Research Never Stops

It’s the Sabbath, but a man still has to eat, so I am going to make another pizza. I think the combination of part-skim mozzarella with a little provolone may be a smart idea. And I’m going to try it with supermarket cheese. In the past, I’ve gotten good results with Sargento shredded cheese, so I picked up some Sargento mozzarella and some sliced Land O’ Lakes provolone.

I had a problem with my pizza yesterday. I now hand-toss my crusts, even though I’m terrible at it. They tend to be thinner than rolled crusts. The one I made yesterday wasn’t thick enough to resist being pressed into the screen, so it stuck in places, and I had to rip it a little to move it to the stone. I lost a fair amount of the pie, but it was still excellent. In fact, the areas where the peel shoved cheese under the pie during the tearing were especially good.

I’m not completely sure the thinness of the crust was the problem; I inadvertently used a clean screen, and they tend to stick. The best ones have grease baked onto them.

Mike is having some kind of hideous food orgy today. I blocked out the memory of most of the things he told me he was fixing. I remember this phrase: “my theme is bacon.”

He said he’d send photos.

Pizza

I have an assignment for some loyal reader.

Make my pizza, using my book. And for cheese, use a quarter-pound of aged provolone and three-fourths of a pound of low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella. Preferably sliced, not shredded. I don’t care what kind of crust you use, or which sauce. Tell me what happens.

I just made a pie with that combination, except that the mozzarella was whole-milk. It was excellent, but it was actually a little too rich. Provolone is a fatty cheese, and when you add whole-milk mozzarella, maybe you’re overdoing it slightly. Hard to say. The problem may be due to the fact that I was too lazy to get olive oil, so I used around a tablespoon and a half of melted butter in the sauce.

The crust was perfect. The sauce was perfect. If you can’t get Stanislaus sauce, Bonta will not disappoint you.

The sauce was this, more or less.

1/4 cup Bonta
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. sugar

I forgot the pepper, I think. And the salt. But it didn’t matter.

Reflective of my Healthy Priorities

Here is what I call a productive day of running errands. I went to Home Depot to get stuff to add more shelves to the garage. Then I swung by Publix to get deli cheese to make a pizza.

I felt I had gone long enough without nature’s perfect food. And since I now make better pizza than any restaurant in Miami, there was no point in buying it ready-made. I had two gallon cans of Bonta sauce slowly aging in the cupboard, and as much as I wanted to hoard them, I knew it was time to let one of them go.

Bonta is good sauce. Not my favorite, but good. I don’t think anything can touch Stanislaus Super Dolce. When I finally give up all pretense of willpower, I will sit on the couch eating it out of the can with a cooking spoon. I estimate I’ll be there by mid-2009.

I bought Boar’s Head cheese. Three-fourths of a pound of whole milk, low-moisture mozzarella, and a quarter-pound of aged provolone. Just for fun. Your best bet in a grocery store is the cheese they sell at the deli counter. The other stuff tends to have too much water, or it’s full of cellulose powder, or it just tastes bad. But as I have said, I made a very good pizza with Sargento bagged cheese.

I’m making a fat-free crust, simply because I prefer the texture.

Crap, I’m out of olive oil. I may have to hit the store. I like a little oil in my sauce.

Hope your fifth of July is going well.

AB Comes Through

Agent Bedhead, keeper of the sacred words “Pete Doherty,” has once again demonstrated her kindness and generosity by putting up a free ad for me. Thanks, AB. I would fix you a steak and a peach cobbler. If you werent in Oklahoma.

I hope she has given up that insane vegetarian nonsense. What would Jessica Simpson eat?

In other news, my tasty new old Smith & Wesson 27-2 in blue with the 5″ barrel has arrived in Miami. Hopefully I’ll be able to connect with my dealer this week, before Range Day.

Short and Sweet

I kept trying to think of a good domain name for a site for the cookbook. It has to be short and easy to remember, and it has to be descriptive. Codebluecooking.com isn’t that great.

After Googling to see what has already been taken, I am thinking I’ll just make it ManlyGrub.com.

Thoughts?

Ethiopian Ambrosia

Dan from Madison lost his mind and decided to try a recipe from Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. And it wasn’t something everyone seems to like, such as brownies or blueberry cheesecake. He chose doro wat, which is Ethiopian chicken stew.

Ethiopians cook very spicy food, and they dump it on giant sour pancakes and use them to pick it up and eat it. You really have to try it. I corrupted it by putting sour cream on the side, but you can be more orthodox. Dan ate his doro wat with rice, and nobody arrested him.

