Tag: recipe

So here is Honest Tea included among “100 of the most notable beverage brands of the past 100 years,” according to Beverage World. Others include Coca-Cola, Perrier, Snapple, Evian, Bud Light, 7-Up, Jack Daniel’s, Gatorade, Starbucks and Absolut. How come Welch’s made it and V-8 didn’t? Yoo-hoo but not Dom Perignon? Jolt Cola but not Colt 45? So, OK, it’s a little capricious. But it’s nice, after 17 months in business, to be named a brand of the century.

Alicia Rasley: “About 12 years ago my husband and I bought universal life insurance policies, thinking the cash value would fund our children’s college tuition. (Well, that’s what the insurance agent told us!) I think we paid $7000 for $150K in coverage. (Single premium.) The cash value was supposed to increase rapidly, based on the interest rate then — you know 10-12%. Anyway, the latest statement shows the cash value is now around $7400. At least we’re back up around what we put in! And we have had life insurance all that time. But, as you might imagine, we’ve found other ways to save for college. This is a live-and-learn experience, and it’s no big loss financially. But I’m glad we never depended on it for college cash.”

The same term life insurance coverage might have cost $250 a year, and $7,000 invested in the Dow Jones 12 years ago would be worth — what? — maybe $40,000 today.

One of the randomly-rotating “quotes of the day,” at left, is from ex-Harvard Treasurer Paul Cabot: “I don’t understand a goddam thing about insurance, except that I don’t want to have any.” To which Steven Gilbert adds: “At a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting several years ago, a shareholder asked Warren Buffett whether the firm had key man insurance on his life. Buffett replied, ‘We sell insurance, we don’t buy insurance.'”

J. Raymond: “[With respect to Cooking Like a Guy™], fresh blueberries freeze well too. As a more acquired taste, you can peel a banana, cut it into relatively thin slices (similar in size to what you would probably use if you were putting them on your morning cereal) and stack these in a plastic container in the freezer. The stacking takes a bit of trial and error only because the banana slice surfaces tend to freeze to each other so you should “offset” them as much as possible to make them easier to remove (a fork works!) from the container after they freeze. It sounds a bit odd but if you’re a fan of Ben and Jerry’s ‘Chunky Monkey’ you might like this too. The blueberries are easier.”

Don’t miss Anna and the King. I didn’t expect to like it, but it’s wonderful. About love and justice — just like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, come to think of it. (But I invite the Thai scholars in the crowd to let me know just how egregiously it departed from historical fact.)

VITAMINS.COM

Joe: “My order, almost a month ago, from Vitamins.com also has not come, even after two calls to customer support. You get what you pay for (or in this case, you don’t get what you don’t pay for).”

Brian Miller: “Count me in for another who has not yet received my order from Vitamins.com.”

Sharon: “I ordered from them because of the $25 come-on. Over a month later I have received only a $6 bottle of vitamin E. They are attempting to resolve the unfilled order (a case of Atkins diet bars) but interestingly enough it cannot be handled by email or at the site but only by phone with about a 20 minute wait. The company was not prepared for the volume and hasn’t a clue about service. Planet RX is the best in my experience so far.”

HERBS

Dana Nibby: “Did you know taking ginkgo biloba and aspirin together could cause hemorrhagic stroke? Click here for details from healthcentral.com. I’d do a quick word search on any herb you’re taking, or considering taking, at healthcentral.”

GRAPES

Nick Corman: “I love frozen grapes. Cookies are another thing that always seem to go from being “good/very good” to “excellent/divine” after being frozen. Apple juice too, although many people over age 14 don’t really seem to like apple juice in any state for some reason. A little apple juice popsicle stick, though, is a delight. (Mmmm…now I’m all hungry for grapes and cookies and homemade apple juice Popsicles.)”

From time to time, I offer up a few of my best recipes. For a combination of ease-of-preparation and good taste (in the gustatory if not the aesthetic sense), they can’t be beat.

Recipe #1 – Frozen Grapes

1. Buy grapes.

Seedless. Red or green. I look for the loose ones the supermarket has collected into a plastic container and marked down because they’re almost too ripe.

2. Freeze.

That’s it. I generally put them in one of the large plastic containers the Hot and Sour Soup came in (after washing), or a in a few empty yogurt cups. I sometimes sprinkle sugar over them before freezing, or Equal if I’m feeling righteous.

To eat, merely remove cup from freezer, settle in front of TV, and enjoy. Pure and healthy. Cooking Like a Guy™.

