Just Bite Me Blog

Yes, that’s where we are. The oven decided to crap out two or so months ago. That, in turn, prompted me to start the “renovate the kitchen” plan, something for which I have been saving for several years. Two years ago I had the window refinished and rehung, and I had a transom installed where a transom used to live (some previous owner had walled off the space), which makes SO much difference in the summer. So the death of the oven seemed like the right impetus for doing the rest of the work, and I found a contractor, and picked out appliances and cabinets . . . and the state has been on lockdown since the week after I put down a deposit on said appliances.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely supportive of the steps the governor and mayor have taken, I’m glad it’s being extended at least through May, and I am extremely fortunate to be employed and able to work from home. I have food and the ability to exercise outside. I have a friend with a car who has also been sufficiently isolated that we are comfortable getting together.

That said, no oven means no roasted vegetables, no cookies or bread or cake. I’ve taken it as a challenge of sorts (because, really, what are my options . . .). I have some bread and rolls in the freezer, so I’m rationing that. The veggies I’m mostly sautéing, which has been working. And! I remembered that I have a waffle iron. The first round of waffles not only used some sourdough discard, it used up some finely diced apples that were getting a little soft. (I also added oats and oat bran to health them up a bit.) The next round, I think I’m going to grate some carrots–basically, carrot cake waffles–and/or add chocolate chips.

Yes, I still want a new kitchen, and I’m trying to figure out a way to make that happen while keeping everyone–workers, neighbors, me–far away from each other and safe. But waffles in quarantine will get me through to that point.

Back in 2006, I was working at bakery job that paid about $10/hour; I earned overtime nearly every week, but I had to work at least an extra 10 hours a week or so to see a comma in my take-home pay. I also did consulting work (proofreading and copyediting) to make ends meet with something closer to a little overlap.

Near the end of that year, as many other things were falling apart in my life, my not-quite-ex failed to pay the COBRA for the health insurance that covered both of us (I paid him for my share, I believe), and the policy was cancelled. I didn’t know this for several weeks, but the reality was that, unbeknownst to me, I was doing physical labor, in an environment where I could have gotten injured (and would thus have been unable to work at all), and I had no health insurance. It’s hard to describe the fear that engendered.

I found an insurance agency through a recommendation from a friend, and got catostrophic coverage right away. I then proceeded to try to purchase my own health insurance policy.

Well, you really don’t get to be in your late 40s without having something that counts as a “pre-existing condition,” especially for insurance companies that want to be able to deny you coverage if they can possibly argue that you failed to disclose something. I did eventually get coverage, at a fairly exorbitant rate, and the coverage did not actually cover anything that might result from the (not all that dire) pre-existing condition. That is, the coverage I was able to get did not actually cover health conditions that I was mostly likely to experience, AND I paid a pile of money, out of pocket, for this coverage, every single month. I suppose I could have rolled the dice and gone without any coverage–the catostrophic coverage typically had limits on how long you could get that coverage–but I could not bring myself to truly contemplate doing that. I don’t have kids, I didn’t have anyone else to support, so that was an easier decision than it might be with a different life.

Even though it’s ten years later–and the bakery owner now offers health insurance options to his employees, and I’m working office jobs that have employer-sponsored insurance (for which I pay $360 per month, pre-tax, so while it’s employer-sponsored, and it’s decent insurance, I’m certainly throwing in a pile of money too)–I still remember the fear of not having insurance.

On top of that, I currently work in an environment where many of the people my organization serves have become eligible for Medicaid, in part thanks to the Affordable Care Act and the Medicaid expansion that came along with it. I see what a difference this makes in people’s lives.

Thus, I would welcome the opportunity to ask the creators of this monstrosity of a tax cut for the rich masquerading as a health care bill (h/t Charles Pierce) how they can consider doing something this awful. It isn’t just bad, it’s mean. It’s nasty. It gives more money to rich people, while basically sending poor and middle class and old people off to die in a corner. You want to talk about “death panels”? This monstrosity is going to kill people. And all for the benefit of people who would regard my monthly premium from 2006 as pocket change–the premium for insurance that wouldn’t actually cover the things most likely to occur to me–that premium is their wine bill, or their taxi fare, or the rent they pay on the garage in D.C. for their extra car, or whatever the hell it is that rich people spend money on each month.