Dan took it easy on the peppers, and he couldn’t get fenugreek. I think buyin fenugreek over the web is worth the aggravation. It has a unique flavor. But as Dan will tell you, doro wat is fine with or without it. It looks like he did an excellent job.

Here’s the first part of his two-part doro wat photoessay.

Positive Review

I am getting excited emails from a reader who is trying my doro wat (Ethiopian chicken stew) recipe. He didn’t bother making injera or rotis, and he was not able to get fenugreek, but you can always cheat and eat it over rice, so that’s what he’s doing.

Rather than bloviate about how great I am, I will wait for him to post a review. So far it sounds favorable.

I think I had to go to Penzey’s to get fenugreek, and the seeds are so hard, I used a coffee grinder to grind them. I have one grinder I only use for spices. Fenugreek is pretty neat, but oddly, it’s not essential.

He’s using chicken thighs with the bones still in them, and I think that’s a good choice.

HOI Approved

I had to cook some thick pork chops the other day, and I didn’t know what to do. I decided to rely on a recipe from my book.

If you have the book, you’ve noticed the stuffed pig recipe. It has two parts. First, a recipe for stuffed pork chops. Then a recipe for an entire pig. I cannot recommend these recipes highly enough. You won’t believe them until you try them.

I didn’t stuff the pork chops I cooked recently. Instead, I took one idea from the recipe and used it. I have sage growing in the yard, so I grabbed a handful. I poured about a cup of apricot nectar and a cup of Marsala (Florio’s sweet) in a pan. I shredded the sage into it and added salt and pepper, I added two tablespoons of butter, and I reduced the liquid until it was thick. I had already salted the chops and set them aside to absorb the salt. I brushed the liquid on the chops and baked them at 350 until they hit 170 degrees on the inside.

They were excellent. You should try it. I think they would be much better if you soaked them in the nectar and Marsala for a day before reducing it. And if you want to be a complete perfectionist, brine them in a baking soda solution for a day before that.

They’re better with stuffing, but this version has the benefit of not killing you as quickly.

If you use the recipe in the book, make sure you use a thermometer instead of relying on time. Jam it in the middle of the stuffing. When the stuffing is cooked, the pork is definitely safe.

I think peach nectar would be good, too.

Wonderful Feedback

I am receiving more priceless celebrity endorsements for Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook.

Okay, they’re not from celebrities. But they’re still pretty good.

Good afternoon, sir! I’ve been a longtime reader of your blog and have bought all three books. It’s really nice to see someone with good values (I’m very impressed by your religion posts) and connections to my part of the world get ahead in life. (I’m an Eastern KY __________ from __ County.) I really have enjoyed all of them, but the cookbook is a masterpiece. I read three chapters, then promptly drove three counties over to buy a griddle. 🙂 Made the steak and potato recipe last night… I thought I’d died and went to heaven. Keep up the amazing work!

Wow, I’m glad someone tried the griddle idea. There are no bad recipes in the book, but some stand out, and my steaks are so good, I no longer have any interest at all in steakhouses. I have been criticized for frying steak, which is what happens on a griddle, but what you get is a beautifully charred piece of meat, more than worthy of an expensive restaurant. My steaks are better than Ruth’s Chris et alia, so who cares if they’re fried?

Sometimes I think it would be fun to make beef gravy on the griddle. It would be sickeningly good. The griddle adds a lot of flavor.

Shipping it today. Very nice job. We making the pizza tonight. You didn’t mention the redneck lamb box thro…

I’ll post a review… althro I didn’t see the comment about the librarian and the leather belt soaked in cinnamon oil from the first one. I loved Adam, Satan and Petunia thro. A better story than the Lilith one.

I can’t say it enough. The pizza recipe justifies buying the book. I have to warn you, though, Mike is right. Once you have the power to make real pizza at home, you’ll make it over and over and over. He said it took him five years to stop. That is not a joke. If you’re fat, it may be a real problem.

Thanks again, all.

Whoops

I think I forgot to mention this. Kevin over at Technogypsy put up a link to my book, Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook.

Thanks, dude!

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Also a gracious link from Bill Quick, at Daily Pundit. Thanks, Bill!

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Claire dared to tamper with my peach cobbler recipe! If she improved it, I’ll sue!

She thinks there may be a misprint, RE vanilla extract. Unfortunately, I can’t remember.

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Here’s one from…Captain Cryptic?

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Damned if Helo hasn’t chimed in.

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Did I already mention Kim’s review? Can’t remember, so I’ll put up a link.

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ACK! Here comes Heather!

Not once, but twice!

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Steve Gigl, who has threatened to cook every recipe and blog it. God help him.

