Tag: recipe

RECIPE #6 – Stale Bread

Every cloud has a silver lining. You know how reheating pizza in a microwave turns its crispy crust soft? It’s something no guy can be happy about — but by the exact same principle of wave theory, a microwave will also take a stale slice of bread or English muffin or hot dog roll and render it warm, soft and moist.

Step #1: Insert stale bread. (Remove mold, as needed. Or not.)

Step #2: Nuke 10 or 12 seconds.

Step #3: Proceed with whatever you had in mind.

Gourmet Variant:

Find a hunk of old cheese way at the back of the refrigerator? Stick it on top of the bread before nuking, and nuke until it melts into a soft, creamy bread spread. Remove. Allow to cool. Eat. Brilliant with brie, cheddar, explorateur, parmesan, or any other rock of old cheese.

Tomorrow: A Novel Way to De-Seed Watermelon

ANY BOY

“The Boy Scouts of America’s leaders fought for the right to discriminate and won it. Now the question is, will the rest of us take action to dissociate from discrimination until BSA stops discriminating — as we would if we learned of an analogous admitted exclusion of African-American kids or others?” — Evan Wolfson, who argued the case before the Supreme Court

JEWISH JOKES

“That’s two Jewish jokes in the past weeks. Would similar humor about Blacks or Gays be as welcome? Not being either, I don’t know, but (being Jewish) I get a bit uneasy when I hear or read ‘Jewish jokes’ related by non-Jews. (Of course, if you’re Jewish, ‘Never mind.’)”

☞ Never mind.

THE ESTATE TAX

“You wrote: ‘I think the estate tax is good social policy’ [just horribly unwieldy]. What’s good about stealing from the dead?” — Brian Annis

☞ That it lessens the need to steal from the living?

THE TANNERS

“What other reasons are there for Allan Tanner day? I am just asking because if the Harry Potter refund was the only thing, then you would have been better apt to name it ‘Allan Tanner’s Daughter’s Day,’ which I admit is a little long. But anyhow as it is his day don’t leave his accomplishments shortsighted as to one that he didn’t accomplish. And there are many others.” — Naomi Tanner (Allan’s one and only daughter)

☞ Hmm. That could be read a number of ways. Should make for interesting Tanner table conversations. Maybe we should set up a 24-hour Tanner-Cam.

MUGGLE

” << Muggle >> Are you just making up your own words now? I can’t find this word in the dictionary.”

☞ Because, dear reader, you are using a muggle dictionary. Check your Thesaurcerus.

AMAZON

“I am glad that correspondent Allan Tanner enjoyed a positive experience with Amazon.com regarding delivery of the Harry Potter book. I did not. My 9-year-old daughter was one of the first 250,000 orders, and ordered specifically because of the Saturday delivery promise. However, Saturday came and went without the book. We called FedEx that afternoon for a delivery status report and was told that our section of rural North Carolina does not have Saturday FedEx delivery.

“Whoops. Well, you can’t blame Amazon for that. But we certainly expected the book Monday; instead, it showed up Wednesday, via regular US Priority Mail, long after my daughter left for Chapel Hill for basketball camp, and we had shelled out another $25 for a replacement copy to send with her. Did Amazon promise FedEx delivery for the first 250,000 orders, or did they not? According to Amazon, they did not. In an e-mail response to my complaint, they offered ‘apologies for any misunderstanding regarding this order. We offered the special upgrade to Saturday delivery for the first 250,000 qualifying orders, but orders which did not qualify . . . were shipped with the (normal) shipping method.’

“Unlike the Tanners, Amazon has not offered to recompense us. And that’s OK, I understand FedEx Saturday delivery zones are out of their control, but I am upset that Amazon did not communicate that all areas of the country would not be able to avail themselves of this offer. Amazon has lost a valued customer (us) for life over this. I guess the lesson is, the best-intentioned attempts at customer service can backfire, huh?” — Mike Hawkins

AMAZON, TOO

“I was one of the 250K who bought Harry Potter from Amazon and got my book on Saturday. And I appreciate the goodwill that Amazon is generating, I really do like those folks. BUT my girlfriend had her copies by 10 AM Saturday — and for a few bucks less than I paid — by going to Costco. I waited till noon, then 1:30 and having tracked my shipment knew that it was put on a FED EX delivery truck at 9:19am I finally called at 2:30. Yes, said the man, Saturday shipments should be there by noon… Oh wait a minute yours is coming from Amazon, it must be the Harry Potter book. Yes said I. Well, said he, we made a special deal with them — our commitment was to have them all delivered by 8pm. Mine finally came at 4:30. As much as I like trying new shopping methods — I don’t think I would have done it had I known when I was ordering.” — John Seiffer

COOKING LIKE A GUY?

