food

I’m now off …… to make French onion soup

A tightwad’s guide to good-eats

If you ever seen the glass covered box, with that little brass hammer on a chain, hanging on a wall. With the words written on the glass. ” Break in case of emergency! ” You are looking behind the glass at the blog equivalent. A warning of a kind to some. But in general, just a survivors guide to saving money at best. At worsted? If it comes to that? A survivors guide to the world to come, a world like in the movie of ” Mad Max, in thunder dome!”

The world is full of anxiety and uncertainty’s these days. With news like trouble in Greece, or the European union. The world seems to be going through growing pains. Unfortunately the worlds socialistic governments aren’t reading the same tea leaves as the rest of the worlds populations. Everyone is currently experiencing life, offered up by big government. Who are all to willing to over promising and under delivering on any promises offered. With out of control spending by them. It just proves that we as individuals are then more and more responsable for our own existences. Saving money is the craft in trade for all of the tightwad’s, the world over. So it seem natural to have a post for saving money and eliminating hunger pains. With a tightwad’s guide to good-eats.

I believe the tightwad is better suited to survive any and every impending doom. By their nature they will do what ever they have to survive. If that means dumpster diving? Well then, One mans garbage is another gold mine.

Providing good eats, as well good nutritional foods to our diets is the chef’s magical work behind the scene. So taking a peek behind the curtains of a chef’s mind-set. Just opens the door of wonderment, along with a ginormous amount of new questions. ” What does that taste like?” Which often is then followed up with. ” How can I make that taste better.?” But then in a world short on money and full of hungry people. Just what constitutes good eats?

I have watched a good amount of food channel on TV. The TV shows where they cook all kinds of rare, and different foods. Do you know what eel snout tastes like? Hummingbird lips prehaps? Opossum rump roast? The food channel cooks some weird foods. Right next to the hobo’s cook book’s recipes, of road kill soup! I know people need some intestinal fortitude to stomach food like that but then this is about survival. So sewer rat on a stick, roasted over an open fire. May also sound a little strange… but does that taste like… chicken?

May not look like a good source of protein. But up and untill the president even mention that he had tried ” Dog ” and found it to be quote ” Delicious. ” Who would have known? I’m not recommending eating ” Dog.” But in the ” Mad Max world“, would a sewer rat have some of those same delicious flavors as dog, ready to dance on your tong? Just how hard of times did the president have to live through to have eaten “Dog? “

Lets face it. If there was a worse case scenario in the world? We as people who would like nothing more than to survive untill tomorrow! Could then find a way to eat things, that wouldn’t be an option in this moment in time.

Dumpster diving for some half eaten pizza. Isn’t all that appealing. But if it has been a week since your last good meal. It might be a battle royal with other people in the same situation. The winner takes the prize ” Half eaten pizza.” Imagine people shoving each other, prehaps fist fighting over a piece of pizza in the trash. But then it has only one bite out of it. You can still eat it from the other end, to avoid swapping spit of sorts from the bite side.The tightwad’s mindset wouldn’t feel like that is the best quality of foods. People can do better! But under extreme stress, and hunger, food is food and good God! Man has got to eat!

Having experienced homelessness. I know that providing good food is possible, on a pan handlers income. Because we have it better at the moment? At least better jobs than pan-handling. Making the proper plans today will ensure a better and brighter future tomorrow.

Looking to all of the free food growing in people’s yards that they only recognize as weeds. Gives the tightwad the Armageddon survivors advantage. Who wouldn’t pay you to pull weed in their yards? It’s a job that kids don’t even like to do these days. If your one of those rare birds then, who doesn’t mind pulling weeds? Offering your services for a small amount of pay. Will provide a service job to you. Along with some knowledge, a full stomach with some good eats as well. If the home owner doesn’t wish to hire you then it doesn’t hurt to ask. ” By the way, can I have some of those weeds that your throwing out?” Thinking to myself. ” Hidden good eats. Score! ”

I’m not recommending raiding someones garden. But eating some of what may grow around the yard that is also good, but not recognized as such, but only weeds to others. If you can then get that home owner, to pay you for the free picking of those weeds? It is truly the best of both worlds. Of course. You would need to know just what is what in the eatable weed world, of good eats? As well as knowing just what kind of uses they have in preparing them. Knowing the nutritional values they also possess is helpful.

