped cream takes only a minute or two to prepare, there's no convenience involved in using the substitute. Since I very seldom use whipped cream, I see no reason to use what I consider to be an inferior product on those few occassions.

 

I don't use the products much myself either. I agree about the filmy residue in the mouth. The main reason I use it, when I use it, is that I find that it keeps in its solid state a lot longer than real whipping cream. In our family that is a good thing because we don't generally eat sweet things in one sitting.

 

Good point.

But the biggest reason to avoid it is the ingredients list:

Ingredients
Sugar, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Propylene Glycol Monostearate (for Uniform Blending), Corn Syrup, Sodium Caseinate (From Milk), Whey (from Milk), Sodium Silicoaluminate, Acetylated Monoglycerides (for Uniform Blending), Hydroxylated Soy Lecithin (for Uniform Blending), Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose (Thickener), Artificial Flavor, Natural Flavor, BHA (Preservative), Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Beta Carotene (for Color), Citric Acid (Preservative).

There's hardly anything in that that qualifies as 'food'. Compare that to the ingredients of whipped cream:

Ingredients: Cream.

 

Not sure what qualifies as food or vitamin in your world, but the fact that hydrogenated palm kernel oil is the second most voluminous ingredient is enough for me to steer well clear.

Plus, my whipped cream has nothing in it but cream. You take a bottle of cream and whip it.

 

Hydrogenated vegetable oil is not a food. It is a weird mutation of a food. Vegetable oil is not supposed to be a solid at room temperature. They add extra hydrogen atoms into it to make it less liquid, turning it into a dangerous trans fatty acid, a chemical conconction that the human body was never intended to have to attempt to digest. The health implications of consumption of this rubbish mostly relate to a huge increase in the risk of coronary heart disease, but this mutant chemical is also linked to all sorts of other issues. For this reason, its use has become much more regulated in recent years. For example, just a few weeks ago, the New York City Board of Health voted to ban the use of trans fat in restaurant food.

 

Well, health issues or not, I agree that the artificial versions of whippped cream taste odd, leave a film in your mouth, and IMO cost too much for what you actually get.

Keep it out of my ambrosia!

We are up to 50 on the bread loaf count. (Yes, I bake them in batches of 3, but remember the one that ended up on the floor on the way to the oven . . .)

 

Vegetable oil is a real food, but once you hydrogenate it into a mutant trans fat, it stops being food in my book. That's like calling a poisonous toadstool a food, just because a mushroom is. Or calling methylated spirits a food because it is made up of the same simple carbohydrate chains as sugar or beer.

 

OK, folks, let's - ah - "simmer" down . If you don't like it, don't cook with it. I seem to recall an earlier post in this topic that involved potato chips. It sounded pretty good to me, actually.

No doubt that sweetened shredded coconut in my sister's minimalist ambrosia has some sort of awful stuff in it.

added a few minutes later: Some people turn their noses up at all this cinnamon bread I'm making, because it's made with white flour. I just don't give it to the folks who don't believe in it. No way I'm going go to all that trouble for someone who's going to chuck that loaf in the trash!

[ December 21, 2006, 23:19: Message edited by: revmaf ]

 

Well I made another batch of fudge today and I think I've got it figured out. I have to let it boil a couple of degrees above what it says in the recipe and I let it wait until it is very cool rather than luke warm to stir it. It is kind of difficult to stir and I worry about breaking the wooden spoon I use to stir it, but after stiring I put it strait into the freezer for a couple hours and it seems to set well. After defrosting it, the fudge had a very nice texture. I'll probably send the batch with my son for his school christmas party tomorrow.

 

Dragonfly, fudge is so beyond me - congratulations on figuring it out.

 

OK, final total on bread is 68 loaves this year. Every year there's an adventure. This year it was the pound of bad yeast and the one loaf on the floor (at the worst possible time, of course, since I was baking lots of loaves that day to deliver to a large group the next).

Oddly, this year I don't really mind the thought of baking bread again. Probably will make a batch in a week or two.

Meanwhile, here is a recipe that incorporates the two foods traditionally eaten on New Year's Day in the U.S. South to bring good luck in the New Year: black-eyed peas and turnip greens. It comes from Chef Walter at WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. Admittedly, it involves some ingredients you'll only find in the U.S., and perhaps only in the South.

Good Luck Skillet

1 can (15.5 oz) black-eyed peas
1 box (10 oz.) frozen turnip greens
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp Tabasco sauce (or to taste)
3 slices bacon, diced (the original recipe calls for hog jowl bacon but even I can't find that)
1 cup cornmeal mix
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a large iron skillet, fry the bacon until it is crisp. Add the onion and cook until it starts to brown. Stir in the peas, undrained, and the greens and cook until boiling. Check seasoning and add salt if needed. Stir in Tabasco sauce. In a bowl stir together the cornmeal mix, egg, and buttermilk, then drop the mixture by Tablespoons onto the boiling greens and peas mixture. Place into the preheated oven and bake about 20 minutes or until the cornbread is nicely browned. Serve hot.

There is another traditional Southern dish that involves black-eyed peas, ham, and rice, called Hoppin' John, that I can dig out and post if anyone wants the recipe.

Any other traditional recipes for New Year's Day?

Jan. 1 update: just made and ate this, and it is not quite as wonderful as I recalled. However, when you come down to it, turnip greens and black-eyed peas are not exactly wonderful on their own, either. Probably needs some additional seasoning, which I'm always overly cautious about.

[ January 01, 2007, 19:51: Message edited by: revmaf ]

 

OK, it's January 1 and time for some new recipes.

Are there NO traditional New Year's Day foods out there besides the Southern U.S. staples I mentioned?

Oh, well.

 

So, as a spinoff from the RB post, does anyone here have a favorie recipe for Scotch eggs?

 

As a special favour, can I get a nice recipe from a different country that I could actually make use of home, being a guy and all? Simple ingredients (like simple veggies or kinds of meat, no hard-to-get regional stuff etc ), doable with simple utensils but still refreshingly different from what I normally eat here in Poland? Not like our food is bad, mind you.

BTW, if you want something fast and easy from here, just take some potatoes and grate them, get the water away, break an egg or two in (depends how many potatoes you take, but as a rule you don't want too much egg - one for a medium bowl, two for a biggie), use some (not much) flour if you like. Form tiny pancakes (well, you can make a whole-pan one, why not, we just don't normally) and splash them flat. You want to fry them in oil rather than butter. Enjoy. Remember, it's as simple as grating some potatoes, braking an egg in and frying the stuff on the pan. It's really no biggy and it tastes great, so you should try.

Okay, but what do you have for me?

 

Chicken in foil bake

OK, Chevalier, take a chicken breast, with or without bone, rub with a small amount of oil,
sprinkle with paprika, salt, and pepper, or whatever spices you like. Cut up a celery stalk, a peeled carrot, and a small potato. Take a piece of aluminum foil, put the vegetables on it, add the chicken breast on top, wrap it up tight. Put in 350 degree oven (sorry, don't know C conversion but you probably do) for about 1 hour. There. You have your entire meal, with vegetables and starch, in one neat little packet and no pan to wash. You can substitute any sturdy vegetable or starch for those I've listed. The paprika mainly turns the chicken a prettier color since it doesn't brown much in the foil package.

Note on edit: I upped the time to one hour after making this again myself last night. I may have cut the vegetables too thick but they weren't done at 45 minutes. Also, I recall now that if you put more than one packet in the oven it also takes a tad longer, as well as if you choose to do this in a covered casserole dish. You'll need to adjust in about 10-15 minute incrments, I think.

[ January 09, 2007, 15:46: Message edited by: revmaf ]