good soup
The elk stew I made yesterday may be the best pot of soup I've ever made. I think I once made a potato corn chowder with bacon that was pretty good--really the only competition to the stew I made last night.
As always, I never work from a recipe, so it's hard to say what I did right. A can of pinto beans, a can of green beans, a can of corn, a can of diced tomatoes. Two turnips, a potato, a tablespoon of minced garlic, two carrots. A beer. I prepared the elk on Tuesday night, by searing it in some olive oil with a good dose of salt and pepper. Water to cover. Then some chicken bouillon, basil, rosemary, dill, more salt, more pepper. Cook it til the vegetables are tender.
Simple, healthy, and delicious. My kind of dinner.
This is in opposition to my roommate Jill's kind of dinner. She also goes for simple, healthy, and delicious: Lean Cuisine. She probably thinks I'm crazy for taking so much time to prepare dinner; she can unbox it, heat it, and eat it in the time it takes me to peel the veggies. But there's just something about a meal from a box that seems phony to me. I associate all frozen dinners with TV trays and the phrase "Hungry Man."
When I think about the relative wastefulness of the two approaches, I'm not sure which is ultimately more earth friendly. Seems like she throws away a whole lot of packaging. But in the time leading up to the meal, the process for her dinner was remarkable efficient, I'll bet. Where I might throw away broccoli stalks for my own pasta, those Stouffer's people don't. And at the end of the day, they've made meals for 6,000 and I've made a meal for, well, me. It's an interesting topic to me.
I was also thinking: we love technology that saves us from having to do work. Except the pepper grinder: we're so excited to be able to do this ourselves. Thank you, Mr. Technology Man, for making it possible for me to grind my own peppercorns! I'm fascinated by the way that globalization and distributed industry makes it possible to relocate different elements of work: we can be more choosy, especially in our hobbies, about which parts of the work we want to do ourselves and which we want to have pre-accomplished for us.
Okay, it's getting a bit abstract. Must be time to stop for now.
As always, I never work from a recipe, so it's hard to say what I did right. A can of pinto beans, a can of green beans, a can of corn, a can of diced tomatoes. Two turnips, a potato, a tablespoon of minced garlic, two carrots. A beer. I prepared the elk on Tuesday night, by searing it in some olive oil with a good dose of salt and pepper. Water to cover. Then some chicken bouillon, basil, rosemary, dill, more salt, more pepper. Cook it til the vegetables are tender.
Simple, healthy, and delicious. My kind of dinner.
This is in opposition to my roommate Jill's kind of dinner. She also goes for simple, healthy, and delicious: Lean Cuisine. She probably thinks I'm crazy for taking so much time to prepare dinner; she can unbox it, heat it, and eat it in the time it takes me to peel the veggies. But there's just something about a meal from a box that seems phony to me. I associate all frozen dinners with TV trays and the phrase "Hungry Man."
When I think about the relative wastefulness of the two approaches, I'm not sure which is ultimately more earth friendly. Seems like she throws away a whole lot of packaging. But in the time leading up to the meal, the process for her dinner was remarkable efficient, I'll bet. Where I might throw away broccoli stalks for my own pasta, those Stouffer's people don't. And at the end of the day, they've made meals for 6,000 and I've made a meal for, well, me. It's an interesting topic to me.
I was also thinking: we love technology that saves us from having to do work. Except the pepper grinder: we're so excited to be able to do this ourselves. Thank you, Mr. Technology Man, for making it possible for me to grind my own peppercorns! I'm fascinated by the way that globalization and distributed industry makes it possible to relocate different elements of work: we can be more choosy, especially in our hobbies, about which parts of the work we want to do ourselves and which we want to have pre-accomplished for us.
Okay, it's getting a bit abstract. Must be time to stop for now.
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