“Yo! Let’s cut to the chase. All guys have blenders. Mix: 1 part ice, 2 parts ice cream (vanilla), 1 part rum (light). This will render your best milkshake ever.” — Wayne Arczynski

☞ Yo, Wayne!

Corn: the only food that needs no cleaning, comes in its own microwavable container — and has its own handle! Reason enough to set sail for the New World.

Four minutes in the microwave, allow to cool down, pull back the green husks (which thus form an even larger handle), apply butter and salt. Chomp. (Corn handle gripped tightly in left fist, beer bottle in right.)

There you have it, a true miracle of nature: Corn — Cooking Like a Guy™ Recipe #5.

No offense to the other vegetables.

Happy summer.

(For previous recipes, none of them requiring a whisk, see December 13, January 5, January 21 and April 11.)

Responding to my recipe for Chicken a la King, Joel Williams has chimed in with his own Cooking Like a Guy™ recipe. Joel writes:

“Not quite cooking like a guy. But if you want to entertain your guests with something better than chicken out of a can, try this beef stew recipe:

Invite some guests over for the next evening (recipe serves 4 really hungry or 6 not so hungry).

4 pounds boneless cut up beef
1 pound bacon
4 bulbs garlic
4 oranges
2 or more bottles red wine
1 pound mushrooms, sliced
Olive oil
Fresh sage, thyme, basil, and parsley – finely chopped up, in equal amounts – about 3/8 cup
1 Video of “The Matrix.”

Sauté the mushrooms in a very little of the olive oil
Cut the bacon into 1-inch pieces
Peel and cut up the garlic into small pieces
Squeeze the oranges, saving the juice. Peel and then cut the skin into small strips.
Combine everything in a large pot. Add red wine and water (about 50-50) with the orange juice to cover. Bring to a simmer.
Watch “The Matrix.”

Take the pot off the stove and put in refrigerator.

Next day you will find about 1/4 inch of fat on the top. Skim it off. Do this before your guests arrive, if they are a bit squeamish. Otherwise, perform this act in a ceremonial fashion when they arrive.

Cook some rice, wheat, or barley. Warm up the beef stew. Serve the beef over the rice or whatever. Serve the rest of the wine with dinner.

Advantages:

(1) You do all of the work the previous day, so you can attend to your guests when they come. All you have to do is warm and serve.
(2) It is really easy, even though you do have to chop some stuff.
(3) Your guests will be happy that you are not giving them chicken out of a can.
(4) Skimming off the fat makes it relatively healthy.

Disadvantages

(1) You do have to chop some stuff.
(2) All of the work is done the previous day, so you have to plan — not really a guy thing.
(3) You already saw The Matrix.”

Are you crazy?  Do you know how much work this is?  And how much you’ll have to clean up?  If he wants something really elaborate like this, any self-respecting guy will rent “The Matrix” and pick up the phone.  It’s called, “Chinese,” and in any decent size town, they deliver.

We did money-, earth-, and face-saving yesterday but forgot the all important time-saving.

Not that Cooking Like a Guy™ isn’t light on the budget and the planet — it is. But for saving time, nothing can top it.

RECIPE #4 – Chicken à la King

1. Open can.

2. Serve.

I would point out that by “serve” I mean: hold the can in one hand and a spoon in the other. (You will know instinctively which goes in which.)

I am fully aware that some will choose to place the contents of the can in a microwaveable container, heat a minute, and then serve. That’s fine, too. And hey, maybe some parsley on top! Some linen napkins and a touch of sherry! But gimme a break. We are talking about cooking like a guy.

Coming Soon: Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS)

Bruce Bouts, MD: “Re: Cooking Like a Guy™ — a warning. Some may be tempted to cook an egg in haste by nuking (microwaving) it. Never nuke an (uncracked) egg!!! They explode. Saw an uncomfortable bachelor while I was in Residency a few years back who had done just that. He received a faceful of second degree burns.”

