Omnomicon

I started my first professional job three days after turning 22, a little naive, a little rough around the edges, not even technically having even graduated college, so the professional workplace was, well, like going to high school again: everyone else seemed to know exactly what to do except for me, and I always felt like I was missing something, but nobody could really explain it to me.

Every morning, coworkers arrived just before 8:30, all with that one accessory, the must-have, the cannot-get-to-work-without (kinda) . . . a cup of coffee. I didn’t get it, this was like, American Eagle cable sweaters all over again, except instead of every girl having “her color,” everybody had their order, to a tee, and always had a store or even specific location of preference.

Sarah had a medium Dunkies. Amanda had something that smelled froofy from one of those drive-through parking lot shacks. Inexplicably, someone would show up with Starbucks they picked up on their way to work in suburban, nearly rural New Hampshire. Michael and Ken hated the place downstairs and would actually walk across to the Cumbie’s for gas station coffee.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the orders, why the gal I was carpooling with would stop on our way to work, even though it would be cutting it close, what the physical size difference was between a 20oz and a 32oz. I could never estimate a price on an order, and I had to read a menu for like 20 minutes to figure out what I wanted, had no idea why everybody loved Starbucks. All in all it was embarrassing. “Eh, I just don’t like coffee, I guess,” I would tell people. Shrug. Maybe order an iced chai. Save myself the anxiety and weird brand of social awkwardness that belongs to smokers and people who don’t drink alcohol.

So I’m really only four years past that now, but at some point along the way . . . it changed. And I only recently realized that there is this world I’ve created for myself. A routine, ritual, comfort, almost a vice, but kinda not really, a way to remind myself it’s a new day.

In this new world, I have to work a visit to Dunkin’s into the first half hour of driving ANYWHERE. And I know the closest in all four directions, including contingency Dunkin’ Donutses if the first had a burnt batch. I know the difference in price from store to store ($2.61 here, $2.72 there…). I have a favorite Dunkies, but at my second choice, the guy at the drive through window calls me “sweetie” and always says “see you tomorow!”

I can tell when the drive-through line will be faster than walking in, and with a glance tell you if my coffee needs more milk or they errantly put in skim. I’m an expert, but it’s so narrow a science that nobody could possibly care. The whole rigamarole is completely rote, and yet so little effort just makes my day before it’s even really taken off.

“Can I get a large iced hazelnut, extra milk, 5 splenda? That’ll be all!”

I’ve said that easily 360 times over the last year, if not more. I think I’m close to the perfect ordering process: size; iced/hot; flavor; milk content; sugar content. That particular order seems to meet the most success.

So if I’m ever late to meet up with you and arrive, iced coffee in hand, please don’t think I was dallying; that’s like showing up with a coat on, you wouldn’t fault me for being late because I stopped to put on a coat, now would you?

Besides, you understand.

I’m a coffee person now.

Since it’s that season, Dano, Patrick & I all moseyed on down to the ice cream stand one recent Friday evening. We arrived and there were families, a demographic with whom I have little interaction, so it’s always a little weird as I have not been routinely around children since, say, I was a child.

As we waited in line, a toddler was playing with a toy ambulance that zipped along and made this awful tinny shrieky ambulance noise. And his parents, god bless them, were so patient, letting him make his way from the window to the picnic tables, one foot at a time, one shrieky noise at a time. And I laughed at each irritating step of the way, not because it was endearing, but rather, if I failed to put the situation in the space of bemused tachment, I might have slapped that goddamn thing out of his fucking hand.

After procuring a sundae and a bench upon which to enjoy it, I continued judging local families like the asshole I truly am. Some kids showed up and began jumping off of this rough 4′ cement wall, which is no skin off my back, except these terribly negative Mom Ideas kept popping into my head. Like “that kid is totally going to slam the front of his teeth into that wall,” “that girl is going to jump on top of that other girl’s ice cream cup, breaking her hand in the process, and there will be a *Scene*,” and “we should probably get the hell out of here before the traffic picks up, i.e. an ambulance is blocking the exit.” These appraisals were hardly from a caring place, oh no, to the contrary, they had more to do with the annoyance that any one of these tragedies might cause for myself and my party, which makes me a bad person, but whatever, I never claimed to be otherwise. Meanwhile, Shrieky Ambulance Kid is about 20 yards away ignoring his ice cream and inducing awkwardly manic giggling through clenched teeth on my part.

I would have been concerned about parents noticing my obviously shitty attitude toward these kids, except that some hipster rolled in wearing a shirt that said something with the word FUCK in it, so they were all busy gasping and pointing it out to their significant others rather than watching their own kids.