Take the dandelion weed. Everyone knows of them and recognizes them when they see them growing in the yard. How can you miss them? Kids pick the seed heads and blow them out like a candle after making the same kind of wishes. Even in the times of the year where it is hot, like summer. The dandelion grows what seem like 6 inches every week. With roots that stretch down 2 feet, in search of water. They can then grow without any trouble, or watering, artificial rain or natures sprinkler in the form of rain. This makes them the best of greens to harvest year round. A huge evasive weed to the gardener. But a useful green to a healthy salad. Growing from early spring to late fall. The leaves are already in organic salad mixes in stores. You have probably have had them but didn’t know it. Even in some fancy restaurants the field garden salad had them in it, and served to you, at a premium price. The flowers can be fermented into cheep wine, and the dehydrated roots can then be roasted. It brews up into a coffee like drink. With all of that goodness thrown out of most people’s yards. It is a tightwad’s good eats salad.

Do you see anyone willing to fight you, for an all you can eat salad?

The nutritional value of dandelion weeds are as follows. A great source of vitamins like A, B, C, D, iron, as well as a quality to them of cleaning out the system. It is natures way of a one two punch to hunger, while taking a vitamin pill all at the same time.

Red clover is our next one. Red clover is easy to recognize as well. Red ball like flowers on top of a larger clover bush like plant. Kids know just what they look like, after all who hasn’t looked for four-leaf clovers before?

The flower has a clover honey like flavor to them when eaten. The same flavor as pure clover honey. Go figure! You have all eaten clover honey before I’m sure? Yet you have also passed these jewels of nature by. Haven’t you? The best way to use the red ball flowers, is to dry them and use them in a tea like brew. The tea is great at suppressing hunger. But has a cleansing affect on the blood and skin, and a good drink for building a strong immunity. With a semi-sweet flavor and a great source of health in a drink served hot or cold. This weed is overlooked by everyone. But aside to all that. Drying the flowers allows them to keep for up to a year or better. Great for a hot drink in the winter. One must think ahead you know? These nuggets can be found in the health food stores today at around $ 15.00 per pound. But then again, if you charge for weed removal services to those homeowners that have them. It will defiantly give you other money to buy other staples. As well as restocking your trench-coat pantry!

It just takes a little thinking outside of the box, in order to survive. Determining to have a good survival, at any cost and in many different conditions. Is very possible! With some self-education in eatable weeds as one of the pieces of the puzzle of necessary skills needed. Marketing yourself knowing that, “one mans garbage is another treasure.” Will open doors to survival on a higher level then most people who havent yet acquired the skill set. Remember that education is a valued skill set that can also be sold to others. In other words, you can dumpster dive for that half eaten pizza, or charge someone, to remove a fresh salad from their yard, and then buy a slice of pizza with the proceeds?

Doesn’t matter that much, on what you decide for yourself. Eating salad from weeds has to taste better than ” Rat! ” ? Washing it all down with sweet clover tea, seem a little strange for some food pairing. But being also careful in picking your weeds from far out-of-the-way places. Far from where dogs have traveled. Is also some good advice. They tend to pee on bushes. May also change the clover honey flavors in that tea. Just an observation, better noted so no disappointments are then experienced by the Mad Max survivor of the future. The tightwads guide to just two enable weeds out of the many out there in the world. That also taste better than a half eaten pizza in a dumpster. Has got to be better than dumpster diving? Besides I’m not one, to try to eat man’s best friend. No matter if it tastes like chicken, or how delicious the president clams ” Dog ” to have been. Dogs happen to eat cat crap! And I believe in the principles of “ You are what you eat!” Be careful then with trying new foods, like ” sewer Rat, and Dog, or half eaten pizza!” Better to try the tightwad’s guide to good eats!

All the best.

pictures provided by a free picture website.

When Hell freezes over! ( Fear not, the great wall. )

Though I walk through the valley of the shadows of over-weight-ness. I will fear no evil. It will be when hell freezes over,  that’s when I will lose my confidence. But then there was this great burning sensation of compleat temptations impressed upon my minds eye.The neion lights of the great wall of temptations, also known as the frozen food display. This was more of a huge display case, in the grocery store aisle that was miss-named at best. Calling it the ” Frozen food display.” Is just Wrong! Wrong wording at least. This was a display case that ran from one side of the back wall, to 3/4 of the way down to the front of the store. No real frozen food here, but better known for an endless display of every kind of ice-creams ever made. A true altar of temptations for the weak knead dieter. Truly weakened by the lack of full fat foods and an over exercised state of mind. Like a moth to flame. It beckons the weak-minded to fill the cart with frozen delights and then run for home before it melts. This is more like the part of my world that should be properly named the “Weight gainers Disney land!” part of the store.