The pain! The embarrassment! Talk about egg on your face. And in a similar vein . . .

Steve Gilbert: “You probably mentioned this (I somehow missed any prior discussion about heating beans in a can, but I can imagine you suggesting it), but it’s a good idea to open the can prior to heating. Minimizes explosions.”

Well, of course, any guy knows you can’t put cans, or any metal in a microwave. And as one who long ago tried boiling a can of Spaghettios, I can tell you that the problem is less explosive than manipulative. That is, how exactly do you grab the incredibly hot can out of the boiling water and open it? I mean, OK, with the right tongs and asbestos kitchen mitts, I suppose it can be done — but what self-respecting guy has tongs or a kitchen mitt? Few pairs of pliers are sufficiently wide-jawed for the job. Plus you’re right — you could have bean juice spewing all over the kitchen, or even an explosion. (There is a small school of thought that rejects the comet theory for that massive crater in Siberia — was it 1908? — and suspects exploding beans.)

Which is why I quickly learned to open the can first and allow it to bob in the boiling water, open end up. You just have to experiment to make sure it doesn’t tip over. Put two or three cans in at once, in a small pot, so it is geometrically impossible for any of them to tip over. Or do what I’ve come to do with age and increasing sophistication — just open the can and start eating. Who says beans have to be hot?

Tomorrow: Was Our 99.6% “Worst Case” Tax Bracket on an Inherited IRA Correct?

Q-Page Folks: Sorry for some recent snafus. Should be fixed now.

Todd Jennings: “My father-in-law, a big-time salmon fisherman on his annual trips to Alaska, taught me about wrapping the big fish in aluminum foil, then running them through two cycles of the dishwasher to poach them. I loved the 3×5 card he wrote for me back in the 1970’s: ‘Wrap fish, put in dishwasher, run one cycle, turn fish over, run for another cycle. DO NOT USE DETERGENT!'”

Charley Kneifel: “Speaking of ‘cooking like a guy’ — I have a book by Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller titled Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine.”

R. J. Kirsch: “Another interesting (and funny) cookbook for guys: The Kitchenless Cookbook, by Suanne Beverly.

RECIPE #3: SALAD

1. Buy a big bag of ready-to-serve salad. Being rather sophisticated, I prefer the “romaine” kind that has a variety of greens. But there’s nothing wrong with the iceberg/carrots/cabbage kind, either.

2. Dump into a big plastic bowl. Or not; but Tupperware is hard to beat when it comes to elegance and versatility.

3. Douse with soy sauce. Soy sauce should be bought in bulk, as it is an indispensable member of the Salt family and complements any fine meal.

4. Douse with olive oil. In an earlier era, it would have been “drizzle” with olive oil, but that all changed when I saw on the “Today Show” that olive oil actually improves the ratio of your bad and good cholesterol, and has all sorts of other pleasing side effects, such as getting you to enjoy salad in the first place, and improving your Italian.

5. Toss. This is best accomplished with clean hands or two forks.

That’s it. And it’s actually less involved than it sounds.

Hint: No need to clean the plastic container! Assuming you only were able to fit half the bag of salad into the container (leaving “tossing” room – you can’t fill it too full), now you can dump the remaining half into the same container and clamp on its Tupper-lid. Sure, the salad at the bottom will get a little soy/oil onto it, but why not? That’s the best part. Just put it back in the refrigerator until tomorrow, when you repeat steps #3-#5.

Gracious dining tip: Sure, you can eat at six-thirty and have your salad before the entrée. But if you want to dine, you would sit down to the TV at eight o’clock — at the earliest — and have your salad after the entrée.

The Internet teems with deals. Dealcatcher.com alerts you to many of them.

Like this one: “If you switch to Qwest fiber-optic long distance,” reports Dealcatcher, “they will send you a $100 check (a real check, not just credit).” You get 5.9-cent-per-minute long distance, anytime; no monthly fee; your name removed from all major telemarketing lists; and a $25 coupon for taking an online tour of the service.

“A hundred dollars buys a lot of 39-cent cheeseburgers,” concludes Alan Light, who kindly sent me this link.

That was a reference, of course, to yesterday’s column, about McDonald’s, which elicited a skillet of responses.