Just keeping you in the moment, there.

Upon the visit’s conclusion, I pulled out of the parking lot and noticed a guy sitting in a gold Corvette who I can only assume is a pedo because a) he drives a gold Corvette, b) he was eating his ice cream cone alone in his car, but most importantly c) he craned his neck to watch a van full of children being trucked off to the next amusement, licking his ice cream (presumably) longingly as they departed. Alternately, I suppose he could really be regretting how his mullet has held him back from having someone to make children with all these years, or stalking his ex and the son he has no legal rights to see, but the gold Corvette makes a strong statement in favor of my original evaluation.

And that, right there, was the icing on the cake, that cake being “If, for whatever reason, we are unable to have children, I’m pretty sure I can live with that with minimal irritation.” At least that way I won’t be tempted to actively destroy the psyche of some progeny who just wants to play while waiting for his ice cream. And as a bonus, I will never have to worry about pedophiles fucking with my chi.

I sent this list to the grocery store with a really helpful dude and this is how he wrote it down.

berries
1 per milk gallon
frosted mini wheat big bite
ham slices not from deli organic
cinnamon rolls tube low fat nonnegotiable
whole bean whatever-creme 1/2 lbs
fat free 1/2 & 1/2 pint
bananas green tips (4)
danish brie or lowfat
munster cheese
pretty pears (2)
pretzel crisps not ritz brand
cheese for omelet from next to deli

Okay, no cues from me, but what would you be making with this list for brunch, late night or dinner party? Remember all the stuff you already have at home like flour, sugar, cottage cheese (or any dairy for that matter), tortilla chips, salsa, oatmeal, freezer-burned bacon (like really unsalvageable, really), and never forget to have a midnight snack like a cheese and grape platter, or if you’re earlier eaters, about 4 hours past dinner, provided guests are still present.

My cooking as of late has been largely experimental and I follow more traditional patterns of entertaining, like always having half of a bottle of wine in the fridge for when guests first arrive, or after grating the cheese, serving the remainder with crackers about halfway through preparation of the main course. Making a non-meat dish as an alternative to any meats served on Fridays during Lent (cream of tomato soup saved me that first night!). Not everything has to be from scratch, and it’s been a priority to serve more than a casserole.

Share your menu. Bonus points if you take this list to the store and include photos of the results.

Q: What happens when you instruct your dental hygienist little sister and an Army trained cook to figure out how to make a ravioli casserole?

A:

Magic.

Happens.

Was totally going to post all the pictures I got of the Recipe Round-Robin tastetests, and then I published before I remembered that I was going to do that. So uh, whoops.

In order to save myself some work, though, I made an Omnomicon Flickr pool for RRR pictures and also if you happen to maybe try one of my recipes . . . I’d love to see how they come out for you! Will also help me diagnose problems if you’re not sure why it didn’t come out (it comes up not infrequently).

Here are some of the wicked sweet photos fellow Omnometrists had to share. I’m seriously impressed! Click to see bigger photos, and feel free to add your Omnomicon-related photos to the pool!

Let’s talk pancakes. Finally. It’s been a spectacularly shitty couple weeks and I’d like nothing more than to discuss this little contest thing we got going on…

I was impressed with the variety of pancake secrets revealed by the recipes submitted. One called for specifically, a griddle. Another sweetly suggested a few drops of red food colouring to charm your favourite little girl with pink pancakes. Yet another with the admonition that “this isn’t rocket science, people” and that you can add milk or yogurt until, y’know, the batter looks right. On a side note, I’d like to confirm with a rocket scientist that this ISN’T rocket science because I really wouldn’t know, I’m just a data analyst.

And then there was the winner: Blender Pancakes. Not only did this recipe call for a blender, but also cottage cheese, specifically, creamy small curd cottage cheese, which I’ve never had occasion to search for but AM IMMEASURABLY INGRATIATED TO DANIEL because hola crap, is this stuff good! I didn’t find anything specifically labeled creamy, but I did find some Vermont Style, which fits the description and makes me want to eat buckets of cottage cheese every night for dinner. And I’ll be making some kind of dip too. Ooo, ooo, and putting grapes in it. And so on in that fashion, at least until the cost of greek yogurt comes down.

Also, Cabot Creamery is relatively local, in that it would be easily within-state distance if I lived in the midwest which, thankfully, I do not. Our states are small up here, but scrappy, and Vermont proudly produces cheeses of all varieties that make us proud to be New Englanders, because most of us would be considerably less proud to be Wisconsiners.

