Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
Nothing is more fun that to play around with the types of bread used for lunchtime sandwiches. The variety of bread used adds a lot of interest to the meal without adding to the waistline!
One of my favorite breads is the humble bagel! I love bagels covered with seeds and containing some surprises! My favorite addition is a cinnamon blend and blueberries!
How was your lunch?
Roger
Karla was a bit distressed when it looked as if the commercial product “Mother’s animal cookies” were about to be discontinued! Fortunately, ‘Mother’s’ decided to keep the brand alive.
Karla wasn’t certain, so we came up with our own recipe… and frankly, it is really yummy! 🙂
cookie:
3 1/2 cups of bread flour
1 1/2 cups Baker’s sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup water
a splash or two of rye whiskey
frosting:
powdered sugar, vanilla and butter ( and a little Amarula never hurts)
350 degrees for 12-14 minutes or until slightly brown.
YUM!
Roger Freberg
‘Lose weight or die more quickly and horribly’ would be a great slogan for a dieting commercial. For example, I love those shock commercials about smoking that show some older gent wheezing and , sympathetically, we listen to him warn us not to let this happen to us. Stop smoking, I get it. But if I were to take an educated guess, being overweight causes more physical harm and early death than almost anything we are doing to ourselves and it will only get worse.
I say get worse, because, it appears that the corpulent are moving into more sedentary years. I don’t think we have to worry about boomers taxing the social security program, a lot less of us may be around to collect anything. Now, the CDC had a quite beautiful color presentation of the trend in obesity rates in this country… but hard to understand… so I changed the colors and gray scaled it. Now, you can better see what’s going on. Arteries are choking in the heartland of America.
First, I know that the diversity of our commercial food offerings is part of what drives people to eat more and I wouldn’t give that up. I know that ‘super tasters’ like me have an additional challenge, but one doesn’t have to feast every day, drink everyday and give up walking.
By the way, strenuous exercise stimulates the appetite and initiates a chain of events leading to failure, dieting and walking is the key. When I was a young boy I had a favorite customer on my paper route, he was 103. He impressed me with his stories and finally I asked him — in my youthfully honest way — why he lasted so long? He told me that it was because he walked everyday to his coffee shop and such. Interestingly enough he did drive on occasion, but he impressed on me that walking was what kept his motor running. He noticed that the first things his friends stopped doing was to walk places, then came the chair , the bed and then death. He said that at a certain age, once you stop walking the ability to start walking again becomes nearly impossible. He also enjoyed eating fabulously on Sunday, drank his ‘Old Fashions’ and brandies, but he was lean the rest of the week.
Just watch what you eat, walk every day ( pick a fun destination , say a coffee shop) and allow yourself to enjoy 1 fabulous meal a week and you’ll lose weight… which makes most people healthier… if not happier.
Roger
PS. I am working on my one extravagant meal of the week… for Saturday!
I had hoped to have at least one apple pie in the oven by now, but our tree is a bit of a trickster. It looked like it was about to produce more than I could imagine and quickly, then suddenly, it slowed down. As we say in Marketing, this is the part of the ‘vertical integration process’ of our organization that fails to make its deadlines! I find trees so unpredictable.
My basic Apple Pie and Apple Sauce Recipe
As for recipes, I enjoy our more ‘natural style’ but this year I think I am going to produce pies with a thicker and more abundant syrup but maintaining the relative seasoning and sauteing.
yum! Apple Pie season for me is almost here!
Roger Freberg
When you look around the world, the chefs who have earned real appreciation are those who understand and can prepare meat. Even in India, the art of preparing sauces and sweetmeats reached a high science and require years of training before they were allowed to serve anyone.
As I have discussed in previous blogs, Pastrami is smoked and re-seasoned corned beef . How it is ‘corned’ and finally prepared is almost a state secret. (The British Army relied heavily on Irish Corned Beef whose preparation is a highly guarded secret to those who claim real knowledge). However, there is much to be said for Pastrami!
So, maybe the secret of a great Pastrami is like an old Tijaran recipe “marinating the pollo for 6 weeks” is crucial (as quoted in the original “In Laws” movie). However, I think it has much to do with the right brine solution and seasoning ( heavy on beer), the right preservative ( we want the meat with its characteristic ‘pink’ color after all) and finally the right final spices (loads of Pimenton) and the right set of woods for the smoking ( Hickory and Mesquite for me).
Here are a few hints from an earlier blog
So while Laura is away with two of our beautiful daughters at a conference in Greece, I have left Jenny Craig (our diet food) tied up in the back… and Karla and I are having some culinary fun! ( Karla also wants to learn how to make those simple frosted animal cookies covered with little sugar balls).
Roger Freberg