Inside Joke for People Who Bought Book

I am getting more emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. I can’t get it through my head that people take this book seriously as a cookbook, because I wrote it to make readers laugh, but the recipes do work, and people seem to like them. This guy actually took the time to make the hash brown casserole! This one takes WORK.

I don’t name people who email me when I mention what they say, unless I’m sure they want to be named or won’t care. Here it is:

I cooked up the hashbrown casserole tonight. It was awesome. I needed to cook the bacon to get the grease, and I believe throwing bacon out is a felony (well, it should be), so I crumbled it up and sprinkled it between the layers of hashbrowns. You, sir, are a genius.

It warms my heart to read things like that. I hope people are cooking this stuff all over the US. But not too often. I need them alive so they can buy my next book.

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I just got another one. I guess it will sound silly, considering the type of writing I do, but I can identify with this one on a special level.

I just got your book Monday and read it when I got home. The chapter written in Christopher Walken’s voice creeped me out, but then just looking at him creeps me out. I read the entire thing before bed. To say I loved it is damning it with faint praise. I loved the recipe for biscuits and I can’t wait to try them but I do have an addition. My mom used to make biscuits with ‘cracklin’s’. Cracklin’s were the left over little bits from rendering lard. She would get fat from the butcher (for some reason it was ground or she ground it, I don’t remember) and render the lard then take the little bits out and cook them a little more to brown up. She would make the biscuits and I don’t remember if she mixed the cracklin’s in or put them on top, but whichever way she did it she would take the biscuits and put them in bacon grease and turn them over so there was bacon grease top and bottom, then bake. When I was about eight or nine she started making Bisquik biscuits and never again did I have an honest-to-goodness biscuit with cracklin’s. Your book has inspired me to attempt to make them myself. Now to track down some place to buy hog fat.

As I have often said, one reason I started improving my cooking skills in the Nineties is that my mother had died, and I didn’t get to see my grandmother in Kentucky very often, and there were foods I missed. A lot of the things I put in the book are things I used to eat at their tables. Cornbread. Biscuits and gravy. Bean soup with ham hocks. I put chicken and dumplings in the original book.

In a less important way, I also missed decent pizza, which used to be all over North Miami when I was a kid, so I learned how to make better pizza than I had back then.

If you’re in the situation I was in, do yourself a favor, pick a few dishes you miss, and figure out how to make them. You’ll get it right eventually. I can tell you from experience, it’s like having an heirloom nobody can take away from you. And if you have kids, you can share it and pass it on to them, and they’ll know a little bit about what your life was like when you were growing up.

More Free Food for Yours Truly

Got some nice emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. Here’s part of one:

I thought I was gonna die reading your Angela Ashes passage. Seriously. Certainly not appropriate for a Sunday, but then, I’m iconoclastic like that lately.

And then the Christopher Walken and Tom Cruise, and, and, and.

Please write more. I know that I will be hooting and hollering and thinking and amassing recipes, if there’s another cook book, while I read your books. I can’t think of many authors who accomplish that result. The “big name” humorists aren’t literally funny, nor are they consistent, that I can see anymore.

I can’t ask for a nicer response than that. Although this comes close:

Just got your new book a few days ago and made champagne chicken tonight. Man, I can’t believe how good it is. It’s like sex on a plate. I’m probably too lazy to make anything else in the book, but I had to make something. It’s an obligation. I didn’t want the book to end up like another investment that ends up never used, like a Bowflex.

Someone got the writing, and someone else gets the food. Maybe I didn’t waste my time!

Fausta and her family invited me to dinner AGAIN tonight. And I was the worst guest imaginable. We started talking about bloggers and blogging, and we got carried away, I kept talking and talking, and eventually they had to tase me to make me leave.

It was sort of like reading this blog, only there was no way to close the browser window.

I really enjoyed myself, even if I bored everyone else to death.

Again, the comparison to this blog is unavoidable.

Thanks for the emails.

This is Breakfast

My cookbook got a link from Protein Wisdom today. Apparently a guy named Dan Collins is blogging over there. I haven’t kept up with Jeff’s business. Hope he’s writing books. Thanks, Dan. And I got a typically flattering link from Cold Fury. Thanks, sort of.

If you want proof that the book works, click the “Death by Fork” link to your left, and your modem will fry as about 10,000 entries spew out in your browsers. But here’s a little evidence that ought to be persuasive. This is breakfast.

I realize this is not a good thing for a fat person–or anyone–to eat for breakfast, but blueberries are only cheap for a short time, and damn it, I wanted cheesecake. It’s as good as it looks. Actually, it’s much better. That’s a big fork and a big saucer, and they make the slice look small. I used a 10″ pan, and that slice is about 2 1/2″ tall. It’s rich and sweet and cold and heavy, the way a cheesecake should be. Light, airy cheesecake is an abomination. I probably took in 800 calories when I ate that slice.

