Knit Think

Friday food

Well, hate to tell you, but this is going to be a pretty low-drama Friday food, compared to last week's. The finger is healing well, and has been a good parental disciplinary tool--as in, "You kids do what I tell you or I'll REMOVE THE DRESSING AND MAKE YOU LOOK AT MY WOUND!" Whatever works, right?

Today's recipe is kind of a two-fer, and both parts are seriously yummy. As in, everyone in the family loved them. OK, maybe Teen 1 was iffy on the rice, but otherwise, 100% approval rating.

The thing is, it's a dull set of recipes to photograph. So bear with me and take my word for it. I'm no food stylist, that's for sure.

First, the meat. I had some nice top round in the freezer, courtesy of our friends at Cub Foods, who had a two-for-one sale recently.

OK. Can we talk about Cub Foods for a minute? You know what I think of that store? This is not very nice of me. I think of it as the store where the stupid people shop. And the whole basis for that opinion is the astonishingly large number of times that someone has blocked the aisle with their cart while others--me, for example--would like to get through, and we say things like, "Excuse me" and "Pardon me" and "If you don't mind, I'll just slide by here" and "Ha! Ha! Aisles just aren't big enough, are they?" Which, frankly? The aisles are huge. You can easily have two carts pass each other by. If you don't park your cart cross-wise and then fill in the rest of the space with your body, as you stand reading ingredients lists on chicken broth cans. Of which there are many varieties.

I'm not totally hard-hearted. I'll cut slack to people who appear to be from other countries and may not speak English and therefore have no idea what I'm chirping at them. But the Minnesota folks? With the cell phones in their ears? Speaking in perfect Midwestern English? I'm talking about YOU. Move the damn cart.

Once? Once--this is so annoying--some woman chatting on her cell phone and blocking the aisle kept glancing at me as I was saying "Excuse me" and thinking of ramming her cart. But she wouldn't move. So I finally backed out of that aisle, went around the corner, and turned back into the first aisle at the other end. Only to find the same woman now blocking the other end of the aisle.

Gah.

Good thing Cub has two-for-one coupons.

 So, yeah. Here's the deal. You take your top round, or flank steak, or whatever you'd like to use for a London broil, and you marinate it in lemon juice, soy sauce, white vinegar, vegetable oil, chopped onion and garlic, bay leaves, coriander seed, and black pepper. Overnight marinating is best.

 

See? Kinda boring looking. Oh, by the way, the recipe is here. It's simple, and it's a good weeknight option, since once it's marinated, it cooks super fast.

While reading the user comments on the recipe, someone mentioned pairing the meat with this recipe: Vinegared Rice. The idea looked simple enough, and intriguing. First you take some long-grain rice and rinse repeatedly in cold water until the water runs clear. This takes several repeats.

   

I think it took 10 or 11 times to get the water to run clear. Then you cook the rice. While it's cooking, you mix together some rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan, heating until the sugar dissolves, then let it cool a bit. Once the rice is done, you stir in the vinegar mixture in little bits, mixing thoroughly.

Of course, you're also cooking your meat. The recipe calls for it to be grilled. Given that my outdoor grill is covered in snow, I went with my trusty George Foreman indoor contact grill. It took maybe 10 minutes. You could broil it too.

 

Because the rice itself isn't boring looking enough, I added some cauliflower to the mix. Not an exciting plate to behold, I realize, but so, so, so good. Oh my. This is definitely a combo that goes into my regular rotation.

Even if I do have to buy top round at Cub Foods.

Hip to be square

Thanks for all the good wishes about my culinary incompetence! The finger is healing nicely. I've taken a fair amount of grief from both Teens, who--wouldn't you know it--both are in cooking units at school right now and have recently learned EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW about kitchen safety. I get no respect, I tell ya.

Quick question: I just bought some of these (square circular needles). I'm intrigued by the claim that they're easier on the hands. Has anyone used them? Are they really easier on the hands? Just imagine, if I could knit longer every day...

Friday food

I know, I know. It's late in the day. But settle in, folks, because I've got a long tale for you. A tale in which our Plucky Heroine faces Great Adversity! Peril! Trauma! Blood! And recites poetry! All beginning with preparing food! But don't worry, being the Plucky kind of Heroine, she Perseveres and All Ends Well.