Tomorrow: Variable Universal Life

What vegetable isn’t underappreciated, when you think about it? Yes, people will ooh and ahh over a terrific tomato — oh, those perfect New Jersey tomatoes in August, or the amazing beefsteak tomatoes you get at the Palm (not that you will often find me at the Palm, but when you do, I will be the guy who ordered the tomato). But tomatoes are ringers, being, as they are, members of the fruit group as well as the vegetable group. (This is what makes ketchup the indispensable food: a fruit, a vegetable, and a condiment.) Fruits are adored. The apple of his eye, a real peach, a plum of an appointment, the fruits of their labor — fruit has long had an outstanding P.R. firm. And the tomato has ridden the coattails of that good will. (In the old days: “She’s some tomato!”)

But tomatoes aside, who ever really gives vegetables their due? “He’s as dumb as an eggplant,” is the kind of imagery you get with a vegetable. Mr. Potato Head. Punch-drunk boxers with “cauliflower ears.” Children shoving spinach to the other side of their plates. Presidents eschewing broccoli. When was the last time you saw someone looking admiringly at a carrot (other than a horse)?

So I think after 949 of these daily columns it is about time — considerably past time — to say a few good things about beets.

Well, and artichokes and potatoes and all the rest of them, really, but you don’t have all morning, and I’m not getting paid for this, so let me just point out:

1. Artichokes are the ideal appetizer if you’re having a nice dinner because they take a long time to eat. (If you really like someone, dinner should be artichokes and lobster. If you really don’t: consommé and boneless filet of sole.) Nor do artichokes require melted butter, let alone that awful heavy sauce some people feel compelled to drown them in. They’re awesome just boiling (40 minutes or so) in their own juices. Be careful not to eat the chokes and kill yourself.

2. Potatoes saved the Irish and the Irish — and I don’t say this just because Charles is Irish — saved civilization. Seriously. You can read it in a book: How the Irish Saved Civilization . So it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in logic to make the connection. Potatoes saved civilization.

3. Beets are a kick-ass vegetable. A single beet has enough red dye in it — not fake dye, natural beet dye — to paint a large house. People don’t realize this, because there is so little demand for red houses, but it’s true. (Or is not true, but, if you have ever boiled beets, seems true.) And they taste good! People don’t realize that, either, but grab hold of a jar of borscht at your supermarket — the kind “made from real beets, not from concentrate” — and I say, move over Tropicana! Just work up a sweat, grab a bottle of borscht from the fridge, shake it up and swig it down. Forget the sour cream, and certainly forget heating it up, although that can be good too. Just chill, shake, and swig. Shake, rattle, and roll.

Tomorrow: Underappreciated Stocks

THANK YOU, GROVER NORQUIST

Following up from yesterday, may I say one more thing about Grover Norquist?

Things were pretty good in the Nineties: low unemployment and an economy pretty much in balance, with everyone getting richer and our National Debt shrinking relative to the size of the economy as a whole.

But thanks to Grover Norquist, things are even better now. Sure, we’re on the brink of national bankruptcy, politically paralyzed, and a third of us are below, at, or barely above the poverty line . . . but we have lower taxes! And if we’re rich, much lower taxes. God forbid we ever make the mistake of going back to a Nineties-style economic balance. The Republicans are all but unanimously pledged to make sure we never do.

IN CASE YOU LIKE NEWT

The new Republican front-runner. Yes, there was the thing about pressing his second wife for a divorce while she was in the hospital. But this is mainly about his hucksterism. Pretty devastating – here.

DEPT. OF IRONY

“We have candidates for President now saying that government can’t create jobs. These are guys with government jobs. They’re ON THE GOVERNMENT PAYROLL. Saying government can’t create jobs. Government created YOUR job.” – Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC

APRICOT JELL-O

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re allowed to eat JELL-O, but not red JELL-O – or even if you don’t – I have pretty wonderful news for you: apricot JELL-O. It’s really good (lemon-lime JELL-O is punishment no one deserves) and you can go even crazier and mix it with Haagen-Dazs peach sorbet. I know a thing or two about cooking.

My ostrich burger patties arrived from Louisiana — $3.50 a pound plus second-day air freight. The cooler kept it all frozen, and the burgers, which have about one-eighth of the fat of hamburgers and fewer than half the calories, tasted just about the same. Unlike turkey, or chicken, ostrich is very red meat. (Incidentally, my apologies for a typo in that nutritional table: the cholesterol numbers expressed in grams, as one of you sharp-eyed readers pointed out, should have been labeled milligrams.)

And for you vegetarians in the crowd (hey: looking at that very red meat has given me serious vegetarian thoughts), I recommend Health Valley fat-free “Healthy Soup in a Cup” — specifically, the “corn chowder with tomatoes.” I’m not saying it’s particularly frugal, at about $1.89 for what becomes 15 ounces of soup (though at least you don’t have to have it air-shipped, and no one has to chop its head off while it’s in the sand). And I’m not saying it’s all that elegant to be eating soup out of the same cup you cook it in. (Charles is in Paris or I’d never get away with this.) But I just love the efficiency of it all. It weighs next to nothing (cuts down on shipping and lets you “lug” a dozen of them home with your little finger). It tastes great (warning: I am an easy audience). And all you do is pour some boiling water into the cup (or microwave), let sit, drink, and toss out the cup. Not a bad hot lunch at the office once you get the hang of how long to microwave it. Who says life isn’t getting better every day? (What’s that? You object to tossing out the cup? Well, rinse it out and then use it for your coffee.)

