Entry tags:
Meme
That Southern-USA-focused food prep meme going around...
1. Made biscuits from scratch?
Yup. Multiple times.
2. Fried fresh okra?
Nope. Can't stand the stuff.
3. Made sourdough bread?
Yes, multiple times! I have not been documenting my experiences in recent weeks here because I am lazy and it turns into Work [tm] if I do that, but while I haven't had great success producing lofty round loaves (mostly because I haven't got the kneading and proofing down right, I think), I have made sourdough sandwich bread multiple times in multiple ways that is quite good (and doesn't taste like sourdough at all!), as well as sourdough crackers, sourdough chocolate chip cookies, sourdough pizza crust, sourdough biscuits, sourdough brownies, sourdough pancakes, sourdough banana pancakes, sourdough banana bread... OK I lie,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
myrialux did the latter three, and made multiple varieties of sourdough banana bread because the CSA keeps piling banana after banana on us. Oh, I think he also did a sourdough banana chocolate chip muffin and a key lime sourdough cookie as well. And sourdough buckwheat pancakes.
We've done a lot of sourdough cooking, is what I'm trying to tell you. We are currently working on a local bakery's sourdough loaf, however, as I have shoved my three starters (white, whole wheat, and mix) into the fridge to starve for a few weeks in the attempt to build flavor, because NONE OF THE STUFF WE'VE BAKED AND COOKED ACTUALLY TASTES LIKE SOURDOUGH.
4. Fried chicken?
Yup. Not deep-fried, but battered and pan-fried. I usually just bake it, though, because it's easier and less mess.
5. Made spaghetti sauce from scratch?
Yup, lots of times. I used to have a puttanesca recipe downloaded from rec.arts.cooking back in the day that I loved, but which I have lost sometime in the past..er, 25 years.
6. Made any kind of yeast bread?
Yup!
7. Baked a cake from scratch?
Loads of times.
8. Made icing from scratch?
Multiple varieties, even.
9. Cooked a pot roast with all the veg?
Yup. But the way I love it, which is entirely due to comfort-food reasons and not much actual merit, is Pot Roast in Foil, which isn't done with vegetables(you can cook them separately if you wish). You get a hunk of chuck roast, season it with salt and pepper, dump the contents of a packet of onion soup mix on top of it, seal it all up, and chuck it into a 350°F oven for a few hours, until it's falling-apart tender. That was a mid-century food fad that my mom did many times while I was growing up, and I did when I was on my own. Haven't done it in a long time, though, Maybe the next time chuck roast's on sale...
10. Made chili from scratch?
Yup, proper Texas chili, chili with beans in, black bean chili, even vegan chili.
11. Made a meatloaf?
Have I made meatloaf? Of course I've made meatloaf! I've even made pork loaf.
12. Made scalloped potatoes?
Maybe? I can't actually remember, because I don't like scalloped potatoes. But I've done many, many potato recipes, including some which are really close to scalloped potatoes that might count?
13. Made mac/cheese from scratch?
Yup. I don't like it--I imprinted on the orange box stuff--butmyrialux loves it, and I have made him some for his birthday before.
14. Made a jello salad?
No. I have been confronted with many at various potlucks and church dos while growing up, but never actually made one, because I have always hated them.
15. Made peanut brittle?
No, because I don't much like peanuts. I'm reasonably sure I've made another variety of brittle, not that I can remember it. My grandfather made peanut brittle all the time, which people tell me was good, but I was obliged to choke it down and smile and tell him it was good because Family, which cannot have helped my aversion to peanuts.
16. Made fudge?
Yup. But why one would make fudge when one can make brownies I have no idea. (A lot of that is due to the whole lactose-intolerance thing, really; while I'm a chocolate lover, I'm an even bigger lover of chocolate that I don't have to take lactase pills to eat.)
17. Made cookies from scratch?
When have I not made cookies from scratch? (OK, when they're Oreos or Girl Scout cookies, yes.)
18. Cooked a pot of beans from dried beans?
Yup! Lots of times, although I usually just use canned beans because it's faster and doesn't require me to be home all day while a pot of beans is simmering on the stove.
19. Cooked a pot of greens?
Maybe? I presume I have been compelled to do it sometime in childhood for some do or other, but given that I don't like 99% of greens* I don't see a reason why I should cook them. Unless, like this upcoming week, we end up with a giant bunch of kale because we forgot to edit the CSA thingy...