Daniel would have been the proud new owner of one snazzy-looking and totally kitsch Automatic Pancake Maker, which hails from the era of scripty diner-writing, if it hadn’t turned out to be um, nonfunctional actually. Not completely nonfunctional, but it did leak batter all about and made a terrific mess. Thankfully, I had a backup Automatic Pancake Maker that is better designed, so I used that instead. I would argue that “pancake dispenser” would be a better term as this thing is neither automatic nor self-sufficient in making pancakes, but the marketing department never consulted me.

Even the better dispenser is not really meant for such a thin batter. I cite as evidence what happens with a thin batter in an automatic pancake maker when the user is attempting to photograph it as well. That thing practically barfed up the hugest pancake I’ve ever unintentionally made.

In trying to avoid this from happening again, I ended up with some interesting modern art kidney-shaped pancakes with holes in them, in addition to a stack of pancakes where not a single one is the same size as any other. Despite their size variance, they did remain more-or-less round, and certainly more than when I try to use other pancake dispensing techniques, so I’ll chalk this gadget up as a moderate success.

I’m kinda happy that the process is so simple, thus letting me ramble on and on about rocket scientists, cottage cheese varieties and products that failed to catch the public’s imagination for obvious reasons. The process is basically “blend all this stuff and then make yourself some pancakes out of it.” That’s it. I like that these are skinny, high-protein little treats that are almost a pancake-crepe hybrid. No leavening, but still a lighter-than-rubbery texture given how thin they are, which can be attributed to the whippiness of egg whites in a blender. I like a good skinny pancake m’self, though they do not accommodate blueberries very well . . . but no reason you can’t throw a handful in the blender.

Another nice thing about these is how quick it is to accumulate a stack. About a minute a side and tada! Pancake. I used my electric griddle because um, it’s awesome, and even though it isn’t the best-ever griddle, it’s well worth the $20. This will not be the last you see of this thing.

Even though I’m a syrup dipper, it’s not as pretty as catching a little drop of syrup glistening from a stack of pancakes, so I did that. For my art. I suffer for it, you see.

And I call this one “Pancake Sunrise,” despite the fact that it was photographed around 2am and would have been inedible by sunrise.

The crepey texture aids this little photographic feat, bee-tee-dubs. See?

Way to go, Daniel. You win.

Blender Pancakes
courtesy of Daniel and 50 tastebuds’ taste test efforts

Combine in a blender:
1 c small curd cream-style cottage cheese
4 medium or large eggs
1/2 c unbleached white flour
1/4 t salt
1/8 c melted butter
1/8 c canola oil
1/2 c skim or 2% milk
1/2 t vanilla
Whirl at high speed 1 minute. Grease griddle thoroughly before cooking.

Serves 3 as main dish.

Always make the first pancake right in the middle of the griddle at the hottest part. It will get bubbles as any good pancake should but don’t let that be your only guide — you have to keep trying to turn it up at the edge to make sure its cooking right. The key is to flip it as soon as you can. Hopefully this occurs at the point that its golden brown. If it takes more than a minute or so to cook, turn up the heat! If it is too dark when it sets up enough to flip, then turn it down. Temperature variations on the griddle are not your friend.

Don’t you want nothing more than pancakes now?? If so, I’ve done my job.

nutrition summary (1/3^rd batch): 390 calories, 26g fat (yikes!), .6g fiber, but 20g protein; ~ 10 weight watchers points

They say you should be close to your wedding photographer, know their kids’ names, address them by their first name. Sadly, given that you are likely to only spend a couple hours with your photographer, the majority of which time will be all business, this is rarely what happens. Couple this with a destination wedding in Mexico, where I don’t even remotely trust that I’ll ever see my (expensive) photos ever again, and an all-around distrust of anyone’s ability to capture interesting artistic shots, and selecting a wedding photographer can generate copious amounts of relatively unnecessary anxiety.

Enter Erin. Here is a woman who is not only charming and beautiful, but that bitch can take photos with her iPhone that rival those of my D80. I mean, big time awesomeness with respect to portraiture. They say food photography is extremely difficult, but I don’t believe them. Food photos are extremely controlled, no movement, you can leave as long an exposure you need, tripods aplenty…I just think it’s so much easier than capturing movement.

