Learning How to Cook - Again

Patrice Lewis, on her excellent blog www.rural-revolution.com recently posted about cooking from scratch.  The gist of the post was making "box" dishes from scratch instead.  Along with some very good advice on cooking utensils to have on hand and items to keep in the pantry, she posted some recipes and invited her readers to post their favorite homemade items that most people these days make from a box, such as mac and cheese, pancakes, muffins and such.

It all sounded so delicious it made me hungry.  I found though that I couldn't really use any of the recipes that were posted much to my dismay.

Last year we discovered that my mom is lactose intolerant and my sister has gluten issues.  Since then cooking has become quiet adventurous in our house.  With wheat and milk out of the picture, most of the "box" recipes that are "go-to" for home cooks just don't work for us no matter if they are from scratch or out of a box. 

Basically now everything is from scratch, because wheat and milk are in just about everything in a box (explain to me why beef broth needs wheat in it.?  Check out the label on College Inn broth.  It's there.) 

Anyway, rant aside, we don't eat a lot of baked goods due to the issues, but I've been experimenting with various flours and liquids to achieve some tasty treats.  My two main flours are corn and rice.  I bought a grain grinder to make my own fresh instead of buying those expensive little packages in the exotic foods section.  I can buy a 50 pound bag of rice for about the same price as five pounds of ground rice flour.  I can make my own flour, it's fresher, cheaper and still make rice the regular way if I want to.

 I'm not real excited about using the gums and pastes normally put in store purchased food (weird and very expensive) to make non-gluten flours stick together, so I'm playing with my flour to egg ratio to up the protein needed to hold it all together (good thing I've got chickens!)  I've had lots of practice runs ending up being chicken food (another reason to buy a cheap bag of rice and grind it yourself) instead of gracing our table, but I'm getting there.  A peach cobbler made with corn flour can be downright tasty.  I try to do a lot of converting of recipes I find that sound great, but you have to work at it, because just replacing wheat flour with rice flour won't work and you won't like the results.

Rice flour cookies are very crisp straight out of the oven, but after a day, they can be like chewing on a rock.  I'm finding that a bit of applesauce in the mix helps to soften them up.

A cup of self-rising corn meal run through the grinder for a finer flour mixed with a tablespoon of baking powder, one egg, a half-cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a cup of lactose-free milk makes an absolutely fabulous cobbler dough.  Melt a stick of butter in your favorite baking dish, pour the dough in, drop the fruit of your choice on top and bake until golden brown.  Yum.

Lactose free milk is available out there now as are milks made from soy, almond and a host of other grains and nuts.  They're okay and in cooking you can't tell the difference. There is also a host of pastas made from different grains.  Some are good, some just cook into mush.  Finding out which ones do what is a matter of trial and error.

I'm also finding out that some things just don't need wheat.  Libby's canned pumpkin has a great pumpkin pie recipe on the side of the can.  On a whim, I made up the pie filling and then poured it into a pie plate that I sprayed with non-stick spray and stuck it in the oven - no pie shell.  It turned out great.  The filling held together wonderfully and the taste wasn't interrupted with pie crust thickness.  I've also tried this with an egg custard pie with similar results.

What I can't seem to find a substitute for is cheese.  There is a soy alternative out there, but it's not very good and doesn't cook worth a flip.  Oh well, maybe someday.

In the meantime, the experiments continue.....

Are People Really This Stupid?

A young man in South Carolina is facing a fine and possible jail time by virtue of being stupid.  It was raining outside and he was pet sitting his parent's dog.  Not wanting to get wet, he decided to simply hang the dog out of a second story window to let it do it's business, and then pull it back in.

I ask you now, can people really be that stupid?

Apparently they can.

Someone saw the incident, took pictures and reported it.  Good for them.

This act of stupidity leaves me rather speechless.  What type of people are we raising these days?  What are they going to do when faced with problems more serious than taking the dog out for a walk when it's raining?  It boggles the imagination.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Congratulations go out to the Auburn Tigers for their win over Alabama in the "Iron Bowl"

Let me make this perfectly clear.  I am not an Auburn fan.  I am an University of Alabama graduate (class of 1983).  I was screaming and yelling all the way for the Tide on Saturday.  It was painful to watch that last play.

I WILL NOT, however, be ugly about the loss.  Some of the things I have heard and seen this year for the game is enough to put you off football altogether.  This rivalry is so bitter that it's even led to murder in one case.  It's getting to where it's downright embarassing.

And it's coming from both sides.  Auburn fans can be just as bitter and ugly as can Alabama fans.  The name calling is no longer funny.  It's nasty and shows the worst in human nature.  It also makes the rest of the country look at this state and know they were right in thinking that we act like a bunch of redneck hicks that will literally kill each other over a sporting event.

Oh Please!  There are enough things going wrong in this country that are really important.  Football isn't one of them.  In fact, football should be a way of forgetting our problems and having a good time during times that aren't so good.  Instead, except for the 60 minutes of playing time on the field, football in this state has become something to dread, because some redneck is going to do something stupid, get himself in trouble and as he's being led away to jail, scream "Roll Tide!" or "War Eagle!"  Well that certainly reflects well on the state, now doesn't it?

The kicker for Alabama missed field goal attempts.  He's getting death threats?  The comments posted by readers at the end of articles about the game are so full of threats, demeaning comments,  f bombs, and other foul language that they should be censored for everyone under 50.

What amazes me more than anything is that most of this vitriol is from people who have never even actually been to either school.  So many people around here were just worked into a lather about the whole thing, but when I thought about it, it occured to me that I'm the only person I know that actually attended the University of Alabama.  I know only one person that went to Auburn University and he's a very nice fellow.  In fact, I ran into him on Monday and congratulated him on the win.  He in turn commiserated with me on the loss.  We parted on the best of terms.

That's the way it should be.  It's a game people.  Let it go.  Congratulate the Auburn fans.  Console the Alabama fans, and gear up for next year.

Congratulations Auburn.  Best of luck on the SEC championship.  I'll be pulling for you.  Roll Tide!