Every time I go to the store I have the best of intentions to get healthy foods. After all we are what we eat! Aren’t we? So in trying to be healthy and weight conscious, I always construct a great shopping list of foods. Foods from every part of the food pyramid. It should be all about quality of food. Rather than the quantity of it. But everyone who has struggled with weight gain, has also struggled with the quantity of it as well. Lets face it, eating like a bird is great and all, for the birds out in the world. But for the big-boned person wrapped into a smaller real life persons body. It’s all about control. Or the lack of it! Some times but rarely, it can be a health issue for someone who is luck enough to have one, to excuse themself’s. But for the most part, it is self-indulgent, by way of see food diets. That’s what gets most of us in trouble. We see it! We then feel enticed to eat it with reckless abandon.

Grocery stores are just in the business of delivering great foods to the general public for a profit. It also just seem that the biggest profits are made from the products that people get, that they also don’t really need. The impulse items. No real thought goes into the purchase of an impulse item, nor is it on any list made by the well-intentioned shopper. You see it!! BAM! It is in the cart.

Stores around the country excuse themself’s from any responsibility’s, yet are still setting-up the store as a giant display of temptations. Should they have greater responsibility’s for the weakened people in the world? After all, if it were not in the grocery store or something like that. what other items would we buy through temptation shopping? What would it be then? We all must take some self-control and responsibility’s for our own actions. Missing the mark by placing blame for what we are, or have become because we were not strong enough to withstand temptations. Is just pushing blame to someone else because we don’t like the results of it. ( Our choices of course.)

Do what I do then. Re-name the items in the store with names of foods that sound just gross to you. Or just to convince yourself that ingredients of gross things are in the items that you wish to buy. Or at least make your own healthy products at home, rather than buying un-healthy temptations in the store. I know it is just easier said then done. Self empowerment is finding something that works for you. The very thing that turns that ordinary over weight person in you, into that hard-body supper hero you know that you are. Under all of that fat there are the same muscles that the hard-body’s have. Okay the hard body’s out there, have prehaps over developed these to some point. But you get the picture. Exercise isn’t lifting one half-gallon of ice-cream out of the refrigerator, one after the other. Nor is it lifting one table-spoon after the other into your mouth and doing this repeatedly real fast. Doing this doesn’t qualify as an aerobic exercise either.

Reducing the amounts of what your consuming is an easy first step. Re-making the items you love to buy, but making them yummy’er / healthier and mixing in some exercise along the way, is fantastic. Well then… Before you know it, you are the next newly discovered hard-body. Think of it as revenge to all of your previous temptations of the past. Being a hard-body is when you become someone elses temptation of desire.

Walking past the great wall of ice-cream. I demonstrate to self that hell has indeed frozen over! I head straight for the liquid non-dairy creamer, next I get frozen fruit at least 1 pound, next I get honey, then some vanilla ( The good stuff ), then I get some veggy’s like carrots, cabbage, and then I head back past the great wall of frozen foods / ice-cream and give it all the one finger salute! From one end of it to the other. All the while telling myself, ” Ice-cream should have reduced fat content, as well, it should have veggy’s in it! MOST OF ALL IT HAS TO TASTE GREAT!

Try it at home like I did! Make it like this:

Place into blender;

1 cup of liquid non-dairy creamer

1 pound of frozen fruit ( strawberries, blue berries, peaches, mango…ect Or even you can try lavender flowers about 15 flowers per batch.)

1 – 2 oz of cabbage, or carrots

About 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1-2 teaspoons honey

16 to what ever is needed in ice cubes to freeze

Will make about 4 1/2 cups servings per batch.

place into blender in order, and blend untill the ice cubes are crushed finely and the mixture is semi-frozen. Soft ice-cream consistency. Place into freezer and enjoy some, in about 1 half to 1 hours time. Ice cream with my veggy’s in it, is some what healthier, besides it makes eating veggy’s easier as well. I call It “ALASKAN CABBAGE!” Because everyone knows that cabbage is good for you, but most people don’t always like to eat it.

Try it you will like it!

All the best of health and all the best to you!

PS. make shure to blend the veggy’s real good, liquefy them before you place fruit into blender if you must. Out of sight is then also out of mind, and ice-cream will after all, will be truly, creamy goodness!

CHEERS!

Unhealthy cereals, what is in them?

just saw a story on unhealthy cereals. Much like these cereals? Just what is in these cereals to make a list of the unhealthy?

Yea that’s right It is on the web so we must believe it! So it was on the ” Daily Beast ” but they are always believable? No real different’s then all of the rest of the news media out there?