I’ll return to rhapsodies about food–the amazing pulled pork that I made this weekend; my attempts to make my own corned beef–eventually, but this was just too overwhelming to avoid.

I hate wasting food. The ideal result of this sentiment is that I hack together meals that use what’s in need of being used, even if it means we’ll never have that particular meal again. The less ideal result, though, is throwing things out, and I had to do a bunch of that today. I got it into my head to clean out the cupboards, and several things weren’t just way past the sell-by date (by which I mean years past the sell-by date), they smelled off. In particular, the two bags of baker’s dried milk–“Best by September 2014” – -had to go, along with some old lentils and two bags (one unopened) of a “toffee crunch” topping I had purchased from KAF three or four years ago. I didn’t like the toffee crunch when I got it, and I kept meaning to use it on something I intended to give away, but I never did, and it smelled (and tasted) pretty bad, and the texture had turned gummy. Out it went.

Oddly enough, the one thing I would have predicted would be off–the almond paste, with a “best by” date of 2010–was actually okay, although the color had darkened to a caramel color. I intend to make king cake this week anyway, so I put it in the fridge. I was surprised it was still good; the oil in nuts can make whatever’s made from it go rancid, but maybe this had enough sugar in it to preserve it. Whatever; at least it will get used.

It was also an opportunity to do an inventory: I have been working my way through a substantial pile of cocoa powder, but there’s still quite a bit left (despite dumping some on the counter and the floor as I combined two opened bags). And there’s an opportunity for an experiment. Both bags of diastatic malt powder and the bag of malted milk powder have turned into bricks, but they don’t smell or taste off, so I’m wondering if I can essentially melt them down and turn them into syrup–combine them with water and cook them slowly, until the brick melts into the water. I don’t have particularly high hopes for this experiment, but you never know.

So, to continue with the theme, I raided the freezer as well, and tonight’s dinner is going to be lamb meatballs or patties, the cauliflower I roasted two weeks ago and ended up freezing, some carrots, and probably some rice, all spiced with coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger, and roasted tomatoes. And maybe some spinach, as I purchased extra for the farm share this week.

Or doldrums, as the case may be.
Neither cooking nor baking has been occurring around these parts, at least not in any remarkable way. Oh, there was a brief outbreak of mini-calzone, and an episode of smashed potatoes with brie, topped with venison ring bologna, caramelized onions, and homemade sauerkraut, but otherwise, not much.
Actually, the mini-calzone ended up with food wastage, of all things. I made a batch of pizza dough, with the intent of making actual pizzas, then changed my mind to make some calzone; all well and good. (For the record, half of the calzone were stuffed with caramelized onions, spinach, brie, and the mincemeat stew of a few weeks ago, and half were stuffed with fresh mozzarella, some bison bolognese sauce, and the onions and spinach.) The dough that was left was supposed to be par-baked into pizza crusts that could be frozen and used at some other time, but . . . I just didn’t. I put the sheet pan in the fridge, with all kinds of good intentions, but we know with what the road to food wastage is paved (hint: the same material as the road to hell). I finally just tossed the dough.

So, really, nothing much to report. I’m expecting to do some cooking this weekend, though, so there might be updates.

