Hi, my name is Walt, and I’ve neglected my blog posting
{Hi Walt}
Since I don’t have to clean or prep for any food holiday, I figured I’d catch up with a blog post filled with as many leftovers as my fridge:
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Regarding my cooking:
The Spinach Dip is easy, but it’s never perfect enough for me. And what I think is the best Spinach Dip, others don’t like as much.
Sweet Potatoes are easy, but people like them too sweet. You shouldn’t have dessert as a side dish, but again, that’s what people expect, so I make it that way. I got impatient when cooking off the cobbler style nut topping and burnt the top. That’s the price you pay when you’re using one oven to cook/warm two turkeys and about ten side dishes.
Squash Cassarole: I rarely make it the same way twice. Water control of the cooked squash dictates how moist the stuff is; this year I used frozen sliced, and true enough, it turned out a bit better than working with fresh. That said, I’ll probably do this again for Christmas, and I will try it with fresh again. Side thought: Isn’t it amazing how modern technology can get you fresh summer type vegetables in cold weather?
Turkey Breast from heaven: I bought a generic WalMart $1.50/lb frozen turkey breast, and thawed it, put it in a gallon sized Ziploc bag and added a brine for about 15 hours. I couldn’t find a “turkey brine” at the store, so I fashioned my own. Chicken soup mix, salt, various herbs including sage (I found some spare “Pork Rub flavoring” and used that) and topped it off with some Apple Cider. Don’t over salt the brine. I used about 16 ounces of brine because my gallon Ziploc bag was mostly full of turkey breast. The ultimate ratio should be about a cup of salt to a full gallon of brine, but if you’re using chicken soup mix as a partial flavoring, reduce the salt accordingly. The turkey breast turned out perfect this year, so I did something right.
Dessert: I really loved all the desserts that were brought over. Too bad we were all too stuffed to actually try any. It’s almost as if you should have to have a separate day for eating the desserts. I like to try something I’ve never done on Thanksgiving and did so this time — yes, I screwed it up, but we won’t talk about that, mmkay? And no, you can’t cover up your kitchen mistakes with whipped cream. But you can try!
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Babies know right from wrong at an early age [Newsweek]
And they’re secretly judging. Notice the part where the babies quit judging when the researchers removed the oversized eyes from the toys.
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There’s a secret behind those “viral videos” and that secret is… they’re gaming YouTube.
I’d heard about this before, people charging to get a particular video seen. But here’s a guest post on TechCrunch by a guy who says his company doesn’t even charge if he can’t get your video seen over 100,000 times. One of the more interesting parts? They resubmit the thing and even change the name of the video in order to get the most viewings. They’ll also do NOT put on tagwords until about a week after it gets popular, so as to NOT have “related videos” that aren’t yours on the same page.
Of course, having a post explaining your success on the hyper popular tech site TechCrunch is interesting… I mean, couldn’t they have, you know, made a video about this?
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Thing is, now I suspect all videos of being faked wanna be viral videos … like this one
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The CALIFORNICATION lawsuit by Red Hot Chili Peppers against the people who created the cable show of the same name:
Uh, you can’t copyright titles, especially if the term was part of a popular bumper sticker in the 1970s.
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I’ve been busy trying to put together a Linux driven computer, but ran into a buzzsaw when trying to make it wireless. I purchased a wireless USB dongle (WG111T from Netgear), but I can’t get the software to work on the computer without locking the whole computer up. The Linux software was simple to install, but some custom things I want to do just take way too much research time to accomplish.
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We’re babysitting a dog, and our dog plus another dog equals mischief and mayhem. We didn’t get much sleep last night, and so… it’s time for a nap.
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My nap was great!
And mine was not.
I call this day Friday.
And Saturday and Sunday depending on how much dessert you had left over. Ours will probably last until the end of the weekend.
Spinach dip: The key thing is flavoring it with Parmesean cheese or something like it. The other thing is, this dip is to be served warm or even hot. It will gel too much if it gets cold. And, it’s thick. Adjust close to serving time with a dash of milk if you feel it needs it.
It will vary as to the amounts, so you’ll adjust accordingly. This year I used one of those Pictsweet bags of frozen spinach
and a stick of cream cheese and a large dollop of sour cream — maybe two tablespoons. This year I added some Feta cheese I had around, but Parmesean, either powdered or hopefully the fresh shredded is your friend here.
Empty bag of frozen bag of spinach into saucepan. No water. (the frozen block spinach has a lot of water, so you have to thaw the frozen block spinach and squeeze the water out, either before or after you heat it up in the pan) Cover and let heat until it’s thawed and starting to sizzle a bit at the bottom. Stir and repeat until it’s hot. Room temp cream cheese — I’ve used the low fat version before and couldn’t tell much difference, but this year I got the normal cheapie full fat brand. Dump the cream cheese in and let heat, stirring to break it up, cover and let simmer. While warming back up, two things: drain one (or more, this year I used one) of those (EDIT 8oz. jars of ) marinated artichoke quarters, and chop the thing up. I’ve blended it up before with poor results. I’ve learned to chop it. Obviously, get rid of the large leafettes that are too tough to actually eat. set aside. Chop some onion. 1/2 large or a small, 1/3 to 1/2 cup, and saute in a separate pan, or do this in advance in the original pan and hold. I’ve learned to do this in a separate pan for this reason: As the onions are starting to saute, I dump the rest of the stuff in. The chopped artichokes, the parmesean cheese (about 1/4 cup, but you can use less), some ground pepper — wait for the salt addition, as you’ll adjust at the end, and you’ll stir up the spinach (of course, you’ve been stirring off and on while it’s heating to keep the molten cream cheese / spinach from sticking) and after the flavoring cheese is in (Feta too if you have it) check to see how much liquid is in your dip. This is where I add a teaspoon to two teaspoons of flour to the saute-ing onions, and stir, making a bit of a glop out of them. The flour sticks to the onions, sure, but that will change. The onions finish cooking a bit, and the flour has cooked about a minute, and then you add that to the spinach, and stir.
Then you adjust for salt, and stir and serve. The stuff will keep on warm as long as you like, adding a dash of milk if it’s too gloppy.
WARNING: This is not the mayonnaise based Spinach Dip that’s mostly ranch dressing and stringy spinach. Mayonnaise based dips don’t heat up well, but I’ve tried them, too. I’ve also tried adding a bit of mayo to the above dip to un-gloppify it, but with mixed results.
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as you can see, I don’t write recipes for a living. I can whip the above recipe up in less time than it took me to type this.
Personally, I wanted to go to Mickey D’s to get a TUrkey burger, only the didn’t actually make one.
Bummer.
The Perfessor
Just so you all know.
They may be next to each other at the store.
They may even be in the same shape box.
But Phyllo Dough is not the same as Puff Pastry.