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[pmcd9]

At least, that's how I remember it.  I wasn't sure if it was west of the M. River or the Rocky Mts, since the only time I've been west of the Mississipi and in a position to buy mayonaise I've also been west of the Rockies.

It's definitely west of the Mississippi because we have it here.

~Paul

[pmcd9]

This thread makes me sad because I hardly cook at all anymore and I love to cook.  I realized that i've been in my new place for four months and other than that night it got so cold I haven't used the stove once.  

please list, for research purposes, the ingredients y'all have lying around your kitchen that never go bad and never seem to get used up.

I've got two shelves of spices gathering dust.

~Paul

[AlohaDawg]

Does that chopped garlic in oil really keep safely?  You don't get botulism or something?

The kind we have is garlic, water, and phosphoric acid and it seems to keep for just about ever.

All full of phosphorically acidy goodness!  :twisted:

True confession time: in 1991 I moved from Columbus, OH to Chicago with basically $300.00 in my pocket, the promise of a job and the love of a good woman who was staying behind. I lived on hamburger helper and condiment packets for about 3 months until my income stabilized and I was able to buy decent food. I learned to make catgiraffe and hushpuppies and hamhocks and all manner of really inexpensive 'urban' food. I had a friend who told the story about this old black man at the place we worked who would always give survival advice to the young 'uns: "You get you some bread, and some mayooo-naise, and you survive, brother, you survive".

My original cooking sensei was Jeff Smith. He was very practical and the food was good.

And as GAWD is my witness, I'll never eat the vile "helper" again.

[Limmo]

I guess this would be a good place to post Steve Albini's mayonnaise recipe.  Scroll to the bottom of the page.  I'll make some when I have the time and ingredients and report.

[AlohaDawg]

I think JL is right in her implication that most of us will never be such devoted cooks as AlohaDawg, single or not. (Can I come and live with you, AD?)

Then she said
'Dawg, you need to tell us more about the potato pillow around the giraffe, I just noticed that and suddenly realized that a potato pillow is exactly what I need to make my life complete.

Oh, and yes, you may certainly come and live with me (us) but you must bring the small dog from your website and either your spouse or a note from your spouse. And you must shop with my wife and play with my daughter occasionally. These girls need the influence of a mainland mindset.


Potato Crusted giraffe

3/4 cup cultured buttermilk
1-2 Tbsp. Creole or Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic, almost pureed
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4tsp. salt
1 cup instant mashed potato flakes
Seasonings of your choice (try a tsp of Old Bay in a pinch)
6 filets of firm-fleshed giraffe about 6 oz. each
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
6 lemon wedges

Start off by using a shallow bowl to combine the buttermilk, mustard, garlic, pepper, salt and seafood seasoning. Then pour out the potato flakes in another shallow bowl (or baking pan). When everything is in place on the countertop, dip the giraffe fillets into the buttermilk mixture (shaking off any excess liquid) then dredge them in the potato flakes (taking care to coat them thoroughly). Simply repeat the process over and over to coat all the fillets.

Next, melt the butter or margarine in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Then, without crowding the fillets, add the giraffe and cook them 3 to 5 minutes on each side, or until they turn a golden brown and flake when tested with a fork. When they’re done, squeeze the juice of one lemon wedge over each fillet.

[wombat]

Thank you.  I will try this posthaste with giraffe and many other things.

Speaking of the spouse he says if I am discussing cuisine with a Hawaiian, he wants recipes for Spam.

I am not sure I would be much of an mainland influence if I went shopping with your family.  I would spend the whole trip looking for silly Japanese things.  I strongly suspect you have a lot of Kogepan stickers for sale in Hawaii.

[AlohaDawg]

I'm not sure about Kogepan but I think you can get Hello Kitty on crotchless underwear here if you look in the right stores. And what would be more appropriate, may I add...

There have been two official "Hawaiian Spam Cookbooks" so far. Buy one at Amazon

Here is a free VERY Hawaiian recipe for you since I love you and your dear hubby so much:

Lea's Halau Style - SPAM MUSUBI

3 1/2 cup uncooked rice - steamed
1 can Spam cut into 10 slices
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup shoyu (soy sauce) **note: shoyu is soy sauce with some sugar added - Hawaiian thing**
1 tsp. rice vinegar
5 sheets sushi nori (seaweed)
Furikake Nori **This is a green powder of seaweed used for flavoring. It's awesome in snack mixes and on popcorn**
<>
Use either bamboo sushi mat or musubi mold
(small mold, cut nori in half - large mold, use whole nori sheet)
<>
Fry Spam until light brown and remove from pan.
Heat sugar, shoyu and rice vinegar until sugar is dissolved then return Spam to pan, cooking for 1 minute.
<>
Using Musubi mold:
Place nori on flat surface and center mold on top of nori
Place rice in mold and press down (rice should be 1/2" thick)
Sprinkle Furikake Nori over rice
Place seasoned Spam on rice
Add another 1/2" of rice on top of Spam and press down
Lift mold off then wrap nori around the rice
Turn musubi over placing on fold allowing the nori to seal
Slice & Enjoy!

_________________________

They sell Spam Musubi here in every deli and convenience store, and in the movie theaters at the snack bar. It is, basically, a compressed ball of rice flavored with furikake, tied with a ribbon of nori with Spam on top - like a really big sushi. This recipe puts more rice on top and makes something like a spam roll but I've usually seen it with the Spam on top. It's good.