At my workplace, we only have one microwave, and it only has one hamster on a wheel to power it (or so it seems), so heating one’s lunch can be a bit of an adventure. It’s also down two hallways and a flight of stairs from my cube, so my heated lunch usually passes several other people on its trip back to my space. The most frequent comment I get is, “That looks healthy!” This past week, for example, my lunch for two days running was some of the carrot soup mixed with a little milk; a wad of spinach from the farm share; some mushroom risotto that a coworker brought for me; and some cheese (because cheese goes with everything, IMHO)–all mixed up together, with the cheese kind of melty on top. The resulting mix was bright green and bright orange, and it did, in fact, look “healthy,” and it tasted pretty awesome. Another day I substituted frozen squash gnocchi with kale from a month or so ago for the risotto, and that was good, too. Today it was spinach, carrot soup, and some leftover carrots, roasted beets, and onions from Saturday’s dinner, with some gruyere. (It was supposed to have a homemade whole wheat soft pretzel, too, but I got hungry and ate that before lunchtime.)

It wasn’t what we’re taught to think of as a meal, though–it was cobbled together from what I had around, either in the fridge or the freezer, and it featured bits and pieces of this and that. These lunch piles often make me wonder how much of people’s eating habits are determined by expectations. If, in your head, lunch = a sandwich, or lunch = a portion of last night’s dinner, or a bowl of soup, or a sub sandwich, or a frozen entree of some kind, or tacos, or whatever else, then my piles of veggies and leftovers and cheese aren’t going to look like lunch to you–though it may well look “healthy”–and it won’t satisfy your lunch desires.

The reverse is true, too. Lunch, for me, is the aforementioned pile, so a bag of fast food holds no appeal. And I’ve been puzzling over that for awhile. It’s not that I’m a morally or culinarily superior being, and, really, the very last thing I want to do is give the impression that I think I am. This article, though, helped crystalize some of what I’ve been thinking, and, as a result, I blame my mother. In a good way.

The article is fascinating, but hardly surprising: the people who sell packaged foods find ways to encourage people to eat more of it, by engineering the sugar, salt, and fat content, as well as the appearance and “experience” of eating it. Or, in the case of the pre-packaged lunch things, the experience of both the person–kid–eating it and the person buying it, likely the mother. When I was a kid (in the 1960s and 1970s), a lot of this stuff didn’t exist yet, but my mother wouldn’t have purchased it if it did. She thought that stuff was not terribly good for us–high in salt, sugar, nitrates, etc., and low in nutritional value. (She even looked for packaged bread that had fewer additives.) In addition, my mother can stretch a dollar well past what you thought was its breaking point: we would buy fruit and vegetables in bulk during the summer and then can and freeze them, or my mother would buy meat when it was on sale and then freeze it. We had a separate standing freezer, and my mother made very good use of it.

We also didn’t have a lot of junk food. We might have cookies, pretzels, or potato chips around, but not much of it, and we almost never had soda around. When we did, it was A-Treat brand, not from the big soda manufacturers. We drank milk at dinner, or iced tea in the summer, brewed in a beige and dark brown pottery pitcher. The point is, I didn’t develop the taste for the salt/sugar/fat concoctions that would make me regard them fondly. My food memories are of home-cooked meals. I suppose that means it’s not surprising that packaged foods don’t have much appeal for me, or that a pile of vegetables and leftovers looks more like lunch to me than does a pile of french fries and a fast-food sandwich.

I’ve also tried to unpack the social, cultural, political, and economic parts (and privileges) as best I can, and I can see at least a few of the pieces that go into it. I’m not going to put them all in this post, but I’ll pick them apart in some upcoming posts.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a vision of Saturday night’s dinner, nearly all of which was grown locally, in Wisconsin: garlic chicken; brown rice; and a vegetable medley of roasted beets, onions, and carrots. Basically, everything except the rice, olive oil, salt, and butter came from the CSA farm, and the butter might have been from Wisconsin as well. (The chicken was a separate purchase rather than part of the share, but it was from the farm.) The chicken was based in part on this recipe, but (a) I took the skin off of some of the meat but not all of it, (b) I got impatient and didn’t remember the recipe, so I cooked the chicken in some of the liquid, and (c) I didn’t sear the meat enough for my tastes. When I make it again–and oh, I will–I will remove all of the skin, sear the meat a bit more, and be a little more patient, but the softened garlic was mush-able and spreadable, and was just awesome. And? It actually tasted like chicken. Really good, really garlicky chicken.