Reading my local paper here in the Valley of the Retirees, I'm struck by undeniable proof that I'm not in Seattle any more (as if the non-stop sunshine wasn't enough). Seattle has great recipes to read. Everyone is into fresh and healthy, and the Asian influence makes for fabulous flavors (I assume. Not that I've ever actually made any of the recipes. My foodie friends do, though, and I do my job--eating and appreciating.) My current newspaper presents endless small variations of 1950s whitebread comfort food that put me back to sleep at my breakfast table. A few of the Food & Drink section's headlines for your awe and amazement:
- "Sour cream enhances meatloaf "
- "Skillet Chicken Fried rice" (don't even try to imagine it, my foodie Asian friends.)
- "Delicate dumplings not just for stews"
- "Stuff and grill mushrooms for a savory treat"
- "Creamy banana pudding a southern delight"
- "Drink of the week--Orange Creamsicle "(orange juice! ice cream! And…well, that's all.)
Under those titillating articles are:
- An ad for the grand opening of the Chicken Pie Factory
- Five ads for Italian restaurants
- An article written in breathless tones about Denny's new value menu
- A review of KFC's new Double Down abomination (bacon, cheese, and special sauce between two breaded and fried chicken breasts. They claim it has only 540 calories. I think someone forgot their glasses when they added up the calorie count.)
- An ad for the restaurant--which shall remain nameless--that produced the apparently day-old cheeseburger, above.
Oh, there are plenty of restaurants that serve tiny $30 gourmet entrees that look like stacks of checkers with bits of fancy sliced vegetables balancing on their crowns. If that wasn't more than half my food budget for the week, I might even try them once in a while. But alas, reality encroaches.
I'm trying to eat healthy and lose weight, so I'm actually making most of my own food in my own kitchen. It's kind of boring, but it's working. Because of my low boredom threshold, I have to make things that require few ingredients and not much cooking. To that end, I just bought a barbeque. Now, as soon as I get a propane tank, I'll just slap hunks of things on a grill like some of my friends do. (OK, and the occasional foil bag of veggies.) (Arrrr, arrrr, arrrr!)
I might still daydream about the recipes and photographs of beautifully presented food in magazines, though. A girl's gotta have aspirations!
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3 comments:
I like the recipies from America's Test Kitchen. They usually work and bring in rave reviews. There is a book that focuses on grilling. Time consuming (but you're retired, so what does it matter? ;-) ), but good results. Then again, I tend to be the kind of person who follows the directions...
-CP from Seattle
I, too, like to read recipes I will never use. However, I have a few tried and true recipes. Jambalaya that I researched and tested in my own kitchen, but it is a once in awhile thing because it feeds about 8 people. (There's only 3 of us in the house.) The few recipes that I managed to perfect reside in a 3-ring binder, repleat with plastic page protectors.
Grilling is great. And it's bbq season. Soon it will be too hot.
LS
Ah, CS, your confidence in me is touching. However, the words "time consuming" make my eyes glaze over. No recipe will be read, let alone cooked, that takes more than 15 minutes and/or has more than 6 ingredients. My idea of grilling is: a) sprinkle some kind of seasoning on flesh of formerly living creature. b)slap on grill.
LS, I too have a binder (no plastic page protectors.) Since I seem to have an aversion to pulling it off the shelf, it has proven to be less helpful than the old standard red-checkered cookbook (which at least tells me how long to grill a slab of flesh...)
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