Whatcha Cooking today?

[Julianna]

Should mention i made it for myself so i didnt care how it looked . I have the crud the kids have, so i mostly just want to sleep at this point.

Young ones don't care either, as long as the frosting is thick.

Too true. I let Zain lick his first food yesterday -- a watermelon slice. His face lit up in a huge smile. He is too little still, but he is showing a lot of interest.

[pepperhead212]

@agee I do various things to thicken Thai curries, but my favorite is using some wheat starch, mixed in a little water - not in everyone's cupboards! This starch seems to keep its thickness better than cornstarch, tapioca starch, and other starches I've used, and reheats better, too. Another thing I use, you might have around, is potato flakes - something I use for bread, but also thickening things, sometimes. And the last thing is some red lentils, ground up into a fine powder. Mild flavor, and mixes up well with the curry.

Next time, boil down some of the coconut milk first, before adding some of the other ingredients, and if still liquidy, whisk in a little powdered coconut milk, if you have some.

[karstopography]

Pan Fried in peanut oil and cornmeal Texas wild fresh redfish caught 10 miles from my house. Steamed/boiled big flat head fresh from the garden cabbage. Sweet corn hush puppies. Homemade Tartar sauce. Partial or impure Locavore, I am.

[Tormahto]

Pan Fried in peanut oil and cornmeal Texas wild fresh redfish caught 10 miles from my house. Steamed/boiled big flat head fresh from the garden cabbage. Sweet corn hush puppies. Homemade Tartar sauce. Partial or impure Locavore, I am.

Dip into any pre-cooked appetizers (shrimp) for bait?

[karstopography]

I normally reserve shrimp for our table, too good to not eat and not necessary to waste for fish bait. Once upon a time, we had a small tow behind the boat shrimp net and caught our own table shrimp. The math on that is pretty bad, though.

Most or many of the tasty local fish like red drum respond positively to lures and or flies without any stinky or wiggling bait type of enhancements. This fish was caught with a fly I tied, a slightly modified copy of Gartside’s Soft Hackle Streamer, originally developed by the late Jack Gartside of Stoneham, MA. Jack Gartside was reported to have learned to tie flies from another person with a Boston/New England connection, the late Ted Williams “The Splendid Splinter". Ted Williams evidently loved to fish and fish using fly tackle.

The fly is 2 white Marabou (turkey) feathers and a single Gadwall Duck Flank feather, that duck feather supplied by my daughter the duck hunter. That’s about it for the fly. Maybe a smidge of flash helps at times. Looks almost like a real live fish when wet and swimming, at least enough to the fish. Fool them, don’t feed them, that’s the saying.

[karstopography]

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Spinach sautéed with a little garlic, angus choice beef chuck roast in the crock pot, and mashed russet potatoes. Rather large spinach leaves I would say.

[Julianna]

I have had the kid crud and have been home with the baby. For 3 days i havent made or had time to really eat anything (did drink water and orange juice and i ate some cheese and 2 tomatoes) but today i made a frittata and some broccoli.we willsee how this goes.

[Tormahto]

I normally reserve shrimp for our table, too good to not eat and not necessary to waste for fish bait. Once upon a time, we had a small tow behind the boat shrimp net and caught our own table shrimp. The math on that is pretty bad, though.

Most or many of the tasty local fish like red drum respond positively to lures and or flies without any stinky or wiggling bait type of enhancements. This fish was caught with a fly I tied, a slightly modified copy of Gartside’s Soft Hackle Streamer, originally developed by the late Jack Gartside of Stoneham, MA. Jack Gartside was reported to have learned to tie flies from another person with a Boston/New England connection, the late Ted Williams “The Splendid Splinter". Ted Williams evidently loved to fish and fish using fly tackle.

The fly is 2 white Marabou (turkey) feathers and a single Gadwall Duck Flank feather, that duck feather supplied by my daughter the duck hunter. That’s about it for the fly. Maybe a smidge of flash helps at times. Looks almost like a real live fish when wet and swimming, at least enough to the fish. Fool them, don’t feed them, that’s the saying.

I've read many books on fishing, with Gartside and Williams included in enough of them. I haven't been involved in fly fishing for a couple of decades. Maribou, for me, meant a strip and pause, strip and pause retrieve, as the material pulses. I grew up with 2 choices for flash, gold or silver. Now, there are many others. Back in the day, the experts said gold on a cloudy day, silver on a sunny day. It worked for me.

