Experimenting with meals

[UncleJoseph]

Lately I've been very dissatisfied with restaurant fare, and my own repertoire of meals at home. One of my neighbors is quite a "foodie," and is always searching for the best pizza in town or the best Italian, etc. He makes a lot of his own foods, home beer, pizza, jerky, etc. It sort of prompted me to refuse to be satisfied with meals in a box and/or eating the same bland pre-packaged foods I've eaten for years.

Breakfast has always been my Tour-de-Force, so I delved into Eggs Benedict, Uncle Joe style. I have tried pre-packaged Hollandaise and have made it from scratch. The from-scratch stuff is a little tricky, but the ingredients are simple and it takes the same amount of time as the pre-packaged stuff.

My recipe for Eggs Benedict: Poached Eggs on English Muffin topped with fresh ground pepper, homemade Hollandaise, center-cut bacon (as opposed to traditional Canadian bacon), and slices of fresh avocado and tomato, topped with fresh chives and parsley. This has been my go-to breakfast recipe for guests and whenever we want a good meal. Always gets a lot of compliments.

I also tried a new recipe for a breakfast sandwich: Poached egg on toasted bagel with taco-blend shredded cheese, with fresh ground pepper and sweet BBQ sauce. This breakfast sandwich is the bomb.

I also make picked eggs (can you guess I like eggs?) and have developed a great base recipe for those. I am going to work on perfecting a spicy recipe next.

I received an electric smoker kit as a gift for last Christmas from my in-laws. Tried smoked ribs on Sunday. Turned out perfect using a blend of cherry wood and hickory, with a simply dry rub. 6.5 hours later we had perfect spare ribs, and didn't even need sauce. More experiments to come.

Lastly, I made a classic Vichyssoise using a base recipe from Julia Childs. I bought a copy of her well-known cookbook and used her classic Potato Leek soup recipe for my Vichyssoise. It was so good I almost ate until I puked. More experiments from her cookbook are also to come, since I love French cuisine anyway.

[sinsual]

Since you have the smoker now, try smoking up some pork chops and using that in place of the bacon in your Benedict. Different flavors of smoke will have a huge effect on the outcome.

You can also experiment with the Hollandais by blending in different fresh herbs. A savory blend of Sage/Thyme/Marjoram will give it that rustic flavor. Or if you can find it, Thai Basil imparts a black licorice flavor that works surprisingly well.

[3278]

Mostly because my daughter isn't into mixtures of flavors, we've started - okay, like, ten years ago, but we're really getting good at it now! - eating ingredients, rather than meals. It's a strange way of cooking, but very simple, very easy, very nutritious, and surprisingly delicious [although it takes some getting used to].

Say, for example, vegetables: when I was growing up, we would stir-fry vegetables in oil and seasonings, or steam them with butter, spices, and citrus juices, or grill them after marinating in seasonings and oil. We don't do any of that: we buy carrots, and just eat them. We buy broccoli, cut it into pieces, and eat it. We buy celery, chop it up, and eat it. No cooking, no spices, no nothing. And at first I was like, holy shit, this is boring and gross, but over time, celery - fucking celery! has become one of my favorite foods, for its flavor. I mean, what?

Meats are almost all prepared in a single fashion: thin layer of olive oil in a skillet, cut meat into bite-ish-sized pieces, and heat until bacteria are mostly dead. That's it. No pepper, no salt, no steak butter, no nothing [although I am sometimes able to get away with a little Montreal Steak Seasoning, because it's so good even she loves it]. And suddenly, I'm confronted with how much I like the taste of beef, or of chicken, as opposed to enjoying the taste of butter, garlic, and rosemary [the chicken of my youth].

Now, it's certainly important to buy very good ingredients, and it's definitely true that after a few years of just eating raw carrots, I get pretty sick of carrots, but it's really been an amazing experience, and it's saved us tons of money and time - precious commodities for a busy high-schooler and her single dad with two jobs and a part-time college schedule. It's also worth noting that we've had to work hard to manage to achieve a really balanced diet, since we're just not eating, say, salt or butter. And we have to make sure we rotate foods, so we don't get tired of the same flavors.

But when it comes time for me to start my next batch of children - really, any day now - I'm definitely going to start this way, since kids often don't like flavor mixture anyway [having much more sensitive palates than adults], and since I don't want to have a pack of children who've been fed super-flavored food - like modern ketchup - until they can't enjoy plain flavors - like raw tomatoes.

[UncleJoseph]

Since I've gained so much weight lately, I'm going to focus on losing it. I am the heaviest and most out of shape I've ever been...not good for many reasons. I also have more health issues than I've ever had, the bulk of which I am convinced comes from my lack of nutrition, sleep and poor health habits.

That said, your "ingredients" eating is very similar to what I want to switch to. Although, I'll probably follow a more atkins- or paleo-based diet, it will essentially be the same. Mostly no processed foods and few seasonings/condiments/additives. I did very well on atkins before, but I'm not certain I want to go that exact route. Paleo seems to be the most healthy, and is almost identical to your way of eating.