Someone named Harold wrote: “Hey, you missed out on the Senior drinks at Mickey Ds for 25 cents!”

Wow. A quarter for a sarsaparilla? This deal may not be available in your area, but it’s certainly worth admitting your age to find out.

Paul Langley: “Our dog Perry, a Border Collie, who just turned 13 and refuses to eat dog food as of last fall, well knows the McDonald’s cheap burger secret. Every Sunday he goes to the drive-in window and gets six cheeseburgers (they’re 49 cents here in Boston) and has two a day until he returns on Wednesday to get eight regular burgers (they’re 39 cents here) which last until Sunday when the cycle repeats. Sometimes he lets his dads buy extra so they can have some too. There is one flaw to your otherwise excellent plan and that is that at the McDonald’s we go to they limit the quantity to 10 per customer.”

Not when I bought my 20, they didn’t. But if there is such a rule, this may be its genesis:

Jesse Lunin-Pack: “Your story reminds me of my days running the kitchen at a sleepaway camp (my first brush with responsibility, age 21). The local McDonalds advertised 25-cent hamburgers, and I ordered 1000 of them. We cooked up some fries and fed the whole camp for less than it would have cost us to cook all the food ourselves, and the kids LOVED it. The next time they did it, the McDonalds added some fine print to their offer — limit of 10 per customer!”

Toby Gottfried: “39 cents? You forget the $10,000 for the coronary bypass operation.” (Splurge, several of you suggested, and eat non-meat Boca Burgers instead.)

Rick Mayhew: “Taco Bell has 39 cent tacos on Wednesday (soft) and Sunday (crunchy). My wife and I have a meal for $1.67 (tax included). We drink tap water. The funny thing is, we like it. If it were a hardship then they wouldn’t taste nearly as good!”

I just find that dog so annoying. Isn’t he in the Taco Bell ads?

R. J. Kirsch: “[In the spirit of] Cooking Like a Guy™, have you read Cooking Without A Kitchen: The Coffeemaker Cookbook, by Peter Mazonson?”

No, but it’s clearly my kind of book. Amazon says “Unique utilization of the appliance. Basket is used to steam food and carafe to heat items.” Fun, quick, healthy and little clean up. My kinda cuisine.

Are you all aware, incidentally, that you can poach a salmon in your dishwasher?

It’s true!

CHEAPBURGERS

I don’t want you planning any big dinner parties around this until you verify it for your own community, but McDonald’s — Mickey D’s, as gourmets know it around the world — seems to be giving away the store. I walked in Sunday night, the guest of a guy who cooks like a guy, and confronted the usual brightly backlit billboard of enticing $2 and $3 choices. Nowhere on the board did it reveal the secret my friend claimed to know (he told me he had seen it revealed in a massive TV ad campaign): that on Sundays, cheeseburgers are 39 cents at McDonald’s.

“No way,” I had told my friend, much as a muggle might regard the prospect of an all-owl postal service. (I read Harry Potter over New Year’s.)

“Way,” he insisted. “Watch this.”

And before you knew it, we had all feasted royally . . . his treat . . . and I had forked over $8.40 (with tax) for an additional 20 cheeseburgers “to go.”

Therefore:

1. Buy cheapburgers. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have bought 50 or 100.
2. Freeze. Not the ones you plan to eat in the next few days, but the rest.

That’s it. When you’re hungry, just microwave for a minute. I had one just now for breakfast. Outstanding. (Charles was beyond horrified.)

Hint: To moisten even more delectably before microwaving — and to increase the nutritional content of your meal — lift the top bun after 40 seconds and add a glop of ketchup. (Ketchup is both a fruit and a vegetable.) Then microwave a final 20 seconds. I don’t usually like to complicate my recipes with an extra step, but in this case, it’s worth it.

Note: Requires no cookware or utensils of any kind, either for cooking or dining. The cheeseburgers come individually wrapped, suitable for microwaving. Clean-up, upon completion of the meal, consists of scrunching the wrapper into a ball and rebounding it off the wall into the trash. (Scrunch with all ketchup and grease on the inside, so as not to mark the wall.)

Want to save even more money? Wednesdays, plain hamburgers are 29 cents.

Thirsty? Quaff, naturally, with an ice cold bottle of Honest Tea.