So. It started with this cast of characters:

 

Chicken, shredded carrots and cabbage, vinegar, soy sauce, and an onion.

It started easily enough. Our Plucky Heroine took her trusty kitchen knife, one of the many she recently took in for professional sharpening. She did that because they were all so dull that she was afraid one would slip and cut her if she didn't get them sharpened.

That, my friends, is known both as irony and as foreshadowing.

Slice slice slice went the shiny sharp knife through the onion, slice slice slice, until it was time for the last slice, and the greedy knife wasn't content to cut just the onion, but decided to take off part of our Plucky Heroine's little fingertip too.

Oh! she cried out (in a Plucky way, of course). My! That hurt! And bleed! Goodness! Like a geyser! She flew to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap for cold water, then stuck her finger under it. Not necessarily the best idea she'd ever had. Blood continued to gush, so she grabbed a paper towel and wound it tightly around the finger, then slowly pulled it off to see what size bandaid would be required.

But there was no flesh on the fingertip at all. Just a fountain of blood. Hmmm, thought the Plucky Heroine (OK, maybe she was borderline hyperventilating at this point), that doesn't look like a bandaid will fix it. I think I have to go to the doctor. And since the sight of all that blood rushing out of her little finger made her nervous, she grabbed another paper towel to cover it up.

But then she paused. Why, look, she thought--look at all that blood on the countertops. Apparently the geyser had cleared quite some distance as she had scampered across the kitchen. Does blood stain countertops? Plucky Heroine did not know, but she didn't want to find out the hard way, so, clutching a paper towel around the finger of blood, she used her other hand to wipe down the counter.

Ready for the doctor? Almost--but not yet. She looked at the other counter. And there were all those perishable foods sitting there, just waiting to, you know, perish! So those had to be put away too. And then finally Plucky Heroine was ready to get in her car and go to the doctor.

You know what's a good way to get quick service at Urgent Care? Show the receptionist your bloody paper towel and tell her you sliced off part of your fingertip. You'll get bumped right to the head of the line, in front of all the coughing children and the cranky old lady.

In no time at all, the gallant doctor was there and impressed with our Heroine's slicing skills. Stitches, he informed her. There would have to be stitches. OK, said Plucky Heroine, who had never had stitches and found that whole idea unnerving. Whatever, just stop the bleeding and stop the pain.

So the gallant doctor instructed the nurse to put a blood pressure cuff on the Heroine's arm to cut off the circulation so he could, you know, see through the blood and start stitching. You know what happens when there's no circulation to your arm? You lose all feeling, and your arm starts to look like a Swamp Thing.

You know what happens when you've been blogging too long? You sit at Urgent Care, watching your arm turn into Swamp Thing, and wish you had your camera so the nurse could take a picture.

She also remembered that there's a poem by Sylvia Plath called The Cut, which starts: "What a thrill--/My thumb instead of an onion" and goes on to say: "A celebreation, this is./Out of a gap/A million soldiers run,/Redcoats, every one."

But at last! No more bleeding! No more pain (thanks, Novocain)! Only this:

 

Just a nifty-difty splint-like gauze bandage (and an arm no longer looking like Swamp Thing). Which, Plucky Heroine did not realize until this morning, was already in the process of adhering so firmly to the wound that when she went back to the doctor this morning to have it checked, more Novocain had to be administered in order to get the gauze off her without making her cry, or throw up, or both. Again--Plucky Heroine loves her Novocain.

Obviously this experience exhausted Plucky Heroine, but nevertheless, home bloodied and beaten, she was still determined to make the damned chicken.

And she did.

Even if it was a challenge trying to cut another onion (because she certainly wasn't going to use the first one) with only one hand.

There it is. Crockpot Chicken Adobo. It was good. But was it good because it was good, or because it represented our Plucky Heroine's personal triumph over tragedy? That, my friends, is the question.

Coffee help

Hey, if you're near the Twin Cities or have visited any time recently and can talk coffee shops with me, please stop by my other blog and share your opinions. I need coffee shops, people!!

A Major Award!

And it's not even fra-jee-lay.

Miss T. was kind enough to award me the Kreativ Blogger award:

 

As with any award, there are rules:

1. Copy the award to your site.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate 7 other bloggers.
4. Link to those on your blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominated.

