Aging well? Don't let the mold get you down

So unlike most blog posts having to do with food and aging, I'm not actually going to talk about the effect food has on your aging process. No no no. Rather, I'd like to take a moment to discuss how food ages. Like a fine wine, getting better as the days go by? Or like chicken left out of the fridge, going spectacularly rancid. On that last note, I encountered my first rancid chicken breast over the summer (the scary thing is that I cooked with some of it, and it tasted fine, but when I defrosted the rest it was entirely gone. Blech). Not a sensory experience I'm looking forward to repeating.

This topic was brought on by some pumpkin cookies I baked on Monday (the recipe is here). For the last two weeks (and the next three), we're having Cookie Mondays at work. So two or three people bring in cookies to share with the floor. I decided to try a new recipe and made these pumpkin cookies. And as I was baking them, I tried them as they came out of the oven and man they were realllly bland. Embarrassingly bland. Such that I seriously considered going to the store and buying cookies. But I just made the icing and it sweetened them up a little, and I brought them in. Tuesday they were ok, a little better than I'd remembered from Monday. But I had two tupperware worth of leftovers to do something with. So I brought one to kickball for my teammates. I made some excuses, saying I thought they were pretty bland (I hadn't iced this bunch). But then I tried one, and they were really yummy! No more excuses, wow those cookies age really well! They were still very moist, and the rum-soaked raisins (I used regular rum because I didn't have the special flavored rum the recipe calls for) added some definite extra flavor. Note to self: next time I make this recipe, wait 2-3 days before serving.

On another occasion was my experience with an avocado. Over the summer, I made my tomato caper ziti recipe, which calls for avocado bathed in lemon crumbled on top. What I normally do is bring in the tomato ziti in a tupperware, and bring in the whole avocado to work. Then I slice the avocado in half, put the other half in tupperware for the next day. But on this occasion, I didn't eat the avocado the next day. In fact, it wasn't until friday that I pulled it out of the fridge (it went in on monday). And looking through the opacity of the tupperware, it looked very strange. I opened it up it had a blanket of mold growing up out of it. Blanket isn't the right word, that sounds thin. This was more like a shag carpet, like grass left too long without mowing, like a nice spongy moss. It was dark dark greenish bluish gray and covered the avocado so completely that had I not known there was an avocado in there, I wouldn't have been able to identify it. I threw out the tupperware without even washing it (well, of course I had to gross some co-workers out with it first...).

Meat is interesting with age. Pork does not deal with with reheating, even the next day. It's not bad for you, not rancid, it just doesn't taste good. Chicken is usually ok for a couple days (and may even be better the next day once the flavors have a chance to sit and enhance), but then it starts to glisten and get a funky flavor before it goes bad. Beef reheats very well, and again there's the flavor enhancement issue with letting it sit overnight, but I had an experience with stuffed grape leaves (beef and lamb) which I had cooked on Saturday and when I finished it up on Friday it gave me a pretty blinding headache.

People deal with aging dairy in different ways. For me, if milk (or cream) even has a hint of a bad smell, it's down the drain, no two ways about it. I did this once, however, and then had to deal with the shock of being told that "you can still cook with chunky cream." Ok, so it wasn't said exactly like that. But the gist of it was that cream can be used for cream sauce even if it's curdled. No thanks, not for me. However, I'll happily lop off the mold from cheese (I'm talking not normally moldy cheese) and eat the rest. I figure it's like penicillin. A little mold on bread? No worries, I'll just pick it off and toast it up.

What are your experiences (good or bad) with aging food? Anything you were surprised weathered time well? Or alternatively, were surprised at just how fast (or funkily) it went bad?

MacGyver in the kitchen

Most of you probably don't know that one of my favorite cheesy 80s/90s show of all time is ... MacGyver. When it was actually on the air, I watched all the new episodes, then I watched it on USA syndication every night at 7. I probably saw every episode about 3 times. Now I'm rewatching it through Netflix. Very nostalgic, really. And bad acting. But I can overlook that.

Because seriously, how can a show not be cool where a guy uses a chocolate bar to stop up an acid leak, running an clock on a potato, or using a binocular eyepiece to catch laser beams?

I think one of the appeals of the show is that he uses everyday objects to kick ass so decidedly. It's like a puzzle. They start playing that MacGyver theme, and you know he's going to throw together the ammonia, peanut butter, and vitamins into some new combo which gets him and the female heroine out of some totally hammed up cliche sticky situation.

So how can you be MacGyver in your own home? Your own kitchen even? No, we're not building bombs out of potatoes and dish soap. But I can tell you some tips on how to fix kitchen glitches, or ways to use kitchen products to get out of sticky situations.