People are suggesting I put flexible unions on the pool pump. I appreciate that. Like I have said, no one in Miami can do anything right. The old pump was installed without unions, and every time it has needed work, PVC doodads have been spliced into the system, so it’s atrocious. I can see why the old timers used cast iron. This job would have been simple with iron pipes. I ought to splice them in now. Maybe I’ll do that. I am really tired of sawing, gluing, resawing, and regluing. And the PVC will be too short to put unions on, once I get done sawing.

A commenter who is apparently a contractor thinks I made a bad choice, doing the work myself. Well, I saved about $150 by bypassing the local blue collar genius who sells these pumps. I saved maybe a hundred bucks on labor. And so far I have spent a whopping $0 on PVC and materials. I had it all before I started. I estimate I will have to spend another five bucks to get the job done. It will be better than anything a professional has done here. In fact, it will solve leak problems a whole slew of greedy slackjaws caused. The only down side is that I have to spend some time working. Well, that’s the nature of life. If you want something, you work.

Some people think I do my own repairs because I’m cheap. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s called “responsibility.” And it’s only part of the reason. The biggest reason is that most tradesmen in Miami are chimpanzees. There is no union. There is no apprentice system. They cause problem after problem because they’re too unskilled or lazy to do things right, and I end up following behind them, doing the work they were supposed to do.

Very often, I am literally unable to find anyone to do a particular job right, at any price. In some parts of the country, you can still hire competent, honest people. Here, much of the time, it’s impossible.

And tradesmen charge too much. I know a plumber who wrote an estimate for three grand to remove forty feet of mostly above-ground cast iron drain pipe and replace it with PVC. Guess what the materials cost. If it’s more than a hundred dollars, I’ll kiss your rear end on national television. And it’s not skilled labor. Some plumbing takes training, but replacing drain lines is simple.

Here’s something tradesmen who aren’t busy enough should think about. Not everyone is supposed to be rich. If you didn’t complete your education and all you can do is lay bricks, you’re not supposed to have a six-figure income and a giant truck with six doors and a custom paint job. Once a homeowner has seen your three-thousand-dollar estimate for half a day’s unskilled work, learning how to do simple plumbing will not intimidate him. If you’re the homeowner, what’s the down side? You spend a hundred bucks on PVC (probably more like thirty), and maybe you spend fifty on a tool rental. So if you screw up, you’re out between $3000 and $3100. If you succeed, you’re out $100 or less. Someone help me understand why that’s not a good bet to make.

If you’re honest and competent and responsible, you’ll probably be busy every day, and you’ll be able to charge twice what the competition does. I haven’t met anyone who fits that description. Generally, my own work–with zero training and very little skill–is far better than what I get from professionals.

Northern Tool has a set of threading dies for $70. That is starting to sound like a very good deal. I have a dry cut saw. I have a vise. I don’t need a snapper. It will be easier to spend the money than suffer in the heat, scraping old PVC with sandpaper. Screw it. I’ll buy the tools. After that, I’ll make a pipe that screws into the pump. Then I’ll make one that screws into a threaded PVC fitting on the other side. I’ll join them to an elbow, after tightening the joints, with PVC cement. In the future, when a pump goes bad, I’ll cut out the elbow, unscrew the dead ends, throw them away, and make new parts in fifteen minutes. I don’t need this BS. I don’t need to spend my days waiting for boobs to show up and wreck things and leave me worse off than I was to begin with. Life is short. Let the plumbers starve. When I work, I do a good job, and I don’t cheat anyone. Why should I expect less from tradesmen?

If I were practicing law right now, I would get about three hundred dollars per hour. Plumbers often charge substantially more than that, when you break down their bills. That’s just stupid.

People have also suggested I cast a block for the pump to sit on, and that I put the bolts for the pump into the wet concrete. The problem I see here is that it will be impossible to take the bolts out and put new ones in. Someone else suggests casting lag shields in the block. But I don’t think they’ll have room to expand when I screw the bolts in. I think the best thing is to cast the block and use a hammer drill to make holes for the shields. It’s not a big deal. I have the drill, the bit, the shields, and the bolts. For that matter, I happen to have a bag of concrete. The only real work will be building the form. Lucky me; I have a table saw and a big piece of scrap wood.

Hey…I could weld a base up and bolt it to the floor. But it’s humid out there. Rust. Oh, well.

