Corn flakes

Americans think they invented everything, arrowheads, teepees, totem poles, but this time they actually did invent something, corn flakes. 

Two American brothers Will and John Kellogg discovered corn flakes by smashing together ears of corn and sugar cane with great force then sweeping up the pieces and toasting them. So it is a three step process. 

Now they smash corn and sugar beet and get the same thing. 

They sell their product for $4. 00 a box for they are Americans and use that insular currency. This is a noncompetitive price for something so simple as smashing together two commodity crops so competition arose to undercut that sharply at $1.00 a box and still be profitable.

I almost forgot to mention, the value people prefer the cost to stay at $1.00 but commodity prices fluctuate so the size of the box fluctuates too. Pursuing that policy eventually will lead to the boxes being the size of an individual portion. 

The people together cannot decide which language to use so they carry on in any language at all switching back and forth between them, you get used to the sudden jolts and eventually it comes naturally. Very often you will see the same thing in multiple languages on the same document, like the Rosetta stone. 

Biscuits and gravy

Biscuits.

The scone kind of biscuit, not the cookie kind of biscuit. 

Let's see if I can remember how to do this.

We are dealing with extreme temperature for a home oven, as far as it will go. This is heat that goes beyond caramelization, beyond Maillard reaction, it is torrefaction leading to pyrolysis.

Psyche. It's that hot only at the start then they coast on zero from there. To shock the biscuits into a new reality. You can tone it all down if you want to, but wouldn't you prefer to be dramatic?

Reasonable cooks use lower temperature and keep it on to the end.

But wouldn't you rather be dramatic?    

Sodium bicarbonate + two acids; aluminum sulfate and monocalcium phosphate + cornstarch to keep it separated, but mostly cornstarch

Sodium bicarbonate + vinegar

Sodium chloride. 

Leftover chicken from the free range thing that I pretty much ruined a few days ago. It's like roasted chicken sludge in a cup and I feel like tossing it when I see it but there is nothing actually wrong with it except looks. 

I made a very light roux sauce with chicken broth, commercial and salty, and milk then added the leftover chicken bits in their own chicken broth (brined somewhat salty). I  tasted the new sauce laden with chicken bits and  deemed it worthy before covering the biscuit with it. 

All that sodium added up and it is just too much in one small spot to enjoy.

It is delicious. In the same way that a salt lick is delicious. To a snail.

I did not like this one single bit but I ate it anyway without complaining.

I am describing.  

  

Chocolate pudding with whiskey fail, apple, Asiago, pepperoni, ham

I flat do not want to eat anything. There. I said it.

Ordinarily you could go, fine then, don't, but I cannot do that either. There is no buffer. There can be no fast days. 

So I'm going to try to trick myself into drinking a cup of heavy cream. 

I do not know why I thought alcohol in pudding was a good idea.

Out of all that, I do not know why I narrowed it down to whiskey. 

I do not like whiskey. Never did. It tastes to me exactly like I imagine poison would taste, and yet I keep trying it to see if that changed and it never does. 

I do not know why I picked Jim Beam out of those bottles. I actually don't know anything about them. They might be Bourbon and I don't know what that is either. 

So I'm starting off poorly and for the life of me I do not know why this impulse hit me. 

I thought an ounce would do. The shot glass I have is tall and it didn't seem right. Zeroed the scale with the shot glass on it, poured, the numbers didn't change until 1.25 oz, did not return the surplus .25 oz, and that might be what killed it. 

The whiskey will kick butt on vanilla. They are similar things so the vanilla should go, but I couldn't, my inner pudding master insisted so I used a scant 1/4 teaspoon, which is ridiculous, I know, but sometimes I just am ridiculous.

I'm not feeling good about this. 

A cup of whole milk and a cup of heavy whipping cream, so a pint of proper mathematical half and half, the custard for an ice cream mixture. I've made this many times. I can do it sleeping. The margins are broad, variations innumerable, there is no reason for this not to be delicious. 

And yet I managed to make the most disgusting pudding I ever tasted. 

I don't temper eggs anymore. Tempering is for sissies. So is straining. 

This is a cheap house brand cocoa that was processed with alkaline. Dutched. Dutch processing of chocolate is one of the rare instances where processing actually does greatly improve the product. Masa harina is another example of that. Much better with the alkaline processing.  

A little of that cocoa goes a long way. My impulse was always to overdo it, but with maturity I've backed off and now even add it in increments to bring it up to desired chocolate density.

  

I love cold milk on hot pudding. Dad does that and I copy him. 

I was going to scarf all four to prove what a stud I am but I could barely finish one, gagging all the way. This is the grossest thing I made and then ate in the last ten years. 

I feel ill.

Dear God, if you help me not barf I promise I'll never do this again. 

I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise 

Scrounged. There is pepperoni and ham in there too and I think this just might have saved me. I have to go lie down.

But first I must look up the difference between lay and lie. 

must 

lie

down

Spaghetti in cream sauce

You could rightly critique this does not show the elements of a mise en place as well as an overhead look at it would do. I discarded those pictures because I didn't like them. I'm biased. They are not

arts!

The foreshortening doesn't bother me because the elements are actually irrelevant. It could be any *vegetable any *cheese any *herb any *allium any *pasta. An element can be subtracted and still be a decent meal while additions suggest themselves.

But I have to admit that rosemary was nice. I only used it because it was starting to turn black and I didn't want to waste another package. 

The containers are showing the elements for a sauce,  *cream, *mustard and *butter.

The pasta bent like Beckham in another pot, it is al dente inside its skinny insubstantial strands when it is added to the cooked vegetables in another pan. That means the pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it cools, and more so when the cheese is added to finish, a lot of liquid, so there must be extra.

Extra liquid not necessarily extra cream.

If you don't, it will turn into a clump. 

The water that cooked the pasta is still there. The water contains starch that sloughed from the pasta. It is cloudy. Even though the sauce is cream, the pasta water can still be used to thin the sauce as the whole pile of pasta slowly thickens on the plate at the table. This is unorthodox. Pasta water taken to the table as if it were gravy and cream sauce thinned with pasta water, but that's what I did.

You can too. Put it in a gravy boat and tell your guests it's a special magic flavorful thinning sauce that you invented just for this. Then say, please, please, hold the applause, that your demure self finds it intolerably embarrassing. Point to your own cheeks and say, See? Red. Even if they're not red. Distraction is all part of the magic.

If this were a restaurant it would have to be taken to the table as something close to cream soup to compensate for expected continuing absorption.  

Can you believe I fell asleep in the middle of writing this? Like this: zzzzzzzzz

I bore myself. 

Or maybe I was really tired. 

Potato and cannellini beans

*One small potato and 

*half a cup dry cannellini beans for two satisfying servings. 

*bacon, only one thin slice

*diced onion

*1/3 LB ground beef, that's minced beef, that's hamburger meat, they're all the same thing. Generally tough cuts of meat that are made manageable and faster to cook by grinding. Imagine that. Ground meat. What did you do with that chunk of meat we had around here? I ground it up. You madman. 

I told you about little gifts left at my door overnight when I am sleeping and you thought I was mostly joking and I was. Sometimes it happens during the day. 

And sometimes there is more to it than little fairy friends collecting amusements trinkets tchotchkes and kitsch. Sometimes there is something behind it that might be good to know. There is a packing list folded inside. Accident? No. The name is a man who recently perished.

Thank you, Resident. I do not know you but somebody does and they respect your interests. Now I have your light, and I think your birds come by too.