If you're familiar with long back taper, short belly fly lines, that's my invention. I approached a few companies with that and other lines, but all they wanted to do was steal them. It's been so long, I don't know if it was LL Bean or Orvis that passed my ideas on to Scientific Anglers, and SA was actually innocent in using it, not knowing the background. With another invention, the CEO of Cortland got back to me and said that it would take years to do a marketing study along with an advertising campaign to launch it. They took it, and had it on the store shelves next spring. Nothing I could do, being blacklisted at the Patent Office. One year, the USPTO proposed fee increases that violated law. I wrote to them, and they backed off with the increases. I estimated that I cost them $50,000,000 in lost patent fees over about 5 years. A drop in the bucket to their billion dollar plus budget back then, but they were not happy at all.

I think all of the runaround I received was part of the reason I drifted away. That, and I actually get more fun out of my fishing roots, All I need is a line, hook, and garden hackle (earth worm), along with cutting a tree sapling, and walk a few hundred yards down to the cool clear brook trout places.

I still have many inventions on the back burner, but don't know if they will ever get anywhere. The ultimate shark tank is inventing in the fishing industry. Those people give new meaning to cutthroat.

[worth1]

I'm in the process of thawing out a pound of my homemade pork Italian sausage to make stuffed manzano peppers.
Manzano means apple in Spanish.
The little devils are as hot as, well the devil but the walls are very thick and tasty too.
When at the Mexican market I picked out some that still had a hint of green to them now they are ripe and orange.
Hopefully the hard as rock avocados i got will be ok.
As they have become ripe as well.
I get hard avocados and let them get ripe at home.

[Tormahto]

I'm in the process of thawing out a pound of my homemade pork Italian sausage to make stuffed manzano peppers.
Manzano means apple in Spanish.
The little devils are as hot as, well the devil but the walls are very thick and tasty too.
When at the Mexican market I picked out some that still had a hint of green to them now they are ripe and orange.
Hopefully the hard as rock avocados i got will be ok.
As they have become ripe as well.
I get hard avocados and let them get ripe at home.

Something tells me that you are not into avacado toast, nor man buns.

[worth1]

I'm in the process of thawing out a pound of my homemade pork Italian sausage to make stuffed manzano peppers.
Manzano means apple in Spanish.
The little devils are as hot as, well the devil but the walls are very thick and tasty too.
When at the Mexican market I picked out some that still had a hint of green to them now they are ripe and orange.
Hopefully the hard as rock avocados i got will be ok.
As they have become ripe as well.
I get hard avocados and let them get ripe at home.

Something tells me that you are not into avacado toast, nor man buns.

Never had nor will I have either.

[karstopography]

@Tormato I mostly use floating fly lines with relatively short heads, 30-40 feet that taper off on the back side to the running line. There’s so many names and makers and various tapers out there now. I hate to hear how the industry stole the ideas you had, but I guess I’m not surprised.

Nothing wrong with garden hackle either. My kids and I used to turn over logs along the Charles River in Millis and find abundant earthworms that devasted the yellow perch and LMB in that river, not that we kept any of the fish. I’ve had a ton of fun tossing the 6 1/2’ cast net into the surf here and then putting whatever mullet and others I got on a circle hook and see what I can get, sharks, redfish, gafftop, you never knew. I’ll fish bait I catch, or lures or flies, no purity here. Problem with using shrimp for bait here is that it can attract some species I’d rather not deal with like hardhead catfish with their poisonous spines, gafftopsail cats with their super abundant slime, and other undesirables. Plus, the shrimp have horns that can poke you and I don’t want to mess with bait camps.

Fly fishing is actually an advantage many times here in the real shallow stuff. I won’t get into the reasons why, but I do partially fish to bring home something tasty for the table and fly fishing makes it easier to do that in some cases. Plus, it is fun. I often bring along a low profile baitcasting rig for chunking soft plastics and hard plugs for when the fly tackle becomes more of a burden than an asset.

I never want to try and do anything to make a living from fishing as I see how that might ruin fishing for me. I don’t think I could guide simply because of the people and their expectations. Most of my fishing is solitary and I like it that way.