So we are down with, picking on the poor cereals maker. Just too much sugar, not enough fiber, to many carbs or just another way for saying sugar again. But to remind myself of a “saying” from  yesterday’s cereal maker ” It tastes GREAT!” the sugar I say. Just what is the point of eating some junk that is healthy when it tastes like wet cardboard. The sugar is what makes kids like what ever they didn’t like on their own. When I was little my mom would mix honey with powered aspirin to get me to take a bitter pill. That was for my own good she use to say. But we need fiber so why not mix it with sugar just to get kids to eat it? Or so the thought is by the cereals makers of the world.

Mom’s of the modern world would like healthy things to feed their kids but don’t like to use to much of their time to provide such. Nothing faster than opening a box, and pouring some cereal in a bowl, add some milk and your off to the races. But about 100 years ago or so it seem. Mom’s use to take out the oat’s and have to cook them for what seemed like 20 or 30 minuets. They would then add butter and raisins or milk or all of the above. Some times powered sugar and cinnamon just to give the top a look of dirt, and not sweet. That way they had less gilt I’m sure. In what they were feeding us for breakfasts.

With the world looking for more healthy things to eat. Why are we all looking to others to make it for us? If we make it we can control what goes into it. But just think what kind of time we would have to have to make it for ourself’s? Who has that kind of time anyway? It can take hours to make granola. But minuets to buy it, even if you put the time it takes to drive home with it, into the equation.

With every study we find another thing we shouldn’t eat! Only to read another study and find that the first one was wrong or wrong in part at least! So what should we eat then? We shouldn’t eat fast food because it leads to becoming fat or having a bad heart. That leads to a heart attack. Who wants that? But to have a fast food burger once in a while isn’t any different then having burgers at home. We shouldn’t eat them 7 days a week at home. Fast food or other wise! The same thing for breakfast sausages, burritos, eggs, pancakes, or cereals. You know with pancakes why are they ok to have for breakfast, but chocolate cake, no way!? Is it the frosting?

The way I see it is, whether I’m making it, or I’m buying it from someone else that’s making it for me. It is my choice to eat or not to eat it. I know if someone is making something with broken glass pieces, or with rat poised in it. Well they should be held accountable for the way they are making things. But if there is too much sugar in it! That’s too much big brother? Eating to much of anything, good or bad things out there, all turns into being bad for us anyway. So it is with sugar cereals, if they cut the sugar in them, then kids will just add sugar, on their own I guess.

I just put sugar and cinnamon on the cream of wheat, oat’s, or oat bran cereals for my kids. That way I control the sugar in it, and they get the good fiber they need. And I keep getting the help I like, because they keep wanting to help me weed the garden, looking for that good tasting dirt I put on their cereals in the morning. Now that’s a healthy Win! Win!

All the best!

NO! not the hairy stuff!! I’m not going to eat hairy stuff!!

“NO! I’m not going to eat that hairy stuff!!” I said to my mom, as plop, it was served upon my plate, and that was it! Stuck with the hairy stuff! Do you remember the first real decision you made without help from your parents? I say no help at all from your parents, you know? You may have picked out a shirt but it didn’t match those pants, mom would then say “how about this shirt with those pants they will match better.” Trying to teach you about matching your clothes. So you would be  guided with your choices in life by those over baring parents, you think! But my day is coming! That’s right, choices galore! So when, or should I say what age, and what choice did you make all by yourself? Do you remember?

My road to my first choice, was kind of like this. Sit back and enjoy the ride, so to speak. My parents came from a different country all to make a better life for, well, ME! I’m sure, they thought it to be real good thing for them as well, and my sister, I will have to admit it. Damn! (This story was to be all about me!  I screwed it up by including my sister), okay back on track. So being from a different country they had well rules that were different from my friends. At first it was no problems with that, but when your friends start to ask “Why do your parents have you do….” it was somewhat acquired. Though they loved me and sis, they would not give up on traditions. They were just going to do things their way and that’s all we needed to know! As for why it was going to be this way? They always pulled rank! “because we are the parents, and that is that! Stop asking!” Yes I was one of those kids to ask why a bit too much at times. But one has to know things right? I saw it as it was, my job for now, and I had to do it well ! My Mom just thought, it was my attempt to drive her crazy!

Rules of the dinner table were as follows; you eat everything on your plate! No if’s, or and’s, or but’s! You heard this I’m sure? If not you missed out! Just saying. My parents thought that food was to be an experience of life. Enjoy new things and textures, tastes, kind’s of foods that you never heard of or seen before. Was to experience something great. “But what if it is yucky!” I would ask, putting the emphases on the word  yuck! But what is a six-year-old to do? Got to ask, and asking “why”, was just out of the question for now! “You must try it and treat your self to an experience of life, if you really don’t like it, then, well, you know it, because you tried it, not because your friends say it’s yucky!” MOM explained like a teacher in school would, she had this way of making a mouth full of tacks sound smooth and creamy and real likable. I fell for it, a time or two, but caught on real fast and started to ask why!

