Most Boring Thread

I had a leftover half of a burrito for lunch today.

 

I hope lunesta, wine and codeine cough syrup are good for you as a combo.

 

I'm home sick today - trying to tear open the little blister pack of Imodium has exhausted me.

 

Whoa, those things are a PITA (literally). Hope you got it open in time.

 

I think tomorrow may be my last day working.
I can't get access to the new Intranet that will be required on Monday, and my boss said, "oh, I don't think you'll need it anyway".

 

Well damn Rae - that's not boring, that's depressing! :huh:

My sympathies. Hope everything works out OK for you.

 

Thanks, Moxie. Everything always works out perfectly for me

My next door neighbor is digging out his section of curb, by hand, so he can make a more sturdy ramp for his off street parking. Note that he doesn't actually HAVE off street parking, he just parks his car beside his house. I think he's put gravel on his yard a few times over the (30+) years he's lived here, that he parks on. Kinda. Now, it's just grass.
This isn't a problem or issue for me. I'm just glad he got rid of the 5th wheel camper he had parked (about 18" from our dining room window) there when I moved here.
But, there he is, shoveling. Amazing how much a person can do with a simple tool, if you have more time than money.

 

I decided to cook tonight. Making a pot roast with onions, mushrooms, garlic, bay leaf, red wine, tomatoes, thyme, salt and pepper. For the last hour of cooking, I'm moving the whole show to a bigger pot and adding about 2 pounds of potatoes.

 

Tom.........sounds really good..........have you ever used beer in any of your recipes?.......

 

I used beer the last time I cooked prior to making the pot roast. I made a Polish kielbasa and sauerkraut dish that normally requires a lot of butter. I skipped the butter and substituted beer -- for health reasons lol. Came out fine, but I prefer it with butter.

In other animal fat news, the latest thing sweeping the internet is this dish called the "Bacon Explosion". Take two pounds of bacon, add two pounds of Italian sausage, add cooked bacon bits, roll the thing up, barbeque it and eat:

[imglink]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/28/dining/bacon_190.1.jpg[/imglink]

[imglink]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/28/dining/bacon650.33.jpg[/imglink]

Here's the NY Times article about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html?em

 

Mmmm....healthy! This ranks right up there with the turducken.

 

Tom, I lived in Pittsburgh for a while............love kielbasa and sauerkraut. Do you have a good recipe??? I've seen that "bacon thing". Looks ok but too much meat for me!!....

 

This is the Kielbasa and Sauerkraut recipe that a former Polish co-worker of mine used. But there are many versions available on the net (google "kielbasa and sauerkraut recipes"; see, e.g., all these recipes on cooks.com: http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,kielbasa_sauerkraut,FF.html) or that you can make up yourself. The constant elements I usually see are: (1) rinsing of the sauerkraut, (2) boiling and slicing of the kielbasa, and (3) sautéing or heating everything in a lot of some kind of fat (butter, oil, bacon, etc.).

- 1 lb. Kielbasa
- 1 (16 oz.) package or can sauerkraut
- 1 stick butter
- 1 pack of dried Polish blackish mushrooms (I don’t know the exact name of these dried mushrooms or their dry weight; can’t be more than an ounce or two; in New York I go to Polish butchers or grocery stores and buy a little round plastic container of these dried mushrooms)
- Pepper to taste

Soak dried mushrooms in hot water. When tender, slice the mushrooms and set aside.

Thoroughly rinse sauerkraut in cold water, drain and set aside.

Boil Kielbasa until tender. Slice, retain the juices and set aside.

In a large frying pan or large pot, melt the butter.

Add and sauté the sliced mushrooms (note, you can also save the water that the mushrooms were soaking in, and add it to the dish at the end)

Add the rinsed and drained sauerkraut and heat through.

Add pepper to taste.

Add sliced kielbasa and its juices, and heat through.

Serve hot.

* * * * * *

Because I live in Manhattan's Lower East Side/East Village, I have easy access to Polish butchers and grocers where I can buy fresh-smoked, store-made kielbasa -- including a couple of places I saw Martha Stewart (she's Polish) highlight in one of her shows that featured kielbasa and Polish cooking. While these stores have several varieties of kielbasa, all of them good, I actually like Hillshire Farms' kielbasa just as much.

Another Polish dish I like is Bigos. Similar to Kielbasa and Sauerkraut, except that other meats are used in addition to kielbasa. But I never bother making Bigos myself. If I want some, I just go to one of the Polish restaurants in the neighborhood.

 

Tom......thanks for the recipe. I just printed it out. I can get Hillshire Farms Kielbasa here, but I am in Baton Rouge.......one of the meccas for really good food.........just not Polish/Czech food!! My ex mother in law was Polish and used to pick what she called "pupinky" (spelling??) mushrooms in the woods. They were black with a pinkish cast underneath. She would can those and use those in recipes. She would start her Kielbasa or other recipes always with a saute' of butter and onions. So maybe that is what is eluded to in the recipe you have. Anyway, thanks again. I will add it to my recipes and make it soon. Judi

 

One of the meals that I actually miss as a vegan, is something called "Limerick Sausage Rolls" that a local Irish Pub type restaurant serves.

There's no way I could choke it down now, of course, but I do have fond memories of it.

I think it was bulk sausage, wrapped in a pastry, probably with a think layer of colcannon, and a cream gravy. I can feel my arteries cringing as I think of it! It's been about four years since I've tasted it.

 

Among South African Emigrants of my acquaintance "boerwors" and "droewors" are the objects of their sausage desires.

As for Polish delicacies, I still can't understand why you can't get a good dill pickle in Aotearoa... Polski ogorkie, or even Polski wyrob for goodness sake!

 

Whoa. All this Polish food and sausage talk, plus the Pittsburgh Steelers' win last night, made me venture out to the Polish stores in my neighborhood and pick up some of the real stuff --- fresh, store-made, double-smoked kielbasa ($4.99 per pound ... cheap), fresh, store-made sauerkraut ($1.49 per pound ... also cheap), and a packet of dried Polish mushrooms ($4.50 for 0.7 ounce packet or $102.86 per pound ... not cheap):



I'm not going to cook it up yet. But I suspect that when I do I'll find that my memory was flawed ... that Hillshire Farms' kielbasa, although it tastes good, is not as tasty as this fresh, store-made kielbasa.

* * * * * * * * * * *

In other sausage news, when I first went to Vienna many years ago I had a culinary revelation. I found these wurst kiosks all over the place and tried some of the wursts. Wow, I didn't know that authentic wursts could taste so good.

When I came back to New York, I found this street cart run by a former East Berliner called "Halo Berlin", selling wursts (and cabbage, potatoes, etc. that those Viennese wurst kiosks sold). These wursts also tasted great. As good as the stuff I had in Vienna.

 

No pickles? I wish you had bought pickles. I could have enjoyed some vicarious salivation (or would it be salvation?)

 

Lol. But I'm not a pickles guy.

Speaking of pickles however, that Aussie patsparks was recently in Chicago and Detroit and, at my suggestion, tried some White Castle hamburgers (the world's finest food). He returned to Australia and wrote a review of his White Castle experience. Among his criticisms, he slammed White Castle and other American fast food places for using sour pickle slices. I think he said that sweet gherkins were the only type of pickle to use. Sweet gherkins ... is that some sorta Australian or New Zealand thing?

 

They are the same as north american sweet pickles (gherkin = pickle).
But what do you expect from countries that put beet root on their hamburgers?