The Curmudgeonly Professor

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Recipe Recommendations for March 26 2012: Sweet 'n Sour Beans and Sloppy Joes

In keeping with the Curmudgeonly Professor's newly found interest in finding and trying out recipes, here are two I am passing along today.  The first is a recipe for sweet 'n sour beans.  I am not kidding you, these beans are the best I have ever eaten.  Those to whom I fed these beans also agreed.  Just get about a half dozen different kinds of beans, onions, bacon, brown sugar, etc., and there you have sweet 'n sour beans.  The recipe is at allrecipes.com.  I need to learn how to post live links directly in my blog posts, but in lieu thereof, go to allrecipes.com link posted at the right under food and cooking blogs, then search for sweet 'n sour beans.  You will never be sorry.

Then, since we had my son and daughter in law over the weekend, I needed something to have with the beans, so to speak.  So I decided on sloppy joes.  My wife said, just dump in a can of Manwhich and have it over with.  I said no, I'm going to trust Mel's Kitchen Cafe (live link posted at right under food and cooking blogs) and went to her "best sloppy joes" recipe since I have found before that when she says "best", she means best and is not fooling around.  Once again, rave reviews on the sloppy joes. Mel's Kitchen Cafe is one of my favorite blogs and I am on her daily recipe email.  Her recipes are detailed, full of photos, and lots of fun.  I emailed her once and told her as far as I knew, I was her only male commenter and she fired back a cheerful comment.  I don't know who Mel, who I assume is Melanie, is, but I love her anyway.

So dig out some beans and some hamburger and fix these two recipes and then write and tell me what you think.

Pumpkins and Cucumbers at South Jordan UT Farmers' Market September 24 2011

 

 

 
 

If you've been too lazy to go to your famers' markets, it's time to go!  Don't miss out on apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, melons, pumpkins, numerous kinds of squash, zucchini, wonderful jams, jellies, and salsas; artisan bread unmatched at any store; tomatoes, corn picked the same morning, and many other fruits and vegetables. Go! Winter is nearly here and it will be back to canned and frozen and tough expensive hothouse tomatoes.  The wonderful harvest season is all too short.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Foolproof Recipe for Hamburger Veggie Soup

Since my wife's illness, I have had to do the cooking and shopping, not to mention all the other household chores.  My cooking experience prior to this time was when I was in college.  Our staples at that time were Campbell's soups, pork and beans, eggs and bacon, and anything else that was cheap.  However, necessity has caused a new interest in cooking.  Here is my recipe for hamburger-veggie soup.

Obviously, the two main ingredients for hamburger veggie soup are hamburger and veggies.  Beyond that, anything in the fridge or freezer that hasn't turned is fair game to throw in.  I browned the hamburger, threw in some garlic and a couple of big onions.  In the soup pot, I dumped several cups of chicken broth and a bunch of water.  Then I looked in the pantry and found tomato sauce and tomato paste so I tossed that in.  Plus a can of diced tomatoes.  Plus a random amount of small seashell macaroni which was the only kind in the pantry.  I scoured the freezer and found a bunch of partial bags of frozen peas, corn, and mixed veggies, so I cleaned out the freezer from nine months ago and chucked all that stuff in.  Then I needed some seasoning.  I started with 2 tsp. cumin, adding Johnny's Seasoning Salt, plain salt, soy sauce, and half a packet of taco seasoning as an inspired addition.  I kept adding a few things here and there.  Then I let the pot simmer for a couple of hours.  Voila!  Hamburger veggie soup for dinner.  And it wasn't half bad.  Plus the kindly neighbor lady brought green salad, bread, and two pieces of berry pie.  So that is how you make hamburger veggie soup.  Even a dumb economist like me can make it and it's impossible to ruin it, so just keep making stuff up and raiding the fridge and freezer.  Be creative.  In no time you will be an expert cook like me.  Now I've got enough hamburger veggie soup to last a couple of weeks.  At least it's infinitely better than canned soup.  I love to read recipe books, especially when I can't sleep at night, but most of the recipes are too exotic calling for stuff I've never heard of.  I'll have to plan my next cooking adventure.  Any ideas?

 

A Book to Read: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan has written a 200 page book about the virtues of food and the perils of industrialized food that could save your life, help you avoid the perils of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and help you improve your life and the lives of your family.  Best known up to publishing this book for his illuminating book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan in this book reduces what is known about nutritionism, food science (or lack thereof), and the effects of what we eat on our lives down to an understandable no-nonsense essay on how we have been duped and the price we have paid for following the clarion call of industrial food.