Money no object? Mondays, chicken McNuggets are 79 cents. Go wild.

Vegetarian? Well, truthfully, I think we’ll be hearing more and about animal rights, and finding it less and less preposterous. I’m not a big carnivore. But 39 cents? My taste for a bargain overcame my greener, healthier self.

This is my last column of the century, so I think I should write about something more important than vegetables. (“The beet,” Russell Turpin writes in response to last month’s column, “is also the most serious of vegetables. Don’t take my word for it. Borrow a copy of Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins, and read the first paragraph.” Adds Denise Sumner: “It’s the only book I’ve ever read in which a beet — or any vegetable, for that matter — is so….well, appreciated.”) Or frozen grapes. (“Another thing you can do with frozen bananas,” writes Anne Speck in response to someone who had put in a word for freezing banana slices, “is throw them in the blender with a spoonful of cocoa or carob powder and a splash of vanilla. Blend it up and you have something resembling a chocolate milkshake without the fat.”)

But what?

I could try to just give each of you a hundred dollars, as money is what a lot of you seem to be interested in. (Me, too.) But American Express has already beaten me to that punch. In order to get you to sample its free brokerage commissions, Amex will now give you $100 cash for opening a brokerage account (refer to Wall Street Journal “Promotion Code 100” and/or call 800-297-7006 if you have problems).

It was once enough just to offer free commissions. Now Amex is paying you $100 to try free commissions. My hunch is that, if this works well, Amex may offer a free toaster as an enticement to take the free $100 to try the free commissions. Toasters have always been a draw for this sort of thing, because their little toast thermostats so quickly break (assuming you never clean them, which no Cooking Like a Guy™ guy ever does), leaving them little more than fire hazards. So everyone could use a new toaster, if not now, then soon, and offering them free would be a way to encourage people to take the free $100 to try the free commissions.

There are huge profits to be made from a promotion like this, which must be one reason American Express stock has been soaring. I can’t compete with a powerhouse like American Express, so rather than give you $100 from my own pocket, I will just join you in running over to American Express for my free $100.

So. No vegetables, no grapes, no free money.

What then? The shirt off my back?

No — although, thanks to alert reader Gary Krager I can steer you to an almost-free $40 men’s dress shirt. (Click here.)

So, then — what?

It seems to me that a few fond words about the Twentieth Century may be in order.

Being a glass-half-full type, I see not the horrors of the Twentieth Century, like the World Wars and Apartheid and the failed communist experiment, but the fact that we survived them and may have learned something from them. Let’s hope. I see not the Depression, but the estimable institutions it caused us to create — principally the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve System, which have served us well.

The amazing thing about this century of radio and TV and automobiles antibiotics and movies and computers (and Velcro and zippers) is that for the first time we realized that virtually anything is possible. Flight -– even to the moon. Instant wireless communication from any mouth to any ear on the planet. Bloodless surgery. Genetic engineering. Even immortality, Bill Gates has noted — and I’m quite sure he’s right — is by now “just a software problem.” (Unsure in just how many decades they will finish debugging the code, I am eating as healthily as I can.)

We could certainly screw it up. But we now have it within our grasp to do almost anything. For thousands and thousands of years, since we lived in caves, this was merely the stuff of dreams.

The other amazing thing about this century — if less miraculous, no less important — is the progress we’ve made in recognizing the fundamental validity of individual human rights. (“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that . . .”)

• It was only 79 years ago that women got the vote. By now, even most Republicans think it’s a good idea — even though the Bible says women should be subservient.

• Until just 35 years ago, African Americans were still officially second-class citizens in part of America. By now, happily, most of that is ancient history — even though the Bible says, “slaves, obey thy masters” (Colossians) “with fear and trembling” (Ephesians).

• And until just 8 years ago, when the Governor of Arkansas began running for President, the issue of fairness and equality for gays and lesbians had never been placed on the national agenda, debated in prime time. Today, much of mainstream America has come to know us as their friends and neighbors, sons and daughters, colleagues and employees. The Republican leadership has yet to get this one right, but they will.

Anything is possible, and every constructive citizen deserves equal rights and respect. Not a bad century. This next one could be even better. With your help, it will be.

And at least until these crazy e-commerce valuations collapse, a lot of stuff will be free.

Happy New Year!