Miss T. cheated and only nominated 5, so if she can do that, I can too.

And because it's a Monday holiday, and I'm working anyway, and I'm sorta feeling lazy, I'll also take her lead and not wax rhapsodic. It's kind of redundant, right? If I nominate them, I must like them, right?

1. Cursing Mama

2. Wound Too Tight

3. Lectio

4. Learning to Bake

5. A Knitting Nurse

Go read them! Now! 'Cause I'm done here for today.

Friday food

Or not. Sorry, folks, between the funeral and the flu, there just hasn't been much happening of culinary interest at Chez Knit Think this week. So, instead, I offer up some pieces of linky goodness:

Think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is as far as P&P can go? I think not. Of course I have ordered mine.

And because I feel bad about not having food today: Bacon Haikus.

As the Brits used to say, Keep Calm and Carry On.

This, that, and the other

I got nothin' much. Went up north for a funeral this weekend. My Uncle Milton passed away unexpectedly. Milt was a very funny guy, which lead to--dare I say it?--an enjoyable funeral. Many funny stories were told. But probably the best moment came when one of his friends of many decades stood up and told about how, 33 years ago, they'd made a pact: whichever one of them died first, the other had to sing "Shall We Gather at the River" at their funeral. The friend went home and told his family about this, and his kids said, "Geez, Dad, you better go before Milton. We've heard you sing."

But only two weeks ago, he ran into Milton, who reminded him of the pact. And so, without embarrassment or any singing ability whatsoever, he launched into the chosen song. And everyone was laughing and crying at the same time.

Then I came home and got the stomach flu. So, yeah.

There's been knitting. But it's Super Secret Stealth Knitting, and I'm Sworn to Secrecy. So I Cannot Tell about the Super Secret Stealth Knitting or even show you a picture of it.

But I did get some yarn in the mail this week:

 

The latest installment of the Nefarious yarn club. Any guesses on who the villain is this time? No?

H.H. Holmes.

If, like me, that name did not ring a bell, let me enlighten you. He's the foul purveyor of murder during the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, having constructed a "murder hotel" outfitted with torture chambers and his own crematory. Pretty nefarious, no?

The colors were inspired by the shiny steel interior bank safes Holmes used to control his environment, combined with--heh--the murky flickering colors of the warehouses in the Saw movies.

So, death and murder and the stomach flu have made up my week so far. How's your week going?

In which my geeky side takes over

The Odd Shelf.

Friday food

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin’ down the bunny trail…

 

Then some organic hunter type person caught little Petey, took him home, cleaned his carcass, froze him, and brought him to the Mill City Farmers Market late last fall, where I bought him and popped him in my freezer. Thus endeth the tale of Peter Cottontail.

 

 

Kinda looks like chicken, doesn't it?

 

But it's not. It's Peter Cottontail or some close relative. We'll call him PC for short. I finally thawed ol' PC out and contemplated what I could do with a rabbit. A very big rabbit.

 

 

 

I went to the master. Italian roast rabbit. Very simple. Rub a split garlic clove all over PC, then spread butter or olive oil all over him and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Throw the garlic in the pan along with some rosemary. (See how artfully I dressed PC in the rosemary? Sort of like a cover for Bunny Vogue.) Roast for half an hour, then add fresh lemon juice and white wine to the pan, cover loosely with foil, and roast some more.

 

   

 

That's it. That's how you cook a rabbit. Easy as pie. Wait--easier than pie.

 

What's it taste like?

 

You know the answer to that. C'mon, everyone, all together now: IT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN!

 

Actually, it tastes like a chickenier kind of chicken.

 

Another way little PC resembled chicken is in my tendency to overcook. See, I have a very nice meat thermometer that tells you what temps beef, pork, and poultry should be when safely done. But it doesn't list rabbit. So I had to guess. And I guessed in the "let's roast this puppy until it's pretty damn dry."

 

My bad.

 

It still tasted good, though.

 

 

Served with pasta tossed with cabbage sauteed in olive oil and garlic.

 

I'm thinking I might serve it for Easter dinner this year.

 

There.

All done.

 

I win.

Don't forget about my internet/radio interview tonight at 7:40 p.m. Central time! And if you miss it, it'll be available to download on the website after the show.