1 can diced tomato
cumin, chili powder, garlic salt
1 can beans (Navy or black, I think I prefer Navy)
Some leftover roasted chicken, including a leg bone
Frozen corn

Put tomato, spices (to taste, whatever you prefer), and leg bone in saucepan, bring to slow boil then reduce to low. Simmer for a while; chop up chicken into bite-size pieces. Add chicken & corn, bring back up to bubble, reduce and simmer some more. Remove leg bone. Serve. Makes 4-5 small bowls full. Really good with sour cream.

Always use scale to measure instead of eyeballing.

For autodrip [missed how much]

Cup != cup.

200 degrees (f), 7 minutes, autodrip. Certification agency? Fluke thermometer, for accuracy. Comes out at 175 degrees.

Discussion of water filtering — or not! In a taste test, unfiltered tap water did best.

I actually tasted some. Not that I have any idea what coffee should taste like.

Display of grids of coffee: showed full range, but really there’s just two grinds for home: coarser for soaking in water, finer for pouring water over. Nice explanation of surface area. Inbetween for Moka pot! Espresso just means fast for Moka.

Show off IR burner.

Hario V60: #2 filter, bleached. Difference in holes in the bottom: Hario has better opening, larger single, vs “beehive” (brand?) with two smaller holes. Numbering in filters is about size. Differences in taste between bleached, unbleached, and metal, mostly a preference thing, altho unbleached tends to taste like paper. Discussion of rinsing or not. At temperature, also heats up the equipment. 1 to 16 ratio (1 gram coffee, 16 grams water) generally, with this at 1 to 18. (.63 oz) Also weighs the water. 25 g coffee, 450 g water. (.9 oz, 15.9 oz) Bloom = degassing

He’s got one of Angela’s friends actually doing the pourover.

Thinking maybe he should rearrange the setup so that more people can gather around, either that or closer to the seating.

2nd pourover taste, made by Panda, underextracted coffee, but preferred. 50g less water.

“If you like what comes out, that’s what matters”

Another taste with 500g water: more muted flavor. (Of course I’m still nursing the cold cup from earlier!)

Discussion of heating the water, backing off from 212/boiling

Discussion of washing/warming the french press. “Full immersion” vs “pour over”

Review french press techniques, if you leave it in after brewing, last cup & first cup will be very different.

Caffeine difference between different methods.

[headed home]

The key modification is that it’s made in the slow cooker instead of on the stovetop. Otherwise, it’s just ditching veggies that I don’t like (texture, mostly) and minor adjustments to the spices. (I don’t usually have garlic powder, for example, so I’ve subbed in garlic salt & reduced the kosher salt.)

Red Beans & Sausage

Modified from Red Beans and Rice with Sausage (via Derrick)

• 1 pound dried red kidney beans (about 2¼ cups)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• ¼ - ½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
• ¾ teaspoon garlic salt
• ½ teaspoon ground allspice
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
• 1 generous teaspoon Kosher salt, or to taste
• sometimes I remember to include about ½ tsp of onion powder, forgot this morning!
• 5-6 links sausage (approx 1.2-1.5 lbs)
• 6 cups water

The night before:

Pour the beans into a 6-quart slow cooker pot and add enough water to cover the beans about 3 inches.

In the morning:

1. Drain & rinse the beans, then pour them back into the slow cooker.
2. Add seasonings.
3. Cut sausages lengthwise, then cut each half into bite-size chunks. Add to the slow cooker.
4. Pour over the water.
5. Cook on low at least 8 hours.

Before serving:

Scoop out about 1 cup beans. (Fish out any sausage that tries to come along.) Mash or puree the beans into a paste. Add the bean paste back into the slow cooker and stir, while leaving cooker on warm or low.

This is tasty with bread, cornbread and/or rice – the original recipe calls for 6 cups cooked long-grain rice, but I don’t always get around to that part. Makes good leftovers.

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) soft butter
• 6 tbsp white sugar
• 6 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp water
• 1 egg
• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Mix flour, salt, baking powder in a small bowl – sometimes I don’t bother to mix ahead of time, instead I just dump in later.
3. Cream butter & sugars.
4. Stir in vanilla, water, & egg.
5. Add flour mixture & mix well.
6. Stir in oats.
7. Stir in chocolate chips.
8. Spoon onto baking sheet; I use slightly larger eating spoonfuls, and line the pan with a silpat. (recipe calls for greased cookie sheet. Parchment paper would probably work too.)
9. Bake 10 to 12 minutes.

Makes just shy of 4 dozen cookies.

(Posted for Kelsey from Oly Reads.)

It’s odd, the first thing I think of is something I haven’t eaten in many months, but it is THE comfort food for me: macaroni & cheese.

Not any old macaroni & cheese*, but precisely the one that we ate every single Friday (go Catholics!) of my childhood, my mother’s version of a Good Housekeeping recipe from 1963. That recipe book fell open to that page; that or the hamburger stroganoff recipe. It took me at least a year after I was living on my own before I figured out mom’s exact modifications, which involve making it even MORE mid-century American than it was to start with. Velveeta FTW!

As a food, it’s simple: fat and starch, creamy and hot, which makes it an ideal wintertime comfort food. It’s easy to make and is done reasonably fast, but has enough steps to feel like you’re actually cooking something. It doesn’t microwave especially well, and that gives it a certain immediacy that’s oddly comforting.

But beyond that, because of “every Friday” and “mom’s modifications,” it has all this resonance emotionally as well, of the good parts of childhood, eating together. The ritual of making mac & cheese has all these particular touchstones: the double-boiler in particular, since that was the only thing it was ever used for when I was growing up. (True story: when I moved out in college and relatives gave me dishes for Christmas, my sister gave me a double-boiler specifically so I could make myself mac & cheese.)

So there it is, the platonic ideal of a comfort food, at least for me.

——————

* I did not eat the stuff in a box until I was in college, when (alas) I ate quite a bit of it: box mac & cheese was in the imagery of a poem I had published when I was younger.

2) Country fair white bread. I may have messed this one up a little by leaving it on the 2nd rise for too long. Seriously, I put it in the microwave — not on, but with hot water for a accelerated rise (!) — and completely forgot it was there while I was doing yardwork. It seemed a little more dense than I was expecting, and that may have been why, but I’m not 100% sure. In any case, it too has a good taste and texture — made for good toast with jam this morning. Tomorrow I’m going to see what it’s like as a sandwich bread, which is one of my ultimate goals in bread-making: to replace store-bought bread. It was a little more complicated than the other breads I’ve made — before the 2nd rise adding butter, egg and powdered milk. (Actually, the English muffin bread also had powdered milk added before 2nd rise.) But not particularly difficult in any case.

None of these have been what you’d call difficult, really, which is what makes it such a wonderful thing. The hardest part is working out the timing. I have to have a few hours at the end for the 2nd rise and baking — although maybe next time I’ll try the delayed 2nd rise (4-24 hrs in the fridge) since then all I need to do is let it get to room temperature…I’m assuming it can do that while dinner is cooking and then bake after.