The first sentence of the book says it all: "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  The problem is, many of us need a brief essay and perhaps even a reprimand about what "food" actually is.  Here are a few gems from his book:

• p. 2  ". . . avoid products that make health claims.  Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."
• p. 4: Pollan identifies two culprits as, first, "a thirty-two-billion-dollar food marketing machine that thrives on change for its own sake," and, two, "the constantly shifting ground of nutrition science that, depending on your point of view, is steadily advancing the frontiers of our knowledge about diet and health or just changing its mind a lot because it is a flawed science that knows much less than it cares to admit."
• p. 7: "most of the nutritional advice we've received over the last half century (and in particular the advice to replace the fats in our diets with carbohydrates) has actually made us less healthy and considerably fatter."
• Pollan argues that food has gradually and continually disappeared from grocery shelves and that "nutrients began to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat." (p. 22).
• Challenges to the American diet are highly politically charged, with mammoth agribusiness firms and government agencies with vested interests challenging every word and idea in attempts to institute sound dietary guidelines.
• Looking at food one nutrient at a time, rather than whole foods and the interaction of whole foods, has led to flawed science and flawed nutritional guidelines.
• The shift from whole foods to "refined" foods marks one of the most critical shifts in our diets and health.
• Industrial food and poor food choices have led to new health industries for obesity and diabetes, among other illnesses attributable to eating and diet.
• Many of us gave up oleomargarine after we realized we had been duped into shifting from one kind of fat to another more dangerous kind (trans-fat), but how many of us have stopped drinking skim milk because we haven't known the additives to skim milk are even more dangerous than cholesterol in whole milk? (p. 153)

Much of what Pollan writes about comes from other food experts such as Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed on this blog some time ago), Marion Nestle's authoritative works, and Pollan's earlier and more length treatise (The Omnivore's Dilemma).  Surely this book is worth the paltry five or six bucks that might give you a new lease on life.  I'm going to go through my collection of books on diet and food I've collected over the past two or three decades and throw most of them away.  How gullible we have been!  But then, aren't we supposed to believe "science"?  Pollan suggests we go back a couple of generations and eat the food our forebears ate. If we had followed great grandma's eating patterns, we might all be better off.

Pears and Peaches

Utah's fruit growers are nearing the end of the harvest.  But saying pears and peaches sounds funny.  Don't we usually say peaches and pears?

 

The Low Sodium Battles and Pitiful Response by the Food Industries

The medical profession and food scientists have long known and warned about the dangers of consuming excess sodium.  High salt levels sell because high salt content makes food taste good.  Medical patients who are warned to watch salt intake are left with frustratingly few real options other than making your own food from fresh ingredients and omitting or limiting salt content.  Salt increases water retention and affects blood pressure, as those of us on restricted salt diets have long known.  Soup manufacturers have introduced a few varieties of lower salt soups, typically with about 480 milligrams of sodium compared with 980 or above 1000 milligrams.  Processed foods and frozen dinners are notoriously high in sodium, and searching for a few varieties of lower-sodium frozen entrees takes considerable time sorting through the frozen food section.  We typically don't even want to ask how much sodium is in fast food and restaurant meals.

Even when a few varieties of processed soups and foods are made available, typically these items may cost more than regular varieties, or may not be reduced in price for grocery store sales.  The reason is explained by what economists call the price elasticity of demand:  If you raise the price of an item 1%, sales will typically not drop if people have to have the item for health or other reasons.  Thus, people will often buy the low-salt, higher-priced items anyway, no matter that low salt soup may be on sale for a fraction of the price of the high salt soup.

High salt content in grocery and restaurant food is a health hazard and a disgrace to the food industry.  Given the incidence of health issues associated with excess sodium, prevention or minimizing these issues through wider availability of lower sodium food and restaurant entrees is one of the cheapest ways to increase our health standards available.  Just kill the salt shaker and use other ingenious seasoning methods.  The varieties of low-sodium canned goods and frozen entrees must be significantly increased, and sales of these items at higher prices than other higher-salt grocery items should be eliminated.  We have waited a long time and all we have seen are a few feeble attempts at the margin to provide a limited variety of lower sodium foods.  The time has come for action, as outlined in the article linked to USA Today below on this topic.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Makes Clam Chowder

The Curmudgeonly Professor is considering turning this blog into a cooking blog.  When our daughter was here visiting from Texas she introduced us to the blog My Kitchen Cafe and made the soup recipe for chicken corn chowder which I have to say is one of the best soups I have ever eaten.  So today I ventured forth and made the clam chowder from the recipe on My Kitchen Cafe.   Not knowing how to cook, I expected the outcome to be a disaster but, lo and behold, the clam chowder turned out to be outstanding.  My wife can't stand clams so she won't touch it ever since we went searching for clams along the seashore when we were visiting my sister in Washington State years ago.  So I likely will be eating clam chowder for a few days.  If you haven't checked out the recipes on My Kitchen Cafe yet, you are missing a bet.  At least try the chicken corn chowder recipe.  T