*The one time I liked greens, it was served at a daycare and I remembered it vividly because I thought it was spinach and I knew I didn't like spinach, but ate it because we HAD to eat everything and...it didn't taste like spinach! So I thought I liked spinach! Boy was I in for a surprise the next time Mom made spinach! I think it might have been turnip greens instead? Not sure. Other than that, raw baby spinach is fine. Cooked, baby spinach gets the same bitter icky flavor that adult spinach has.
20. Made cornbread from scratch?
Yup. This is where I turn in my Southerner card, though, because it tastes better sweet. Fun fact: the Southern aversion to sugar in cornbread comes from old-time Southern cornbread being made with a very sweet corn so you didn't need sugar. But the corn varieties widely available have changed, so the one usually used isn't as sweet, but they still don't put sugar in to sweeten it, and tastes have changed to prefer it. Although if you're confronted with non-sweet cornbread, there ain't nothing that can't be fixed by dumping a load of honey on it.
21. Made a pie dough from scratch?
Yup, but it's a hassle unless it's a crumb crust, so I just buy crusts.
22. Cooked a whole turkey?
More than once, even! It's easier it you process it into pieces or spatchcock it first, though, and now I've taken to just buying already-roasted turkeys for holiday meals.
23. Snapped green beans and cooked them?
Yup. The black Lab we had growing up loved the smell of snapped green beans and would sit there, drooling copiously at me, as I snapped them. I'd give her one, she'd mouth it a bit and drop it on the floor with a clear, "No, I want the one that smells good, not that one."
24. Made mashed potatoes from scratch?
There's another way to make them? (i.e. mashed potatoes from a box taste DISGUSTING and why would you do that when you can just boil some potatoes and mash them?)
25. What’s the most people you have (alone) prepared a whole meal for?
Alone? 4 or so? With a bit of assistance, 9. You can't really prepare a meal for 5+ alone unless you do all of it before people come over because in my experience people bustle into the kitchen, say "Is there anything I can help with?" and won't take No for an answer. So I have to devote brain cycles to figuring out where I can slot their help into my mental plan, which screws me up (hello ADHD!). So I have to plan from the beginning where there are things other people can do.
26. Poached an egg?
Yup. Althoughmyrialux is the egg-poaching master in the household, because of ramen.
27. Made pancakes from scratch?
Yup. It's not any harder than making them from a mix, and I'm more likely to have scratch ingredients on hand than mix ingredients.
28. Roasted vegetables in the oven instead of boiling them?
Yup. I grew up with a mom that made the transition from boiling to roasting when it started getting more widely practiced in the late 70s and early 80s. As an academic family we sort of skirted the edge of granola (the description of a lifestyle, not the food), so we adopted "health" foods and practices earlier than most in our area.
29. Made fresh pasta?
Yup! Oh! Add "sourdough pasta" to the list above. It was good, if a bit thick because neither of us has the patience to roll it out thin enough and because of pandemic panic there are no pasta attachments for our stand mixer to be found anywhere in the metroplex.
30. Made croissants from scratch?
No. I've made puff pastry from scratch once--never again--and I do not like croissants enough to bother with all the folding/laminating stuff to get the butter properly distributed throughout the dough. On the rare occasion I wish to eat a croissant, I purchase one. (and that's usually because there's nothing else that appeals to me in the case wherever I am.)
31. Made tuna salad?
Loads of times. Tuna fish sandwiches were a standard food we ate growing up. I do not like crunchy relish/pickle bits in it: I prefer minced green onions for the crunch part. Do not speak to me of grapes, apples or nuts in tuna, chicken or egg salad.myrialux makes it with relish because it's a comfort food, but he can do what he wishes with food he eats.
We usually don't make it now because the cats are annoying when tuna is in the air.
32. Fried fish?
Yes, panfrying, not deep frying. I don't like deep-frying because of having to handle All That Oil, so I just pan-fry stuff with a lot of extra oil, or bake it instead. We've been considering a FryDaddy or such because you can leave the oil in it for a few rounds until it's got so many bits in it that the flavor changes (although you're supposed to strain it frequently), but the problem is we have no storage space for it.
Anyway, unless you've gone fishing and caught the fish yourself there's no point to fried fish at home when you can just go buy some at one of the many places that serve fried fish. (Around here, that would be the place that will give you a fried fish meal in exchange for your old Big Mouth Billy Bass, which they use as decor...turned off, yes.)