1. Flour - Say your cat jumps on your lap and starts kneading your stomach with some seriously long claws. So you grab the nail clipper and set to it. And then the blood-curdling shriek lets you know that you really shouldn't have been distracted by the tv (MacGyver, of course), and you notice you've cut her nails a little too close. Then you start to freak out, because you've heard that cats can lose a lot of blood through their claws if you cut them too short. And what if she goes into her catbox and rousts around in there with her cut claw and it gets infected? So you grab your phone and dial the vet, which (because it's the weekend) reroutes you to the animal hospital. And what do they tell you to do to clot up her poor poor little kitty claw? Put flour on it. Seriously. And it works! (Not that I've personally been through this situation, no no not me...)

2. Potato - I seem to remember from Mr. Wizard that a potato actually can run a clock. But since I doubt you could get a potato clock to play Debussy's Arabesque as an alarm, I think I'll stick to my cell phone. Digression. Anyway. Point is, if you accidentally over-salt your dish, drop a peeled potato in while the dish is still cooking. The potato will absorb the excess salt.

3. Potato - So one day I'm sitting around and happen to glance at my hands. And the tips of my fingers are all black. Wtf? How did the tips of my fingers get black? So I grabbed my scrubbing rock thing (I have no idea what it's called, that probably indicates how much I actually use it...) and scrub the black off my fingers (I later realized that it was basil juice from tearing up basil leaves). Having sensitive skin, scrubbing is not the best option for me. Other options? Potatoes. Slice and rub raw potato on the stain and rinse with water.

4. Apple - If you're like me and only bake once a year (Christmas cookies, yum), then you may have a block of granite brown sugar sitting in your cabinet. And if you're like me, you looked in the cabinet and said "oooh, I have brown sugar, I don't have to buy any more!" And then leave that particular cookie recipe until you're covered in flour with hair going every which way, and thus in no condition to go out to the store (unless you want to get people running away looking at you funny). And so you scrape and scrape and scrape at the danged block of brown sugar, and grab out your grater on it (idea! would the slicer function of a food processor work on this?), and basically kill your shoulder getting a 1/4C of sugar off it. And really all you need to do is place a slice of apple in the container to soften it up. I also have a cute little pottery (terra cotta) bear that I got for Christmas (after the cookies, thank you very much) that can be soaked in water and then put in the container, same purpose as the apple, but more expensive.

5. Wine - Don't throw out your leftover wine! (you have leftover wine? Seriously?) It can be frozen into ice cubes and used in casseroles and sauces. Or if you're having a party and run out of alcohol, you could always just start sucking wine cubes. Now I'm curious how that would taste.

6. Marshmallow - My dad has a very cute cockapoo named Nik. Nik loves chocolate, and desserts, and well really any kind of food. They were eating ice cream cones the other day (the people, not the dog), when Nik started to whine feel really left out of all the sugary fun. So he takes an ice cream cone. Bites it from the bottom. Proceeds to get chocolate ice cream all over his white fur. And hasn't this happened to all of us (well, not the dog stealing your ice cream cone, but the bottom of the cone dripping all over your face and shirt)? Your remedy - stuff a miniature marshmallow at the bottom of the sugar cone to prevent any drips. Which won't help if you take a big bite out of the bottom, but it will stave off any unwanted drippage.

7. Lime - Bad headache? Throbbing like a techno club in your skull? Possible old wive's tale Potential miracle remedy - cut a lime in half and rub it on your forehead. Rumor has it the throbbing will go away.

Any other tips? MacGyverisms?

Breakfast of Champions

In case any of you missed the swimming yesterday (I think it was yesterday, it's hard to keep track of with my DVR), the American men's team won the freestyle relay. Cue Michael Phelps screaming for what seemed like ten minutes (or was that instant replay?).

So then they do a little background on Michael Phelps (and seriously, he has the cutest puppy ever, I have total puppy envy). And they read out of his autobiography (can you believe a 23-year old has an autobio already?) what he would eat for an average day for breakfast:

- 3 Sandwiches of fried eggs, lettuce, tomato, cheese, fried onions, and mayo
- one omelet
- a bowl of grits (is Baltimore considered the south?)
- 3 slices of french toast with powdered sugar
- 3 chocolate chip pancakes

He's supposed to eat 8000-10,000 calories a day. A DAY! In the piece they had on the tv, he basically says he eats as much as he can put in, because no matter how much he eats, he doesn't break 200lbs. Can you imagine how much he must be swimming on a regular basis that he can eat that much per day and not gain weight? Wow. His breakfast is more than I'd eat in an entire day.

They showed a dinner out at a Chinese restaurant, and the entire (6-person) table was covered (covered!) with plates of food.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to be able to eat that much (though training that much might be more problematic, I have no idea how he doesn't push into overtraining). But I think it'd be pretty hard to HAVE to eat constantly to keep my weight up. Easier that than to restrict to keep it down, but I think I'd be happy being able to consume about 3000-4000, that'd work for me!