The Lazy Gourmet

[Buster's Uncle]

If there's a childhood trauma story or something, I'm interested - in your own thread...

[Unorthodox]

Not really trauma just a long slow growing dislike for skin and bones.  Since fowl seems to be the most common thing people eat with skin and bones still attached, a growing dread for turkey day...

I mean I COULD carve a turkey if it was needed for practical or etiquette purposes.  I would hate every minute and probably not be able to eat, but I could.  hEt's kind enough to boil the monstrousity that is left behind after turkey day while I'm gone. 

One of these days I might do it myself and articulate the skeleton afterwords as therapy, since hEt ruins the bones. 

[Buster's Uncle]

You probably ought to do that.  History indicates it would give you a lot better handle on your feelings about it.

[Dio]

Not really trauma just a long slow growing dislike for skin and bones.  Since fowl seems to be the most common thing people eat with skin and bones still attached, a growing dread for turkey day...

I mean I COULD carve a turkey if it was needed for practical or etiquette purposes.  I would hate every minute and probably not be able to eat, but I could.  hEt's kind enough to boil the monstrousity that is left behind after turkey day while I'm gone. 

One of these days I might do it myself and articulate the skeleton afterwords as therapy, since hEt ruins the bones.

This makes very little sense because you build models of creatures with bone analogs. I cannot deny that sawing bones emits a repugant odor.

[Unorthodox]

"Analogs".  Sure. Keep telling yourself that.  It's about 50/50. Real/analog.


I know it makes no sense. I like nice clean dry bones. Don't like wet bones with flesh still hanging on.  Maybe somewhere butchering our own food as a child got to me on a delayed reaction. 

Skin is worse that bone though. I can eat a t bone for instance.

[Buster's Uncle]

Actually Uno, I'm eating the marrow out of fried chicken bones as I type this...

[Unorthodox]

ghoul. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It was delicious.  No kiddin' - very late supper, and I was hungry.

[Elok]

Garlic-butter chicken:

Chop up chicken breast into little chunks.  Brown in a generous amount of butter.  Deglaze with equal parts white wine and chicken broth, add minced garlic, and cook it down into a sauce.  At the end, toss the chicken back in and stir to coat, then squeeze in half a lemon or so.  We generally serve it over rice with green beans.  It's luscious.  I didn't mention any proportions because we tend to eyeball it.

[Buster's Uncle]

A word on popcorn:

it's incredibly cheap, of course, bought as bags of nothing but kernels - the salt and oil you add yourself will end up setting you back more, I think.  Mylochka had a friend in grad school who discovered she had no money in her budget for food and survived -barely, I imagine- on popcorn for a semester.  (Peanut butter has it beat all hollow -popcorn is hollow, being mostly air- for nutritional value in something very cheap, but I guess not cheap enough for her, poor dear.)

And so I, a practicing miser, approve of the popcorn popped on the stove w/ salt and oil as a very economical snack food.

-But there's this, that I came here to say: sometimes I get a strong craving for something greasy, salty and snacky, usually late at night, and a big production standing over the stove just don't cut it.  Microwave popcorn is scandalously expensive by comparison, but time and convenience does have non-trivial value, and two minutes nuking, and Bam! you're eating a sack of potato chips' still hecka-cheap cousin.

Microwave popcorn.

[Unorthodox]

Oh. POPCORN! 

If you ever have a school kid coming buy selling this stuff, it's worth it. 

http://www.braxfundraising.com/fundraising-products/spiritpopcorn/

They must salt that stuff with crack or something.  Best microwave corn I've ever had. 

[Rusty Edge]

While we're discussing corn...

If you're only cooking for one or two, you can use the microwave to cook an ear of sweet corn in the husk. 1 ear, 4 minutes. 2 ears, 8 minutes.

Use a glove or oven mitt to remove it, it will be hot. 
Use a knife to cut of the butt end of the ear ( cut so as to remove the first ring of kernels )
Squeezing from the silk end, you can push the ear out through the cut.

Gourmet because it tastes great, Lazy because it's the easiest way to completely de-silk an ear of corn. As you probably know, cooked corn silk tastes like lawn clippings smell.

[Buster's Uncle]

...We did an experiment with grilling unshucked corn about a month ago.  Not setting fire to it is tricky, but leaving it laying on the upper shelf on some aluminum foil while the ribs grill was too slow.  Mylochka pronounced the end-result definitely worth further research.  Not that lazy, and likely nothing grilled counts as gourmet, but M sez delicious...

[Buster's Uncle]

Recreated Pit Roast Offers a Taste of Stone Age Life

[Rusty Edge]

That was interesting. There's something about the early stages of social organization that I find appealing..

Perhaps it's uniting the wandering tribes into a CIVILISATION!   

Anyway, While it could have taken years to build, if it was the site of an annual gathering/festival ( reminds me of the mountain men's annual Rendezvous in the American Rockies in the early to mid 1800s ) , they could agree to build it, and have everyone carry one river stone up the hill while they are there. That would be very symbolic. Or turn it into a strong man's contest, to see who could carry the most head sized stones up the hill in an afternoon. Same kind of thing with digging. With prizes and libation, that could be fun. Much the same as a barn raising.

Extended families are able to do massive amounts of work in a single day, like replacing a roof or butchering.  Communities can clean up a river.  If it's something done by and for a community, it wouldn't have to take years to build.