Anyway, I don’t regret cutting contractors out of my life whenever possible. It has been nothing but a blessing, and every one of you should be striving to do the same thing.

Why Cook It?

Just now, as I was eating raw cheesecake batter off a spatula, it occurred to me that cheesecake batter tastes a lot like Key lime pie. And the wheels started turning, and now I want to make a Key lime pie with cream cheese in it.

It won’t be an authentic Key lime pie. Those only contain condensed milk, juice, egg yolks, and maybe–if you’re kooky–some zest, salt, and/or vanilla. And real Conchs don’t cook their pies. Only pansies do that. Citrus juice kills salmonella. Look it up.

Conchs are people from the Keys.

I’m thinking I could make a mixture of sugar and cream cheese, and I could get it to the point where it’s as sweet as condensed milk, and I could substitute it for half of the condensed milk in the recipe.

While I was running errands, I did a victory tour at Barnes & Noble. They only had one copy of my book, so I did the natural thing.

Tonight the Marsala bottle caught my eye. Can you make a cheesecake that somehow includes Marsala? Cheesecake with zabaglione would be weird, but good. Shove some strawberries in it, and you’re ready to go.

You Take the Bad With the Good

Arrgh.

New pool pump. Guess who is about to install it? Here is some advice. Don’t even think about buying one of these at a bricks and mortar store. Store price? $379, plus tax. Internet? $239, plus very reasonable shipping.

I realize that local store owners have to make money, but it seems like anything related to a swimming pool automatically costs 50% more than it should, just as anything related to a boat or a pet bird costs more. The industry seems to attract small timers who don’t understand that quick nickels are better than slow dollars. I would have been thrilled to buy this locally, even at a small premium, but these people must be smoking crack, charging $379 without even checking to see what Ebay vendors charge.

Got a pool? Guess what? Your pump is probably too big. It turns out that 1.5″ pipe will only allow something like 44 gallons per minute. That usually means a pump with one horsepower or less. Yet many pool doofuses install giant pumps that suck huge amounts of electricity while laboring unsuccessfully to push water through undersized pipes. You waste electricity, and the pump wears out early.

More pool trivia: it’s probably cheaper to run a small pump all day than a big pump for eight hours. This is a very small pump, and I plan to run it 16 hours per day. It should do a better job than the old pump, for less money.

I’m getting incredible comments on the book. Thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping for, but it’s still an experience. I felt in my heart that this book was going to reach people, in a way that the others could not. That’s why I wanted to publish this one first. When you try to break into writing, you have to listen to marketing people and agents and experienced editors, and you can’t discount what they tell you. And in the end, you get to publish what they let you publish. Sometimes that’s a good thing. But I have had tremendous faith in Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook ever since the idea popped into my head. And I couldn’t get it to the market until I published those two other books.

It’s a miracle anyone bought the spam book. You have to wade through endless badly written 419 emails to get to the funny stuff. There was no way to avoid that; it’s the nature of the project. It’s worth it, if you’re a real reader. Most book buyers don’t fit that description. They want a quick scan and instant gratification. It’s not surprising that the caveman book was not a giant hit. The show that was supposed to put wind under its wings was killed by the thought police. And how many people just naturally gravitate to caveman books? Very few. This book, on the other hand, ought to have much more appeal. It’s easy to read, the recipes are actually good, and I think I did a creditable job with the humor.

People are putting up Amazon reviews and sending me emails. I am grateful for all of them. Don’t hesitate to ask for recipe clarification. It’s important to me that people succeed with this stuff. One of my pet peeves with professional cooks is that all they care about is making money; they don’t care whether the food they tell you how to prepare is any good. I care. I want people to cook this stuff and say, “Holy cow, this is unbelievable. That was eleven dollars and one cent well spent.” I don’t have a staff of underpaid minions writing my recipes for me. I don’t take credit for things written by faceless underlings, without checking to see if the recipes are good. Other cookbook writers and food personalities do those things as a matter of course. You can tell when you try their awful recipes.

Don’t forget, I have a P.O. box where you can send copies for autographing. With return postage and a suitable envelope, mind you. I plan to check the box once a week. I tried to get a post office box that was more convenient, but it was impossible. They have removed the parking lot at the Coconut Grove P.O. That means I have to cross US 1 and go through a bunch of lights and park in the hood, so I won’t be going every day.

You can send the other books if you want.

I’m going to try to get that cheesecake made today. I don’t see how I can survive without it.

Keep the comments and emails coming, and if you really want to help, email people and tell them about the book. This is the kind of book people like giving to fat men as a gift; you probably know someone who is perfectly suited to it.

Thanks again. I’m out.