So I pulled my first harvest of pickling cucumbers this Saturday. I have never preserved anything on my own, EVER. It's a bit daunting. My kid inhales dill pickles. Loves them. This was a project that kind of was a necessity. After a soak overnight, the recipe was super easy. The anxiety set in while waiting for it to seal. I could only think about wasting my first, and maybe only, harvest of cucumbers.
It didn't seal. Hours after pouring the boiling liquid into the pint jar, it didn't seal. Shit! I left it on the counter overnight. It was still too hot to refrigerate, I was disgusted and really just kind of forgot about it. When I woke this morning, they jar had sealed and all was well in the world.

Anyone that knows me personally, knows I have this man-crush thing on Alton Brown. Science and food. How do you make television more entertaining. Maybe if Adam and Jaime from Mythbusters blew up everything he made at the end of every episode. A couple of years ago, I watched Alton Brown lose his damned mind. He is all about the most simple route to great taste. When he made cottage cheese from scratch it perplexed me. The simplest route to great taste in cottage cheese is cracking open the Breakstone's container and shoveling it in. Right? Alton kept assuring me that once I tasted this homemade stuff, I wouldn't go back to store bought. Hmmmm...
Flash forward to now. I'm paying more attention to the ingredients labels in foods. Cottage cheese is definitely processed and definitely fortified with chemical shit that I don't want in my kid (if it requires "natural flavors" it's probably not fucking natural). She eats the stuff in such quantity, I'm contemplating my own milk cow. So she and I set out this evening with simply skim milk, white vinegar, kosher salt, organic half and half, and a candy thermometer to cross that next hurdle in a more natural diet.
Results: It's good. Actually it tastes great! The texture is definitely different. It's kinda chewy. Sorta like mozzarella. That was a bit of a surprise but it doesn't take anything away from it being a damn fine cottage cheese. Alton, I'm sorry I doubted you.
As an afterthought, his yogurt cheese recipe is AWESOME. It's like a healthier cream cheese, absolutely foolproof to make, and it's lactose intolerant friendly! Get some!

Swift Level: Natural Beef is without a doubt the best tasting ground beef I have ever eaten. I'm wondering if it's the best animal I've ever eaten. The Co-Op paid off if for no other reason than this. The eggs were fantastic. The greens and spinach were awesome. But the burgers made from Swift Level 90/10 is flat out fucking stupid good. You people aren't eating cow. I don't really even know what you're eating. But tonight I ate cow. And went for seconds.

Today I placed my first order with the Co-Op. A real live Co-Op. That's pretty damn hippy. I'm still digesting it. Don't get me wrong, I think Co-Op's are a GREAT idea. Food just doesn't get any closer to the farm. And the right people are making the money from it. It's a big step and a commitment to the quality of what I'm putting in my family's bodies. I'll keep you posted on the results.

I've almost always regarded restaurant food to be better. Better tasting, better ingredients, just better. My grandmother was an amazing cook. I loved eating her food, but it was always a treat to go to a sit down food joint. Even if it was just the 'Sizzler. Somewhere along the way, in the past few years, I've had a change of heart. It's taken such a long time to realize that restaurants, even the good ones, don't have to be better. Good food tastes good if you simply don't fuck it up. That's the mantra. That's all you have to do. It's a very simple equation. Good Food + Don't Fuck It Up = Tastes Good.
Let's break this down.
Good food. I specifically said good, not healthy. Diet "this" and fat free "that" have no flavor. I also suspect that they hold a closer relationship to plastics then consumable natural foods. More on that in a different post. At the risk of sounding like a hippy, natural organic foods taste better. I will not debate it. They just do. Meats, dairy, vegetables, fruit, grains all taste better when they're not genetically engineered like some Captain America clone. I eat real butter! Not even the crap formed up in sticks from the supermarket. I use real, unsalted Amish roll butter. Why? because it infuses everything with awesome! The first time you eat fresh organic eggs and see that rich dark orange yolk, you will understand why i pay a whopping 80 cents more per dozen.
There is a trade off. These awesome tasting foods have no chemicals or preservatives in them and therefore do not have the half-life of U92. It means more trips to the butcher or farmers market to obtain the freshest food you can or more waste in spoiled goods.
Don't Fuck It Up. When your food is high quality, it will benefit most from the LACK of dressings and frills. A simple seasoning and properly cooking it really is all that it takes. I recently grilled organic yellow squash for company. The recipe was foolproof. Slice thick, toss in olive oil, kosher salt and pepper, grill till done. The dish was the talk of the party. "What did you put on that squash?" "Oh my god, it's so sweet!". I realized that maybe people didn't really know what squash tastes like. Great food doesn't need a balsamic reduction or a cranberry chutney. It just needs to be treated with respect.
Tastes Good. Trust me. Give it a shot and see if you agree. Great quality food prepared delicately will taste amazing on it's own merit. And it will be kind of healthy when you don't pile on the dressings, sauces, and condiments.
I don't expect to inspire anyone to break out of their Walmart induced food coma. But if anyone reads this, I just want to set the stage for what's to come.

I would say that this blog died off, but it never really lived. Truth is that I started it to continue some of the ideas that I had published and before I had much invested here, I got a better writing gig.
So here's the idea. This time around, no more reviews. No more structure. I am going to just talk food. My passion. I may be all over the place. Gardening, shopping, cooking, all of it. It's all fair game. Food, I know you're out there and I'm coming for you!

Should I, yes or should I, no?