Lockdown Cuisine Thread

Fried spam sandwich for lunch, with mustard.

 

highly recommended; adding jalapeños & parmesian to the dough

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Even before the lock down, we almost never eat out. Not much has changed on our daily menu. One thing is that we can't get fresh vegetable as often. My wife is doing the best from canned and frozen vegetables from our garden last year. General Tso's Chicken (or General Gau’s, or General Gao’s depending on who you ask) with steamed rice is our favorite.

 

White or brown rice? We were doing a lot of white, switched to brown, much more flavour, not to mention more nutritious.

 

My wife likes brown rice sometimes and buy a small bag occasionally. I don't like brown rice, neither my kids. So we buy 15lb or 20lb bag of medium or short grain white Japanese rice, 100 lbs at a time.

 

no changes here. mrs.b loves to cook,(and i love to eat, so it works out well) and so far, the food supply has come through

 

This crisis has made me face a harsh reality.
I'm a lousy cook. Which didn't matter too much before this crisis when access to restaurants and prepared food options were open and easy.
But now I've been forced to face the repeated illusionary lie, which is the difference on the frozen food box, between the picture and the finished product.
Plus I tried to just make a few hamburgers last night and ended up setting off the fire alarm.

I always knew when watching the nature survival shows, that I wasn't one of those guys, or when watching the Walking Dead, that I'd be Zombie Fodder in the first reel.
But this whole crisis has underlined that reality.
Thank God I have a good supply of toilet paper.

 

I like my various America's Test Kitchen cookbooks the best.

If you want to try Momofuku, it is available as an ebook for $2.99

Momofuku: A Cookbook (eBook) - Slickdeals.net

It is actually a very popular book.

 

Trying to mix it up from the usual fare. Trying some new recipes.
With both of us at home with three meals/day the dishwasher has been getting a workout.

Lots of tuna salad and egg salad sandwiches
Elvis Presley pound cake (look it up...)
Chicken/Steak fajitas
Stuffed Shells

 

I'm kind of not thinking about recipes much. Have a bread machine and managed to find flour so there's that. Bought an Instant Pot, have a variety of things in the fridge. Some happen to cook in the same amount of time in an Instant Pot (Brussels sprouts and carrots, for example). I never liked Brussels sprouts until my twenties, but fortunately that happened. They're plentiful here and a lot fit in a fridge drawer, and they keep there a while. Couple different steamed-up veggies over some rice, fresh bread, some cheese or something, nothing fancy but feels quite civilized enough for me.

Another theme is going through some canned food that I did stack by the stairs years and years ago, you know, the 'in case something extraordinary ever happens' stash. This counts, I figure, so I'm rotating out some of the most ancient canned soup and have bought newer to replace them.

One ancient can I found was alphabet style (probably cheap when I bought it). Heated it up, poured over some rice. kind of bland. Well, the last time I ordered out to support a local restaurant, it was my favorite Mexican place, and they had included a whole small tub of their house red sauce, which is not to be trifled with, and I still had most of that tub left. Dumped that all in. Then had to stir in some nuts and yogurt to dial the heat back down. Darned if that didn't end up a pretty tasty dish.

 

My wife is a baker, so we've had more fresh bread and cookies than at any point we've been together.

But if carbs aren't your thing, we've also been eating more whole chickens, so she's been making bone broth soup stock by boiling the bones and saving that for later.

Nothing beats homemade soup.

 

We used our Instant Pot to make turkey stock, basically all the bones and meat scraps, cover with water, and cycle on high for 30 minutes then coast, several times.

In past we've just used a stock pot, but it had sprung a pin hole leak last time. In past I've always needed to clean the bones, run the meat down the garburetor (sic). This time however, just pinch the bones and they disintegrate, easy. Guess I could have made bone broth too, didn't think that far.

The finished stock we convert to ice cubes, and make a pot of turkey soup as well, celery, onion, turkey white meat and a few spices, bay leaf.

Breakfast this morning a fry-up: potatos/ones, egg omelet, fried (chicken?) sausage with mushrooms and onions.

And coffee: the nearby coffee place has a cafe and sells bagged beans (whole or ground). They roast right there. Since the pandemic they're only doing bean sales, a few hours a week, no cash sales.

 

An unnamed family member bought another unnamed "late adopter" family member who detests pressure cookers after an unfortunate childhood incident involving soup an Insta-Pot about a year and a half back.
It was only her heroic frugality that prompted its use, since it could not be returned.

I can't say whether or not they can clean an EGR, but I would not be willing to bet much against it!!!!!!

The unnamed "late adopter" family member said recently that if the Insta-Pot fails in service that a replacement WILL BE ordered that same day.
I can also report that the same unnamed "late adopter" family member has since given no fewer than three of them as gifts.

Yeah.
They're pretty good to have around.

 

I'm a skeptic. My son tries to convince me everything is better in an Instant Pot. Ours isn't seeing that much use. We do have a full-sized (canning capable) pressure cooker as well. Spare ribs are fall-off-the-bone tender in 1/2 hour, yum.

 

We received an Insta-Pot as a gift, but my wife found no use for it and gave it away. She has a high-end stovetop pressure cooker pot (not electric like Insta-Pot) and uses it all the time. Using Insta-Pot to cook is like using a microwave oven to cook a full meal. It may be convenient and easy, but I guess, a real cooking guru like my wife does not like it.

 

The guy I followed in line at piggly wiggly had an overflowing cart full of
Dinty Moore and TP
along with a couple boxes of Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches

my assumption is #1 leads to #2

 

As a kid, back in the 1960's everyone had an ol' fashion pressure cooker. Apparently there has been a resurgence, but rather than use a natural flame via natural gas or inductive cooking - everybody seems to need an electric pressure cooker now days. Man, there are tons of recipes out there for this tech. . In the realm of pork ribs? Oh - man ... I have to admit ... it was almost worth (being forced to) getting one.

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