33. Made baked beans?
Yup.
34. Made ice cream from scratch?
Yup. We got a foncy ice-cream maker as a wedding present and most recently it made cantaloupe sorbet.
35. Made jam or jelly?
Once. It didn't jell. I haven't really had the desire to make it since, because I don't eat it much.
36. Zested an orange or lemon?
We even own a microplane.
37. Made grits from scratch?
Nope. Don't like 'em.
38. Made an omelette?
Lots of times, in lots of ways. The classic French way, the Jacques Pepin way in which if it goes too long and browns it's now "country style," the big fluffy diner-omelette way that uses whipped cream to puff up... My personal way is a sort of blend of the classic French way and Jacques Pepin's way, with none of the grace and style inherent in them, but which I like.
39. Lived in a house without a dishwasher?
Yes. We were in the Serengeti at the time, so not only was there no dishwasher, we didn't even have electricity except for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. (Mom tells me the fridge had a generator to itself, but we had no freezer.)
The first house we lived in after we got back from Africa wasn't built to account for a dishwasher, but the landlord had equipped it with a big dishwasher on wheels, that stayed over in the breakfast nook area of the kitchen most of the time, and when you wanted to wash dishes you rolled it over to the sink, plugged a hose to a faucet and laid another in the sink to drain, and started it. I don't remember much about it because I was too young to be trusted with the dishes until we moved to the next house, which had one built in. That rolly dishwasher had a countertop on top of it, which was nice because it provided more prep space if you needed it.
40. Eaten a bowl of cereal for supper?
Specifically for supper, no. I mostly eat cereal as a snack, and that's stuff like Froot Loops or Honeycomb, that's sweet and crunchy and big enough to be picked up by hand. As I never liked milk,I didn't much like it in cereal either, and a bowl of cereal does not hold me for longer than an hour or so. (I will occasionally eat Raisin Bran because I am at the age where you get supremely concerned about your fiber intake.)
1. Made biscuits from scratch?
Yup. Multiple times.
2. Fried fresh okra?
Nope. Can't stand the stuff.
3. Made sourdough bread?
Yes, multiple times! I have not been documenting my experiences in recent weeks here because I am lazy and it turns into Work [tm] if I do that, but while I haven't had great success producing lofty round loaves (mostly because I haven't got the kneading and proofing down right, I think), I have made sourdough sandwich bread multiple times in multiple ways that is quite good (and doesn't taste like sourdough at all!), as well as sourdough crackers, sourdough chocolate chip cookies, sourdough pizza crust, sourdough biscuits, sourdough brownies, sourdough pancakes, sourdough banana pancakes, sourdough banana bread... OK I lie,
myrialux did the latter three, and made multiple varieties of sourdough banana bread because the CSA keeps piling banana after banana on us. Oh, I think he also did a sourdough banana chocolate chip muffin and a key lime sourdough cookie as well. And sourdough buckwheat pancakes.We've done a lot of sourdough cooking, is what I'm trying to tell you. We are currently working on a local bakery's sourdough loaf, however, as I have shoved my three starters (white, whole wheat, and mix) into the fridge to starve for a few weeks in the attempt to build flavor, because NONE OF THE STUFF WE'VE BAKED AND COOKED ACTUALLY TASTES LIKE SOURDOUGH.
4. Fried chicken?
Yup. Not deep-fried, but battered and pan-fried. I usually just bake it, though, because it's easier and less mess.
5. Made spaghetti sauce from scratch?
Yup, lots of times. I used to have a puttanesca recipe downloaded from rec.arts.cooking back in the day that I loved, but which I have lost sometime in the past..er, 25 years.
6. Made any kind of yeast bread?
Yup!
7. Baked a cake from scratch?
Loads of times.
8. Made icing from scratch?
Multiple varieties, even.
9. Cooked a pot roast with all the veg?
Yup. But the way I love it, which is entirely due to comfort-food reasons and not much actual merit, is Pot Roast in Foil, which isn't done with vegetables(you can cook them separately if you wish). You get a hunk of chuck roast, season it with salt and pepper, dump the contents of a packet of onion soup mix on top of it, seal it all up, and chuck it into a 350°F oven for a few hours, until it's falling-apart tender. That was a mid-century food fad that my mom did many times while I was growing up, and I did when I was on my own. Haven't done it in a long time, though, Maybe the next time chuck roast's on sale...