Meanwhile, as I was hard at work taste-testing this stuff for you, my Russian stock broker coughed up every penny I was owed. It wasn’t like investing here, where you know you’ll get the proceeds of your sales promptly. The dollars took more than two months to arrive. But — to my mild surprise and great delight — I got back every cent of my original investment plus a nice fat profit (which you can rest assured I promptly blew on some other stupid investment). I think it certainly helped to have a friend on the scene to make some calls. And it helped that I spent a few hundred dollars to hire a firm that specializes in such matters. What I don’t know, and may never, is whether my Russian broker was actually trying to keep my money, or whether he had encountered difficulties and bureaucratic weirdnesses of his own. (“This is Russia!” after all, as people there are fond of saying.) But I said I’d let you know what happened, and that’s what happened.

I continue to think that, while speculative, Russia represents quite an opportunity. If the Templeton Russia Fund (TRF) should tank one of these days, perhaps on the eve of Yeltsin’s operation, or if it fails to go well, or there’s some other big scare, I think I’d pick up a few more shares. It’s risky . . . but not if it represents only a small portion of the funds you earmark for long-shots.

Finally, an update on my friend Jim Halperin’s first novel, The Truth Machine. It was no place two months ago and is now in every bookstore in the country, more or less, making me green with envy and Jim green with greenbacks. It’s an amazing story made more so last week, when Warner Brothers optioned the movie rights for big bucks. The producer is Bruce Berman, who was the studio head for the last two Batman movies and all three Lethal Weapons. And what I hate most about Jim Halperin is not his extraordinary success — that I suppose, as a friend, I could learn to abide — but the ease with which he does all this, part-time, while running a business. As we speak, I’m on page 257 of his second novel. Sad to say, it’s a lot of fun.

AMERICAN EXPRESS REWARDS – SAVE $50?

I think that in your May 14th comments on the American Express Rewards Program you should have mentioned that membership costs $25 per year (1st year waived) and $50 to enroll using a Corporate American Express Card. I’m sure Mr. Broad doesn’t worry about the fee, but others might.” [I had passed on the report of SunAmerica’s Eli Broad charging a $2.4 million Roy Lichtenstein painting to his Amex “to get the miles.”]

One interesting avenue explained to me by the nice lady at American Express is to enroll your personal card for the $25.00 fee and then link your Corporate card as a secondary card for free.” — Peter Iannone

Thanks, Peter. I don’t have a corporate card, but if I did, it sounds as if you’d have saved me $50.

OSTRICH MARINADE

David Davis, Public Relations director for Dallas’s Adolphus Hotel, read my comment about ostrich steak and suggested the following marinade. I’m not entirely sure what a marinade is — I think it’s what you let the ostrich steak sit in for a day or two before actually cooking it — but I know some of you will follow this as easily as others of us follow yield curves.

Ingredients:

6 whole lemons, skinned
6 sprigs fresh thyme, cleaned and stemmed
3 shallots, chopped
5 pearls garlic
2 tablespoons whole peppercorns (or 2 ounces)
4 cups salad oil (or 28 ounces)
3 tablespoons honey (or 3 ounces)

Directions:

Place the above ingredients–except for the salad oil–in a blender. Mix the ingredients well while slowly adding the salad oil a little at a time. When the mixture is thoroughly blended, pour it over the ostrich meat in a tight-fitting basting pan. DON’T STRAIN THE MARINADE. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 4 to 6 hours. Sear each ostrich portion and finish in the oven at 375 degrees for 10 minutes (max). Serve medium rare with fresh fruit, a sweet sauce (blackberry, for example) or a honey vinaigrette. Since it has virtually no fat, the ostrich meat has to be cooked sparingly. It dries out very quickly.

Let me know if you and your friends have problems with this recipe. I can find out how to fine-tune it for you. (I’m no help personally in this area. The kitchen in my condo is used as storage space for my financial records.)

Remember: Don’t strain the marinade!

HOOVER – BIG DAM, NOT SUCH A SMALL MIND AFTER ALL

And while Mr. Davis has the floor, here is yet another remarkable message (remarkable for the trouble he went to on our behalf). It is in response to my July 25 comment on Herbert Hoover. Hoover was writing to film studios in 1917, urging them to stop using real food in their movies. Either use something fake or take out the scene, he suggested, which I took to be a rather petty contribution to the War Effort. Was the fellow conserving steel by suggesting reuse of paper clips soon America’s Vice President?