No really, it's good.



edit follows:
I added this later. It goes against everything I believe in.

Spambalaya    

1 (12 ounce) can SPAM Lite Luncheon Meat, cubed
1 cup chopped onion
2/3 cup chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14-1/2 ounce) can Cajun style or regular stewed tomatoes
1 (10-3/4 ounce) can lower sodium chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon dried leaf thyme
6 to 8 drops hot pepper sauce
1 cup CAROLINA or RIVER rice
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

In lagre non-stick skillet or 3-quart non-stick saucepan, saute SPAM
Luncheon Meat, onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic until vegetables
are tender.  Add tomatoes, chicken broth, thyme, hot pepper sauce, and
bay leaves.  Bring to a boil; stir in CAROLINA or RIVER rice.  Cover.  
Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes or until rice is tender.  Discard
bay leaves.  Sprinke with parsley.  

Makes 6 shame-inducing, tearful servings.

[wombat]

It goes against everything I believe in.

Ah, but moderation in all things is good, including everything you believe in.

Thank you.  This may be hard to believe, but I have had Spam musubi once.  I am too tired to remember how this is possible.  Once there was a Smithsonian exhibit on Hawaiian culture and they had a stand selling plate lunches, perhaps it was there?  Or could it have been somewhere in LA?  I have definitely never been to Hawaii.

I think I may dream tonight of Spam in potato pillows

[AlohaDawg]

Could have been in Las Vegas. There is a Huge Hawaiian presence there, including an L and L drive in and Hilo Hatties. But you should come here.

[AugustWest]

*throws hands up in despair*

Well, obviously there's a reason nobody's done this yet.  Seems nobody has the same things lying around the kitchen.  

I've tried the whole chicken thing -- honestly I have -- but I find that we either end up eating chicken every night for a week (getting really sick of it in the process) and still throw some of it away -- or I make a meal with part of it, boil and shred the rest for a casserole, which I make in huge helpings and then freeze, and make stock from the carcass, and then the casserole stays in the freezer for months until I forget that it's there, remembering only after the power's gone out and I'm throwing away all my frozen food.  The stock sometimes gets used, but for some reason mine always comes out weak-tasting and not worth the trouble that goes into making it.  

So the point is, whenever I buy a whole chicken, lots of it goes to waste, because between the two of us, we simply can't eat that much chicken.  As I said before, I imagine when we have kids I'll do this kind of thing more often -- it kills me to pay $2.49/lb for chicken when I could get a whole fryer for $0.79/lb, but it ends up costing more that way in the end.  

I've never thought to look for cornish hens at Sam's, tho -- I will have to try that, I always try to have a few in the freezer in case I'm called upon to make an elegant, crowd-pleasing dish on short notice.

Are you sure you don't have chickens confused with turkeys?  Or Emues (Emus?  Emi?  Emuses?)  er, Ostriches?  Mrs. West and I will each eat a breast, the girls like the legs and that leaves the thighs and back to shred.

And re: your stock.  How long are you boiling it?  I usually let mine simmer at least 2 hours.  Then some gets made into chicken vegetable soup with the shredded chicken and the rest goes into the freezer.

Spam eh?  Now there's a meat I haven't eaten this week.  Prolly full of sugar, though.

[CortJstr]

At least, that's how I remember it.  I wasn't sure if it was west of the M. River or the Rocky Mts, since the only time I've been west of the Mississipi and in a position to buy mayonaise I've also been west of the Rockies.

It's definitely west of the Mississippi because we have it here.

~Paul

You have which? I have an Imponderables book saying Hellmann's east of the Rocky Mtns and Best Foods west. It also says that when BF aquired H they decided to keep their distinct recipies so they wouldn't alienate customers. But by now they might be the same, what with all our modern lab ingredients.

I lived on hamburger helper and condiment packets for about 3 months until my income stabilized and I was able to buy decent food.

Hell, I don't even use Hamburger Helper now because I hate browning ground beef. All dirtying a pan, all have to drain molten grease, all not owning a splatter screen, all thinking the box calls for way more beef than actually works.

And what's the deal with white meat chicken? Only sucky ol' flightless birds have white meat because other birds are too good for it. Why is the only haven of the dark meat lover Popeye's?

[slink]

Does that chopped garlic in oil really keep safely?  You don't get botulism or something?

Erm, it is unsafe. It can develop a particularly nasty bacteria. So while people do it fairly often, it isn't wise.
The best thing to do is slice garlic very very thinly and melt it in the oil before you use it. Takes longer, but you're not going to kill people that way.

Chili's in oil is fine though.

[slink]

Oh, and as for food that is quick and uses what I got in, I would tend to always have spare Chinese egg noodles lying around, since you can knock up a good stir fry with what I have in in no time.

[pmcd9]

You have which?

I quess I wasn't entirely clear was I.  We have Hellmans in Texas.

~Paul

[wombat]

Does that chopped garlic in oil really keep safely?  You don't get botulism or something?

Erm, it is unsafe. It can develop a particularly nasty bacteria. So while people do it fairly often, it isn't wise.

JL, we don't want you to die of botulism, please learn to peel garlic!  Isn't it better than expiring of a fatal neurotoxin?