10. Made chili from scratch?
Yup, proper Texas chili, chili with beans in, black bean chili, even vegan chili.
11. Made a meatloaf?
Have I made meatloaf? Of course I've made meatloaf! I've even made pork loaf.
12. Made scalloped potatoes?
Maybe? I can't actually remember, because I don't like scalloped potatoes. But I've done many, many potato recipes, including some which are really close to scalloped potatoes that might count?
13. Made mac/cheese from scratch?
Yup. I don't like it--I imprinted on the orange box stuff--but
myrialux loves it, and I have made him some for his birthday before.14. Made a jello salad?
No. I have been confronted with many at various potlucks and church dos while growing up, but never actually made one, because I have always hated them.
15. Made peanut brittle?
No, because I don't much like peanuts. I'm reasonably sure I've made another variety of brittle, not that I can remember it. My grandfather made peanut brittle all the time, which people tell me was good, but I was obliged to choke it down and smile and tell him it was good because Family, which cannot have helped my aversion to peanuts.
16. Made fudge?
Yup. But why one would make fudge when one can make brownies I have no idea. (A lot of that is due to the whole lactose-intolerance thing, really; while I'm a chocolate lover, I'm an even bigger lover of chocolate that I don't have to take lactase pills to eat.)
17. Made cookies from scratch?
When have I not made cookies from scratch? (OK, when they're Oreos or Girl Scout cookies, yes.)
18. Cooked a pot of beans from dried beans?
Yup! Lots of times, although I usually just use canned beans because it's faster and doesn't require me to be home all day while a pot of beans is simmering on the stove.
19. Cooked a pot of greens?
Maybe? I presume I have been compelled to do it sometime in childhood for some do or other, but given that I don't like 99% of greens* I don't see a reason why I should cook them. Unless, like this upcoming week, we end up with a giant bunch of kale because we forgot to edit the CSA thingy...
*The one time I liked greens, it was served at a daycare and I remembered it vividly because I thought it was spinach and I knew I didn't like spinach, but ate it because we HAD to eat everything and...it didn't taste like spinach! So I thought I liked spinach! Boy was I in for a surprise the next time Mom made spinach! I think it might have been turnip greens instead? Not sure. Other than that, raw baby spinach is fine. Cooked, baby spinach gets the same bitter icky flavor that adult spinach has.
20. Made cornbread from scratch?
Yup. This is where I turn in my Southerner card, though, because it tastes better sweet. Fun fact: the Southern aversion to sugar in cornbread comes from old-time Southern cornbread being made with a very sweet corn so you didn't need sugar. But the corn varieties widely available have changed, so the one usually used isn't as sweet, but they still don't put sugar in to sweeten it, and tastes have changed to prefer it. Although if you're confronted with non-sweet cornbread, there ain't nothing that can't be fixed by dumping a load of honey on it.
21. Made a pie dough from scratch?
Yup, but it's a hassle unless it's a crumb crust, so I just buy crusts.
22. Cooked a whole turkey?
More than once, even! It's easier it you process it into pieces or spatchcock it first, though, and now I've taken to just buying already-roasted turkeys for holiday meals.
23. Snapped green beans and cooked them?
Yup. The black Lab we had growing up loved the smell of snapped green beans and would sit there, drooling copiously at me, as I snapped them. I'd give her one, she'd mouth it a bit and drop it on the floor with a clear, "No, I want the one that smells good, not that one."
24. Made mashed potatoes from scratch?
There's another way to make them? (i.e. mashed potatoes from a box taste DISGUSTING and why would you do that when you can just boil some potatoes and mash them?)
25. What’s the most people you have (alone) prepared a whole meal for?
Alone? 4 or so? With a bit of assistance, 9. You can't really prepare a meal for 5+ alone unless you do all of it before people come over because in my experience people bustle into the kitchen, say "Is there anything I can help with?" and won't take No for an answer. So I have to devote brain cycles to figuring out where I can slot their help into my mental plan, which screws me up (hello ADHD!). So I have to plan from the beginning where there are things other people can do.
26. Poached an egg?
Yup. Although
myrialux is the egg-poaching master in the household, because of ramen.27. Made pancakes from scratch?