Erin’s background is in film (and she was totally the first friend I’ve had with an imdb entry, how frickin rad is that?!), so she certainly knows how to frame a shot. Except she didn’t know how to use a real camera. Which sounds really risky, but we went with it. So now she has my beloved D80 and my favourite 50mm lens, and has been cavorting about the country and Boston with it, snapping everything. EVERYTHING. And then she comes to my house and photographs me cooking, which takes a lot of the pressure off creating a post (bee-tee-dubs, new post this week featuring her photos). And I also have someone to help me in my Etsy photography.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with these shots, they convey…some kind of quaintness that I don’t often bring across, but is rather inherent to my personality. Thought I’d share our sunny Sunday morning vintage-inspired photo shoot.

First I made some coffee with a disappointingly modern grind-and-brew.

Employed the gorgeous new 50s pinecone carafe.

Grabbed some milk and cream.

Oh yeah, and Patrick was there! I almost forgot!

So I modeled an apron for him.

…but only after selecting the ideal manual mixer as a prop with the most pin-up face I think I’m capable of.

We discussed the hand mixer at length.

He gave it a shot and agreed that it has a very pleasing sensation when you cranked it. I was all like “Right dude? Seriously!”

I was satisfied with my selection.

Add gratuitous vintage masturbation.

That lovely lady there is myself, with makeup (shockingly), in an early 50s party dress, pastel crinoline, peeptoe shoes, rickrack-trimmed pink apron, luscious lips and a rarely large Pyrex bowl in turquoise Butterprint…I’m actually amazed at how consistently I managed to keep my era. We call that era control around here.

So no point I guess other than if you happen to be having a wedding in the New England area within a couple hours of Boston, Erin would be thrilled to backup photograph for free to get a little bit of experience. She really does love nothing more than snapping photos, and it would be doing us an inadvertent favour as well. You can get files in RAW, unedited, and a full release for their future use. I’m telling you, if she weren’t *already* our wedding photographer, I’d definitely take me up on that (or whatever . . . I’m not entirely sure of the proper grammar on that one).

Happy sunny Sunday!

I have my own new chat abbreviation, formally dedicated to all participating in the rrr: ssf, “sorry so flaky.” I was *supposed* to distribute recipes Friday, and I was *planning* on following through, but then everyotherfuckingthing impeded that, so my apologies.

Short story:

Everyone’s in.
You have asap to still submit a recipe.
I will send out recipes this week.
You’ll have the upcoming weekend and the one to follow to give a shot at ‘em.

I like to think my flakiness is one of my charms, buuuut I’m fairly certain that is not the case. *winkyface*

Everyone knows those people who rants and raves about their Italian/German/Czechoslovakian/Whatever grandmother, her incredible cooking, and the totally amazing recipes that have been handed down for generations. Sadly, I have little to counter with. While the French French are celebrated the world over for their epicurean heritage, the French Canadian are not. Case and point: French Canadians eat frog legs, though on second thought, the French French eat snails, but they have the sense to do it with a lot more panache. My family hails (on both sides, originally) from farms outside of Three Rivers, that I cannot imagine were particularly profitable, seeing as my ancestors cascaded down to work long-ass hours for practically nothing in textile mills in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Our culinary traditions reflect this reality, and we eat pauper food.

I have two Memeres. The differences between the two are easy to list: Memere Dubois grew up on a Quebecois farm, the daughter of mill workers; Memere LeBlanc grew up in Maynard MA, the daughter of a butcher. Memere LeBlanc has replaced her complete Pfaltzgraff set three times; Memere Dubois uses her oven to store boxes of Little Debbie. While they both can, by memory, trace roots back to Quebec, you can see how perhaps maybe their perspective on food might vary. Ever so slightly.

Okay, a lot.

But they, and everyone else in my family for that matter, can agree that Pork Pie is excellent, must be served at Christmas, and is properly consumed only with ketchup.

While Memere Dubois is a lot closer to the heritage, Memere LeBlanc is clearly the cook, which made it difficult to determine what recipe to use. Memere Dubois always buys frozen pies from some little old lady in Pinardville, and these have potato in them, which makes sense seeing as it’s a nice cheap filler. But Memere LeBlanc’s preferred recipe, naturally, called for two pounds of unadulterated pork. I decided to go with this version because it is based on an actual family recipe (the potato-pie version was definitely NOT the one Memere LeBlanc knew from memory), and pork is only $2.99 a lb, so really, it is modern-day pauper food, and thereby even more appropriate.

This is the recipe as written, though by the time this was handed to me, I already had the same pie in the oven. Boggle your mind on THAT, (or don’t…Memere gave me the recipe over the phone).

That size is a mite too small to read, but if you had crazy vision, you could see that it calls for pork butts ground twice, which is frankly unsurprising from someone who grew up around lots of meat. The tool I’d procured to follow this exacting direction really didn’t work out, so I had to settle with regular old supermarket ground pork. And the trick, she was done. Along with an onion, that pork is pretty much the only significant ingredient.