But Mr. Davis adds perspective:

I went by the library after lunch today and flipped through some biographies on Herbert Hoover to see if I could find your letter referenced. No luck. But the books confirmed that he was appointed “Food Czar” by President Woodrow Wilson in May 1917. According to biographer Eugene Lyons, this is what happened: “In the months before his return [from Europe], he [Hoover] had made for Mr. Wilson quiet surveys of food, shipping, and other elements of war. . . . From the first, ‘food mobilization’ had been recognized as America’s number one obligation if and when it joined the war. The formation of a special agency to deal with every phase of food provisioning was the President’s suggestion, but the availability of Hoover doubtless hastened the decision. In conference with Wilson, on May 5, Hoover accepted the invitation to organize and head up this agency. He made the same stipulations he had made in assuming the Belgian burden; first, that he was to receive no pay, and second, that he was to have full authority.” Lyons goes on to say that “Some twenty million individuals–housewives, restaurant managers, food processors, wholesalers, retailers, shippers–signed pledges making them ‘members’ of the Food Administration, as attested by a certificate and lapel buttons. . . . The very landscape of America shrieked the reminder, ‘Food Will Win the War!’. . . .” More than you wanted to know, but there you are.

Sounds vaguely like Gerald Ford’s WIN pins — Whip Inflation Now.

I just found the Ceres web site. You are obviously associated with Ceres. What is that association? Are you a principal? By your association are you recommending Ceres? In your books you seem to espouse mutual funds over individual stocks as an investment. Have you changed your mind? — James Griffin

My association with Ceres: they pay me (generously) to write these comments. I have no stake in the company and no relationship beyond that. True, I wouldn’t have accepted the assignment if I doubted the company’s integrity. But so far as I know, they are sound and principled — and at $18 a trade, I had little fear anyone would be overcharged.

I still espouse low-expense, no-load mutual funds — for example, in the disclaimer at the top of each of these comments. But like a lot of people, I trade stocks anyway. Even (horrors!) the occasional option. When I do, I like to keep my transaction costs low. I do maintain “full-service” accounts at a well-known firm, but it is mainly out of loyalty to my long-time friend/broker there — a relationship begun several years before there were discount brokers or personal computers at all. I don’t have an account at Ceres, but have been very pleased with my account of several years’ standing at Accutrade, owned by the same parent. Accutrade costs more than Ceres, but I’m too lazy to switch. I also have an account at Fidelity, but use it mainly as a checking account.

Tomorrow: Ripley’s – Believe It Not

Bagels: the staff of life. But what if they go stale? Just give them 15 or 20 seconds in the microwave. It’s a miracle! Indeed, you will never have to throw out stale bagels or bread or buns or muffins again. Think of the money you’ll save!

(I’m less sure what to do if they’re moldy. I know mold on cheese can be a good thing.)

The same microwave nightmare that reheats but turns a crispy pizza crust mushy is the salvation of your stale baked goods.

You heard it here first. Or has Martha Stewart beaten me to it?

Much of the fun of writing this daily comment is the daily feedback. Herewith, a sampling:

With respect to the comment about my Rastafarian employee who’d been arrested for possessing a pound of marijuana — is society best served by paying to put such people in jail, I wondered? — came this sensible reply:

“I haven’t smoked (pot) in years and don’t want my granddaughter to, but the current system has proven ineffective and is a waste of tax dollars. If we are trying to protect people from themselves by making marijuana illegal, then what the hell does a drug bust do to their life?! (Never mind screwing up what could have been a fine day.)”

(As it turned out, the marijuana was confiscated and the charges dropped.)

With respect to my Jacqueline Onassis letter to Rudolf Nureyev, where I asked whom Jackie might have been referring to when she said, “Caroline is so jealous of Tina” — who was Tina? — one of you answered:

“Christina — Onassis’s daughter.” You kindly omitted . . . “you moron” . . . from your message, but you would have been fully entitled to think it.

Finally, with respect to baked potatoes, one of you wrote:

“Substitute parsley or chives for “lots of salt” and try the Light & Lively V-8, and I’ll give you a big Aaa…men!”

Another of you wrote:

“Think how much money you would save if you put that big potato in the same glass with the V8. Not only will it save on dish washing detergent, salt and pepper, you wouldn’t have to worry about burning the roof of your mouth.”

Touché.

Looking for a way to save money? The E in POTATO stands for “excellent.”

Microwave a big one until really mushy, with the skin all thick and wrinkled . . . add lots of salt and pepper and a tall glass of V8 . . . and you’ve got a healthy fat-free lunch for about a dollar. Save $4 a day this way for a year and, apart from helping to shed an unwanted pound or two, you’re $1,400 richer.

Careful: don’t burn the roof of your mouth.

Tomorrow: Priority Mail