Rule two; By trying new foods you will always honor the cook. They are trying to serve good foods for their guests, in preparing it, just the way they know how, so that it tastes good. The cook is using their talents to their best of their abilities, so we will honor them and make an attempt to eat what they’re making for us. You can guess at the questions, I had by now for my mom?? So moving along to number three.

Rule three; No matter how it tastes you never dishonor the cooks attempt at cooking! You should always be happy for the foods you have and are able to try.” Okay mom! I will try to do all that.” I would reassure her. Not believing me, she would again repeated herself. But sometimes I tried not to answer her, but she would then tap me on the shoulders and say ” are you listening to me?” Life is rough for a kid in my position. Have to act right, and do the right things, and say it just so… Just what gives? The pressure of trying not to embarrass my parents when they are foreign, and unfamiliar with American traditions, is just hell I tell ya! But what is a six-year-old to do? In short!! Rule three was ” Don’t embarrass my parents!”

The dinner party was to be at 4 o’clock, early dinner. Just so there wouldn’t be a rush to leave because kids have to get to bed. The parents would all be talking around the living room, while the kids would be running around most of the rest of the house, at times outside for a quick game of hide and go seek! When dinner was about to be served like 15 more minuets before, the call would go out. “time to wash up for dinner… do you all hear me? Calling all hungry kids 15 more minuets till dinner.” Because we were starving, and after playing hard, we were real hungry, we would then drop everything to wash up.

As the server was placing all of the food out on the table I could smell all the goodness of it.” I wonder what kind of foods these people like?” Then I thought.” Hope they like the foods we eat?” My sister slapped me on my leg! “What?” I asked in a scolding voice. “You are talking crazy! These are americans they don’t eat mom’s kind of food. It is probably yucky!” She was doing her best in scaring me! The anticipation was starting to get to me when… “Okay who is hungry? Come and get it!” The host said with some excitement in her voice.

Mom jumped to her feet just to catch up to me and help serve me up. While waiting our turn to dish up, I was looking around people, just to get a better view of what smelled so good. Then it was our turn, mom would ask,” would you like to try this?” all the while giving me the look of .. remember what I told you all week-long about…. I shook my head without saying anything. My plate was filling up nicely when mom noticed saying, ” no vegetables yet!” She looked around like she had missed them but no, she found them at the end of the table. Steamed collard greens with spinach in butter sauce and lemon slices. All of the true ingredients of yuck! Play dough looked good compared to that, slimy green wilted long string monster greasy hair. “Mom!!” I tried to say while getting her attention. But  she plunged the fork down into the monsters green hair, as she started to pull some out of the dish, like a fork of worms wiggling, the stringy strings started to move from all sides of the dish. My eyes got wider and wider as mom and the fork lifted the green yuck higher and higher in trying to separate some for my plate. I’m sure I was thinking, “OH! CRAP! Sis was right! What the hell do americans eat!?” Right before mom could plop the green yuck down on my plate, like it was dangling over the plate, I could take no more of mom not listening to me! “NO! NOT THE HAIRY STUFF! I’M NOT EATING THAT HAIRY STUFF!! I yelled at mom! My mom was frozen in time. She could have crawled into the cracks of the floor from the embarrassment! But it was green hairy stuff, come on mom have a heart! Because the rules were the rules? I sat there, not eating at all! Finley mom found some heart for me! Some time when the cook wasn’t looking, she slid my green hairy stuff off my plate  and placed it onto hers. Once it was gone, I scarfed down the food so as to keep up with some of those rules! But I made sure I didn’t get any of the greasy monsters hair juice in with my other food as I ate it.

Mom is now 81 years young, and we were just reminiscing about this story. “You know?” she said.” We never got to go over to those people’s house again?” smiling as big as ever! “At the time I could have killed you from the embarrassment, but now.. we did have years of fun telling this story at their expense, and for our amusement! You should thank me for letting you live!” she said with a laugh, and a hug! “How dare you embarrass your mother like that!” Scolding me now 40 years later, again laughing. ” Well mom how dare you try to kill me with having to….. No! I will say it like this.. I’M NOT EATING THAT HAIRY STUFF!!” Yelling out as loud as I could in repeating the past. Both of us laughing with tears running down our faces.

Thanks mom for the memories!!  ALL THE BEST!