Drewzilla's Open Salon Blog

Pilaf? I barely know you!

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:12:33 -0500

I pen this post with a slightly burnt thumb from grabbing a pan right after I took it out of the oven. The good news is I will live. Thank you for your concern and sympathy cards.

To accompany the breaded pork chops, I decided to try a new technique for rice pilaf. Previous methods included rice-a-roni and a few feeble attempts the natural way.

A few weeks ago I caught an episode of Martha Stewart's cooking tutorial on PBS. One of my Saturday past times is dozing off to cooking shows on a lazy Saturday afternoon. This episode was all about rice. Riveting!

The key takeaway was to rinse your rice before cooking. Armed with this lil tip, I tried pilaf again. Rinse the rice in a sieve/small strainer under cold water. Shake out the extra water (Florence and the machine style).

Sauté an onion in a little olive oil and butter. Once the onion becomes see-thru add in the rice and stir. Let the rice absorb the oil and flavor. Like the onion, wait for the rice to become translucent.

This should take a few minutes. Next I added water. You want to follow a 3:2 ratio of water to rice. So if you make a cup of rice dear students, how much water will you need?

I'll wait. Carry the 2...

Cup and a half. I used brown rice and could've used a touch more liquid.

Slap on the lid and wait it out. It should be about 15-20 minutes. Toward the final minutes you can add in veggies. I added frozen peas and fresh carrots. After all the fluid has absorbed give it a stir, turn off the heat and put the lid on for another 10 minutes.

The one other tip is to use stock or broth instead of water. It'll give tons more flavor.

You'll excuse me. This bachelor has to go tell the world about his boo boo.

Rockin' with Mawmaw on the Bayou

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:12:43 -0500

Back and forth they rocked.

“How’s yo daddy?” Mawmaw asked, with a pronounced, drawn-out lingering on the “add” and a quick trailing off on the “y.”

Four oblong, baby blue bathroom rugs were placed under the four rocking chairs in the living room. A faded picture of her daughter’s wedding portrait was centered above the couch against the back wall. The other walls were adorned with an array of family photos like most grandparent’s homes. They always hold onto those school photos from when you awkwardly teetered on the precipice between childhood and adulthood.

“Y’all meet rain?” Mawmaw’s sister asked from her still rocking chair.

Struggling to understand what she meant, she repeated herself after my eloquent response of “What?”

“Y’all meet rain on your way down here?”

Dark, rain-bearing clouds had quickly replaced the non-threatening stratus clouds after 3 that afternoon. The rainfall, however, didn’t match the severity of the ominous dark swathes in the sky.

Rocking chairs are one of those few kinetic forms of seating. Each of the ladies rocked in a different way. Mawmaw’s sister remained still in hers. Slowly pushing herself back and forth with her feet, Mawmaw let the wooden chair with cushions do the pendulum-like work. And Jill rocked without abandon, like a child on a swing, her hands holding onto a bowl of homemade potato salad dusted with Tony Chacheres creole seasoning. Farther and farther she’d rock back. Her chair pivoting with each pass until the rockers deviated onto the wooden floor and she had to stop rocking, get up to move the chair back onto the pastel rug before starting to rock again.

As all good conversations do, the discussion turned to food as we rocked. After chatting about what we’d ingested so far on my visit we began talking about the turkey gumbo I made. Eager to learn some southern cooking tips from a bayou dweller, I peppered Mawmaw with roux-related questions.

“You gotta get the oil real hot. Then you add in the flour and mix it until it’s dark. I don’t use measurements. You just know.” Now in her 80′s, she continued on her roux, “I don’t make my own anymore. I just use the mix.”

“The secret is to cook a bunch of okra at once. Cook it until it’s mush. Then I put it in the freezer and use what I need.”

As we drove away from Mawmaw’s, the thick moss draped over the tree limbs slowly rocked back and forth in the gentle southern wind.

Pen and pencil myths

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:09:48 -0400

First Pluto. Now this? Everything I knew to be true is crumbling.

Pen and pencil myths:

There’s a popular myth that NASA spent “millions” of dollars developing a pen for astronauts to use in the weightless environment of a space ship — while their sensible Russian counterparts were happy to use the low-tech pencil. Alas, for all its appeal and plausibility, this is not true. Initially, astronauts and cosmonauts were both equipped with pencils, but there were problems: if a piece of lead broke off, for example, it could float into someone’s eye or nose. A pen was needed, one that would defy gravity, write in extreme heat or cold, and be leak proof: blobs of ink floating around the cabin would be more perilous than a stray pencil lead. A long-time pen maker named Paul C. Fisher patented the “space pen” in 1965 (which he had developed at the cost of a million dollars, at the request of but not under the auspices of NASA.) NASA bought four hundred of them at $6 each, and, after a couple of years of testing, the pens were put into space.

That is from Kitty Burns Florey, Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting.

Pen and pencil myths

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:09:48 -0400

First Pluto. Now this? Everything I knew to be true is crumbling.

Pen and pencil myths:

There’s a popular myth that NASA spent “millions” of dollars developing a pen for astronauts to use in the weightless environment of a space ship — while their sensible Russian counterparts were happy to use the low-tech pencil. Alas, for all its appeal and plausibility, this is not true. Initially, astronauts and cosmonauts were both equipped with pencils, but there were problems: if a piece of lead broke off, for example, it could float into someone’s eye or nose. A pen was needed, one that would defy gravity, write in extreme heat or cold, and be leak proof: blobs of ink floating around the cabin would be more perilous than a stray pencil lead. A long-time pen maker named Paul C. Fisher patented the “space pen” in 1965 (which he had developed at the cost of a million dollars, at the request of but not under the auspices of NASA.) NASA bought four hundred of them at $6 each, and, after a couple of years of testing, the pens were put into space.

That is from Kitty Burns Florey, Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting.

The Grass is Always Greener (and Thicker)

Wed, 7 Sep 2011 00:09:29 -0400

Feeling good about yourself? Well, never read your alumni magazine. No matter how good things are going for you, someone else's life is far better.

Hella proud that you buttoned your shirt correctly the first time? Yeah. Well someone else that sat in the same lecture hall as you did, just found a cure for cancer.
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