Saute ‘em up.

End up with this.

Drain off the grease. Since I won’t be saving the fat for the War Production Board effort, the easiest method I’ve found is using a sieve—it is MUCH more convenient than spooning the stuff out one teaspoon at a time. I have this convenient sieve that sits in my sink.

Hhokay, so. Here we hev our meat now covered by ze water.

And then you simmer that business for an hour, mixing it up frequently to try to break up all the meat wads. If you change your mind and want to make goetta instead (which is German but somehow Memere Dubois grew up on the stuff), you can boil for an additional hour. No word on when you add the oatmeal, however.

Another strain and now we’re going to use your treasured stand mixer. This will accomplish three things:

1. It will break up the meat into uniform little granules.
2. It will mix up the spices and milk with the pork.
3. It will cool the mix much more quickly than letting it sit out.

Finally, after like, an hour and a half, you’re ready to start assembling a pie! Go you! I’ve discovered that refrigerated pre-made pie crust comes out tasting just as good as homemade and also doesn’t make me want to shoot myself in the face, so I’m pretty much never making a pie crust by hand ever again. Just sayin is all.

For some reason, pork pies are always topped the same way: a crust with about a 1″ hole in the middle to allow venting. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off freehand, I found a trick for cutting the hole.

(you’ll notice I can’t even position a glass in the middle of the pie on my first try, which is exactly the reason why freehanding it was such a terrible idea)

Then I attempted to protect the edges of the crust with aluminum foil.

It got a little toastier than I would have liked anyway. But at least the edges weren’t burnt, those are the best part!

And of course, as any Charbonneau, Levesque or Savoie will shout at you, you have to at least try it with ketchup. Even if you don’t think you’ll like it, that’s the right way to eat it.

French Canadian Pork Pie
Coming to you straight from Memere LeBlanc’s memory

2 lbs pork butts, ground twice (plain old ground pork seems to work as well)
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2-3.5 c water
1/2 tsp sage powder
1/4 c milk
pinch nutmeg
pinch allspice
another 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
pie crust for a covered pie (refrigerated, frozen or your own—you decide!)

Brown pork and onions in a large skillet, breaking up meat as much as possible as it cooks. Drain grease, return to pan, and add just enough water to cover the top of the pork (this has varied for me from 2 c to 3.5 c). Simmer, uncovered, 1 hour, making sure to stir regularly (keep on breaking up the meat with your spatula). Do not let the meat dry out, though it does not need to be covered in water the whole time.

Preheat oven to 400^o. Drain meat and onions again, toss into a bowl and beat with remaining ingredients (don’t forget the extra 1/2 tsp pepper!) until almost cooled. This will take the 5-10 minutes you’ll need to prepare your double pie crust, so if you happen to have a stand mixer, it’ll come in handy.

Bake for almost an hour, or until the top looks done. Let cool 5-10 minutes before serving with a side of ketchup.

The end!

nutrition summary: 180 calories, 11g fat, 0g fiber; ~7 weight watchers points

ENLIGHTENING FEEDBACK

mizike agrees with me, which is enough to be edited in, BUT he also gave me the name of this pie.

Nothing says christmas in Quebec like Tourtiere. Serve it with a side of poutine and a bowl of split pea soup for the maximum french-canadianness possible in one meal.

The Wiki on Tourtière is enlightening and dead-on, we just always called it pork pie. My family never did the poutine thing, but split pea soup is ALWAYS on the stove just after Mom and Dad have made a ham. I salute you, mizike, fellow Franco!

Also, I totally earned some cool points from Adam, and just wanted to point out that I am always accepting cool points. Not that I need them or anything. I may even give them to charity.

On one of my thrifting excursions, I happened upon this bad lawrence for $3.

Taken in by its chrome plated iron glory, I was all like “That thing is majorly diesel! Totally made to last forever! I could really *use* this!” And snapped it up, so happy with my excellent find.

I got home, clamped it onto the old kitchen table.

Then I ground some meat in it.

Little bits of grey meat kept making its way into the mix. At first, I figured it was something to do with the meat, and picked it out. Upon closer inspection, it would appear that the metal through which the meat is extruded is not iron, has corroded over time, and was grinding itty bitty pieces of metal into my meat. I’m not sure if that’s a major health problem or whatever, but at the very least the idea of gritty metal between my masticating molars is extremely unpleasant.

Consider this an official Omnomicon PSA, brought to you by Aleta Meadowlark and associates.