Yup. It's not any harder than making them from a mix, and I'm more likely to have scratch ingredients on hand than mix ingredients.
28. Roasted vegetables in the oven instead of boiling them?
Yup. I grew up with a mom that made the transition from boiling to roasting when it started getting more widely practiced in the late 70s and early 80s. As an academic family we sort of skirted the edge of granola (the description of a lifestyle, not the food), so we adopted "health" foods and practices earlier than most in our area.
29. Made fresh pasta?
Yup! Oh! Add "sourdough pasta" to the list above. It was good, if a bit thick because neither of us has the patience to roll it out thin enough and because of pandemic panic there are no pasta attachments for our stand mixer to be found anywhere in the metroplex.
30. Made croissants from scratch?
No. I've made puff pastry from scratch once--never again--and I do not like croissants enough to bother with all the folding/laminating stuff to get the butter properly distributed throughout the dough. On the rare occasion I wish to eat a croissant, I purchase one. (and that's usually because there's nothing else that appeals to me in the case wherever I am.)
31. Made tuna salad?
Loads of times. Tuna fish sandwiches were a standard food we ate growing up. I do not like crunchy relish/pickle bits in it: I prefer minced green onions for the crunch part. Do not speak to me of grapes, apples or nuts in tuna, chicken or egg salad.
myrialux makes it with relish because it's a comfort food, but he can do what he wishes with food he eats. We usually don't make it now because the cats are annoying when tuna is in the air.
32. Fried fish?
Yes, panfrying, not deep frying. I don't like deep-frying because of having to handle All That Oil, so I just pan-fry stuff with a lot of extra oil, or bake it instead. We've been considering a FryDaddy or such because you can leave the oil in it for a few rounds until it's got so many bits in it that the flavor changes (although you're supposed to strain it frequently), but the problem is we have no storage space for it.
Anyway, unless you've gone fishing and caught the fish yourself there's no point to fried fish at home when you can just go buy some at one of the many places that serve fried fish. (Around here, that would be the place that will give you a fried fish meal in exchange for your old Big Mouth Billy Bass, which they use as decor...turned off, yes.)
33. Made baked beans?
Yup.
34. Made ice cream from scratch?
Yup. We got a foncy ice-cream maker as a wedding present and most recently it made cantaloupe sorbet.
35. Made jam or jelly?
Once. It didn't jell. I haven't really had the desire to make it since, because I don't eat it much.
36. Zested an orange or lemon?
We even own a microplane.
37. Made grits from scratch?
Nope. Don't like 'em.
38. Made an omelette?
Lots of times, in lots of ways. The classic French way, the Jacques Pepin way in which if it goes too long and browns it's now "country style," the big fluffy diner-omelette way that uses whipped cream to puff up... My personal way is a sort of blend of the classic French way and Jacques Pepin's way, with none of the grace and style inherent in them, but which I like.
39. Lived in a house without a dishwasher?
Yes. We were in the Serengeti at the time, so not only was there no dishwasher, we didn't even have electricity except for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. (Mom tells me the fridge had a generator to itself, but we had no freezer.)
The first house we lived in after we got back from Africa wasn't built to account for a dishwasher, but the landlord had equipped it with a big dishwasher on wheels, that stayed over in the breakfast nook area of the kitchen most of the time, and when you wanted to wash dishes you rolled it over to the sink, plugged a hose to a faucet and laid another in the sink to drain, and started it. I don't remember much about it because I was too young to be trusted with the dishes until we moved to the next house, which had one built in. That rolly dishwasher had a countertop on top of it, which was nice because it provided more prep space if you needed it.
40. Eaten a bowl of cereal for supper?
Specifically for supper, no. I mostly eat cereal as a snack, and that's stuff like Froot Loops or Honeycomb, that's sweet and crunchy and big enough to be picked up by hand. As I never liked milk,I didn't much like it in cereal either, and a bowl of cereal does not hold me for longer than an hour or so. (I will occasionally eat Raisin Bran because I am at the age where you get supremely concerned about your fiber intake.)
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ITA about the cornbread-sweet is the best. I didn't know about the sweet corn, though, interesting. What do you make of the people who put crap in their cornbread like, gasp, corn (or jalapeños, etc).
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As far as cornbread goes, if other people want to put stuff in it they can, but I don't. I think that one recipe I use has some corn kernels in it which are mostly inoffensive, but it's not something I seek out.
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*nods*