Another Great Website: The Pioneer Woman: Plowing Through Life in the Country

Here's another stupendous website our daughter Carolyn discovered and passed on to her parents.  The Pioneer Woman is obviously a multitasker who can do anything, including passing along cheerful and uplifting comments on a multitude of topics.  Her site includes cooking, home and garden, homeschooling, tasty kitchen and, to top it all off, Confessions!  First blog I've seen with confessions.  This blog will brighten your day and is worth preserving on your favorites and bookmark lists.  Let me know if you try a recipe that really makes your day.  Love, the Curmudgeonly Professor. (website is http://thepioneerwoman.com/

If You Haven't Discovered My Kitchen Cafe, You Are Missing Something!

When our daughter Carolyn was here from Texas while her mother was recuperating from hip replacement surgery, she made a big batch of corn and chicken chowder, the recipe for which is shown in the following post.  Since then, my wife has made it several more times, and given soup bowls to several neighbors instead of plates of sugared goodies.  We received nothing but raves and requests for the recipe.

Carolyn also recommends that we make the shrimp enchiladas, the recipe for which is on the website.  She almost drools when she tells us how good it is.  I have posted the live link to MyKitchenCafe.Blogspot.com at the right under favorite blogs.  Lots of really excellent stuff on My Kitchen Cafe!  Try some recipes and fire back your experience with them.  The Curmudgeonly Professor is switching from flowers to food.  For the moment, anyway.

An Appeal to My Readers: We Need More Candidates for the Egregious, Hated Food Dialogue

Thus far, my appeal to readers to nominate their most egregious childhood food, or even later horrendous concoctions, has produced only four entries:

• "cold, slimy, left-over asparagus"
• split pea soup (I won't eat it now unless I HAVE to); also salty split pea soup 
• onions 
• tripe (It gives me the shivers just thinking about it now, and I only ate two bites of it)         

I have another candidate: carrot and raisin salad.  As I remember, it seemed that this egregious and hated concoction was served in the school lunchroom at least every day. I detested it, the taste, the smell, the looks.  Enough to make one barf.  It took me fifty years before I tried it again, and then it tasted pretty good, and I like it now.  But carrot and raisin salad was a childhood nightmare.

 Surely the collective memories and ingenuity of my blog viewers can come up with a better and more extensive list than this!  Send in your nominations!

 

Good Stuff to Read Today: How Douglas Conant Cleaned up Campbell Soup

Bruce Horovitz has written an informative and entertaining article about how Douglas Conant resurrected the ailing Campbell Soup company in today's USA Today.  You can read the article here.  There are likely few people in the country who haven't heard of Campbell Soup.  We didn't have any money to buy Campbell Soup when I grew up in the Great Depression but I survived in part while batching it through college on many cans of cream of mushroom, chicken noodle, and a few other varieties.  I envied my richer fellow students who dined luxuriously at the college cafeteria and the frat houses.  Lately, after becoming more sodium conscious, I shunned Campbell Soup until they began reducing sodium significantly, but probably still not enough.  Besides, I had unhappy memories of avoiding starvation in college on opening those little red cans of soup and downing them with peanut butter and jelly.

Horovitz writes that each home in America probably has a half dozen cans of Campbell's in their pantries.  Quick-fix recipes for decades were whipped into shape by cans of cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, and others.  The author notes that not much happened at Campbell's since its founding in 1869 until the last decade.  Conant's self-described mission was to take a "bad" company "and lift its performance to 'extraordinary' by the end of one decade--that's by 2011."  By replacing brands,  introducing microwaveable soups, reducing salt in many brands, eliminating MSG, and generally providing a healthier focus on Campbell's products, Conant appears well on his way to success.  Campbell's has outperformed the market during the current downturn.

Conant's career at Campbell's provides an outstanding object lesson in how you remake a moribund company with stale brands and outdated ingredients into a resurrected company that not only survives, but also provides consumers with enticing new and healthier products.  The graveyard of major corporations that stay in ruts for decades too long and continue to tell themselves that what they did for decades is good enough for now takes up a big chunk of the Stupid and Brain-dead Companies' Cemetery.  You'll like the Campbell Soup story.  Anyone like Conant whose summer reading includes the complete works of Zane Gray and whose daughter includes the statement "sometimes you annoy me" on her list of 50 "favorite things" about her dad, definitely should be a success.