Back to food and cooking, the garden spinach sautéed was excellent. A little olive oil, a couple of crushed garlic cloves briefly cooked in that until fragrant, then removed. We this time served the spinach with sliced hard cooked egg on top, something I grew up with and my wife hadn’t done before. She liked the spinach like that.

Tonight, it’s taco soup. Easy and good for the cold weather we are getting.

[worth1]

I also have a cup of dried mayocoba beans soaking.
But I didn't buy them under that name.
I bought them in bulk under the name peruano beans.
It pays to know the many names of the same thing, Because under the name mayocoba, they cost at least twice as much in the one pound bag at HEB.
There are several names for the same bean.
I also feel they would make an excellent baked bean in the style of Boston baked beans but wouldn't be authentic to the Boston baked beans snobs.
You couldn't call them Texas baked beans because they are hung up on pinto beans.
Lucky for me I can only stand about 1/2 cup of the things before I've had enough.

No mine will be savory not candy.

[worth1]

Well any who.
I broke out my porcelain baking dish for the occasion.
I don't use it all the time but when I do.

The sausage has an egg some panko crumbs black pepper dried onion fresh cilantro and ketchup added to it.
It's going to need the sweetness of the ketchup to help offset the heat of these manzanos.
They are out in my seasonal walk in cooler waiting to be baked low and slow.

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[Tormahto]

I also have a cup of dried mayocoba beans soaking.
But I didn't buy them under that name.
I bought them in bulk under the name peruano beans.
It pays to know the many names of the same thing, Because under the name mayocoba, they cost at least twice as much in the one pound bag at HEB.
There are several names for the same bean.
I also feel they would make an excellent baked bean in the style of Boston baked beans but wouldn't be authentic to the Boston baked beans snobs.
You couldn't call them Texas baked beans because they are hung up on pinto beans.
Lucky for me I can only stand about 1/2 cup of the things before I've had enough.

No mine will be savory not candy.

Mayocoba/Peruano/Canary, all the same bean. They were very popular with gardeners, and in the supermarkets, here, about a decade ago. Then they just disappeared. There's one WalMart in the area that serves a more concentrated Hispanic population, so maybe they still carry it. Mayocoba was the same price as most. Pinto beans were always the slightly more expensive beans, here.

For Boston baked beans it' has to be the smallest bean, "Navy" or "Small White Bean" (these two possibly could sold as the same bean at times), for me.

[worth1]

@Tormato
The pinto is the least expensive here.
The mayocoba was less expensive as it is now but with the ever increasing Latino population and the Mexican food craze the price has jumped way up on many things of this nature.
Sadly the folks that brought it here to begin with have to pay for it out the nose.
At one time Mexican type cheese was a lot less expensive than the American or European type cheese.
Not anymore.
That's one of the reasons I shop at the Mexican markets for some of this stuff.
They make a living without taking advantage of their customers.
The other is you simply can't find it any place else.
Like the chile manzano.
I have recently learned the dried avocado leaf is another herb they use.
Has an anise/nutty like flavor.
You'll be seeing me use them very soon.

[Tormahto]

The Mexican style frying cheeses, here, are middle of the road for price. American, cheddar, mozzarella, are less so. I'm trying to think of the cheese I was looking for about a month ago. At $21/lb, imported from Switzerland, I found a good substitute.

[worth1]

Decided to make charro beans with the mayocoba beans.
Got the last of the ingredients put in with the already cooked beans the fresh tomatoes.
For the life of me I couldn't find the things and finally looked under my lunch bag in the garage.
Other ingredients are.....
Cilantro stems chopped fine.
Freshly chopped onion.
Garlic powder.
Bacon chopped fine.
Chicken bullion powder Knorr brand.
Freshly ground cumin.
One chopped habanero.
Several hydrated in the bean juice Morita peppers chopped.
This is all on the stove on a very low simmer just below the above the low setting getting the final cook.
No extra salt was added due to the use of the chicken bullion.
There are as many ways to make charro beans as there are people making them.
This is but one.

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[worth1]

So as to not waste anything I took the chile manzano tops and cut the hard core and stem off and finely chopped them to add to the mix.
Made about two heaping tablespoons of extra flavor.
Its the little things that count.

[worth1]

These are called rocoto relleno in Peru.
Just my take on it.

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