We Go to In-N-Out

Yesterday we successfully navigated ourselves inside the new St. George In-N-Out burger establishment, which actually is in Washington, St. George's sister city.  Only a select handful of people know where St. George actually leaves off and Washington begins.  True to expectations, In-N-Out had four menu items: double-double, I don't remember the price; cheeseburger $1.95; hamburger $1.65; fries $1.19.  Plus soft drinks and milk shakes.  The hamburgers and cheeseburgers are works of art and actually look better than the huge fat burgers other chains show in their TV ads, only to deliver a flat measly pancake when you actually order one at their stores.  One worker was thunking big peeled Russet potatoes as fast as she could through a french fry slicing machine. You are referred to as "guests" and not customers:  "Guest 199, you're order is ready." The restaurant was crowded and the lines never stopped.  Someone is busy taking orders in the drive-up line so you are not starting from scratch when you get up to the window.  The food preparation line is an efficient assembly line with people moving very, very quickly.  Feel free to come to St. George (Washington) if you feel the urge to indulge in an In-N-Out burger, or stop in Vegas, Hesperia CA, or any of the southern CA locations.  It's definitely worth the effort.

BYU Students Make 500 Mile Round Trip to Have Lunch at In-N-Out Burgers in St. George UT

According to Salt Lake's Deseret News columnist Lee Benson in his article in the Sunday DNews titled "Cult Following Nothing New for In-N-Out", one table at the In-N-Out Burgers was "filled with college students who thought it would be fun to pop in for a late lunch--from BYU."  BYU is only about 250 miles to the north.

Veterans of the I-15 corridor from Salt Lake City to southern California, as well as people from Las Vegas and various California locations, are all closely familiar with In-N-Out Burgers.  Our family always timed its trips to stop at the In-N-Out at Hesperia CA, close to Cajon Pass.  For the uninitiated, In-N-Out is a California-based establishment that has limited its expansion by direct corporate ownership and by the limits of distance to deliver fresh ingredients each day from their California base.  The menu is simple: burgers, fries, shakes and drinks.  The kids have their own lingo for ordering burgers: 4 x 4's, 2 x 2's, and so on, indicating how many beef patties are placed on a bun.  No nonsense.  No dollar economy menu.  No tacos.  No burritos.  No chicken or fish sandwiches.

When I was teaching at BYU, some of my California students said they had made a quick trip to Vegas, then the nearest In-N-Out from Provo, nearly 400 miles one-way. It was a nostalgic and emotional trip, they said, because they were so homesick for In-N-Out.  

I would be glad to visit the St. George In-N-Out if I could find a time when the drive-up line wasn't stretched out forever and the inside of the store didn't have twice as many people as could be seated.  Maybe the fad will die down soon.  Meanwhile, we will stick with Marv's Hamburgers, perhaps nearly as good, or heresy or not, maybe just as good, as In-N-Out.  But tradition and loyalty are an integral part of the In-N-Out mystique. Besides, you don't have to stand there pondering over the menu, and the only decisions you have to make are how many patties and what flavor of milk shake you want.  I love In-N-Out because it is a tribute to simplicity, quality, and skilled management, defying all of the menu-diversifying activities the giants must continue to make to stay competitive.  So stop in St. George, or Vegas, or Hesperia, or any southern California location, and see what we mean.  Try a 4 x 4.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Accompanies His Wife to the Grocery Store

Veteran readers of this blog may recall that a few months ago I was placed in limbo and told that I was not allowed to accompany my wife to the grocery store any more.  This unfair and unwarranted decision was made on the multiple grounds that my wife could never find me, that I griped and complained incessantly, that I bought too much stuff we didn't need, and that, in general, I was not a pleasure to be around, i.e., a pain in the you-know-what.

Today, however, I was given permission to accompany my wife to the grocery store once more.  I wondered why, and found out when I got to the grocery store.  She gave me a list and told me to get my own cart and said she would meet me at the front of the store when we were through.  I took my little list to the canned fruits and vegetables aisle.  Looking pathetically inadequate to find what was on the list, a nice clerk asked if she could help me.  She got my items, one by one, and I was miraculously finished in record time.  When we checked out, the checker was inspired when she saw our system and announced that she was going to give her husband a separate cart the next time they went to the grocery store.

When we got home, my wife said, menacingly, "Where are the green beans?"  "Oh my heck," I said (as we say here in Utah), "I forgot to get them."  I forgot to tell my nice clerk lady I needed four cans of green beans.  How can you have a green bean and french-fried onion casserole on Thanksgiving without green beans?  So now I have to make a special trip back there for green beans.  I don't know whether it was the clerk lady's fault for not asking to see my list, or my wife's fault for not double-checking my purchases before we left the store, but the omission was definitely not my fault.  I was merely sacrificing my time and talents just to go to the store.

Remember, about 80% of all french-fried onions are bought for Thanksgiving dinner, or so I think I read some time back.  The french-fried onions will disappear before the green beans will, I predict.  Also, I was able to get my $1 hot dog from Dorthy, the 91 year old hot-dog lady, and thus consume my yearly allotment of sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, fat grams, and other additives.  So the trip was not a total loss.