11 Years, 4 Months, 1 Week, 6 Days

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Empty Bottle

Four-thousand one-hundred fifty-three days or 11 years, 4 months, 1 week, and 6 days ago, I split and chopped up a bunch of vanilla beans and divided them between two bottles of organic vodka in order to make my own vanilla extract. Today, I used the last drops of that 11-year-old vanilla. Knowing this day was approaching, I went looking for the same bottles of Vodka 360, bought two, ordered a lot of beans, and set them to do their extraction thing back in late June 2020. When I open the first bottle it will have been aging for 8 months while the second bottle shouldn’t be opened for about 5 more years. Should you wonder what calls for such perfect vanilla, its beautiful fragrance is wafting through our place right now along with the sweet scent of eucalyptus honey and coconut oil. I’m making another batch of sprouted and dehydrated granola. Life’s little luxuries.

Steak Season

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Cattle Exchange burlap bag from Canadian, Texas

Fresh from Canadian, Texas, this burlap bag containing over 10 pounds (4.5kg) of ribeye steaks just arrived at our front door. Steak season is a short one only running from October 15th through December 31st. Our first order of six steaks arrived back in October and I grilled our first 21-ounce (0.6kg) slab of cow b during our road trip up to Oregon in November. Since then, two more steaks have joined their brethren in the afterlife. It must have been their ghosts talking to me because at the last minute on the 31st of December, while most people were considering what level of inebriation they’d attempt to forget 2020 with, I sprung into action, deftly pulling the trigger on my big steak purchase. Now our freezer glows brightly with the treasures of beef that are typically only enjoyed at the Cattle Exchange up in the Texas Panhandle.

So are these steaks really worth the expense? That’s hard to say as I’m inclined to romanticize things and these particular steaks are associated with one of the most spectacular 4th of July celebrations Caroline and I have ever enjoyed. Back in 2006, we booked ourselves into the Arrington Ranch BnB that was featured in the movie Castaway; dinner was had at the Cattle Exchange. This wasn’t my first time there; the year before, traveling cross country with my mother, she and I happened to stop in while passing through Canadian, Texas. Seeing a brochure about town, I decided after my amazing meal that Caroline and I would return, and that’s just what we did. It’s kind of sad to think we’ve not been back in the intervening 15 years, but at least we can order steaks from them for 10 weeks at the end of the year.

Tragically, I won’t be having a steak tonight as I’m in the middle of a 5-day fast. Come Tuesday though, I’m fantasizing about some chanterelles served up with a flame-broiled steak. By the way, I’m well aware of just how indulgently fortunate I am. Not a bite of one of these steaks is eaten without some profound gratitude that luxuries like these are able to be had. Rest assured, I feel the exact same way about the nearly dozen different dried Korean plants we’ve had delivered recently that will be accompanying our upcoming bibimbap.

How Do You Do Food?

JWise Food, Thoughts

Pantry of John and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

In only 95 days, Caroline and I will have been self-isolating for one year. First of all, the definition of self-isolation for us is along the lines of being aware of our proximity to others, always wearing a mask when near others, walking for exercise much more than ever before, being aware of how much sunlight we are getting while supplementing it with vitamin D, not being as spontaneous to go places as we’d like to, staying out of as many businesses as possible, reducing how often we shop in person, and essentially eliminating visits to restaurants.

What this post is really all about, though, is our relationship with food during the pandemic. We started hoarding food (I hate to use that word, but it is what it is) in January. Back then, I’d say it was more like putting some extra things to the side just in case what was happening in China started spreading. By February, I’d have to admit that I hit the panic button a little, and unbeknownst to Caroline, I started squirreling stuff away in the nooks and crannies of our cabinets as I shifted stuff and packed food supplies in an ever-increasing density. When March rolled around and the first wave of panic buying hit the general public, our freezer was packed solid, and I really couldn’t reasonably store anything else in our kitchen. I was guessing that we had enough food on hand to last us a solid 90 days.

Pantry of John and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

We then encountered a logistical problem; we didn’t know where, in 9 cabinets spread between 19 shelves, we’d find stuff. The fridge was easy because that was all fresh food that needed to move out before it rotted. We needed an inventory, and that’s just what we created. A simple affair built in a spreadsheet with over 400 line items. We put a piece of tape at the corner of each door that had food behind it, numbered it, and counted the shelves from the bottom up, starting with the number 1. If we needed a jar of pickled asparagus, we could see that there should be a bottle in cabinet 6, shelf 2. This became our grocery store.

When we needed fresh foods I tended to try and use Costco as much as possible as they early on asked customers to wear masks and put up plastic dividers between customers and cashiers. Even though it’s only two of us, 10 lbs of onions could be gone through, and usually, only one onion would go bad while we worked through them. Six avocadoes paired with two containers of cherry tomatoes to make tomato/avocado salads to accompany meals or to eat for lunch. Two dozen eggs last us three weekends as we only eat a hot breakfast on Saturday and Sunday to make up for not being able to go out for a traditional breakfast at some favorite local joint. Fruit, some veggies, and meat were mostly coming from Costco. Things we wanted in smaller amounts, as we really couldn’t eat 4 lbs of bell peppers fast enough, were gotten from a nearby grocery store, typically right after opening or after 8:00 p.m., so I could avoid the crowds. Caroline very rarely, if ever, went to the store with me during the first 4 or 5 months of the pandemic.

Pantry of John and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

While the kitchen is my responsibility, the data is Caroline’s. As I’d ask where the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce are, she’d give me the coordinates, and then she’d remove it from the inventory, eventually adding the item to the “Removed” page in our spreadsheet. This week, the “Removed” page surpassed the “In Inventory” page, so I thought I’d take a closer look at it, and this is what I found.

The first item was consumed and removed from inventory on March 24, 2020. Looking at what followed, I am surprised by how much we’ve consumed or, in some cases, how I thought we ate more of something, but the data doesn’t support it. Somehow, we’ve eaten 4.6 lbs of nopalitos, aka cactus pads. Not too surprising we’ve used 9.5 lbs of bacon. In no particular order, we’ve consumed 12 lbs of canned black beans, an amount of butter I’d rather not share, only 6 lbs of chicken, 19 quarts of chicken stock (we make a lot of bean dishes starting with dried beans), 24 filet mignon, 4.5 lbs of ground beef, 28 hotdogs, 2.6 gallons of pasta sauce, 24 pork chops, 50 ounces of pozole, 4.5 lbs of prunes, over 15 lbs of brown rice, almost a gallon of salsa, countless tomatoes, avocadoes, six cans of spam, nuts and seeds for the roughly 12 lbs of granola I make a month and probably about a gallon of soy milk per month to accompany it. I also know we’ve been through about 4 lbs of crunchy stuff that’s an integral part of Burmese salads, 5.5 lbs of coffee beans, eight cans of enchilada sauce, and 13 packages of preserved Chinese vegetables.

With more than 400 line items, often with multiple units of particular things, we need to keep in mind what’s languishing and at risk of being forgotten lest we have to throw a spoiled product away. The inventory isn’t enough to keep us aware of how things move out of our kitchen, so every couple of weeks, Caroline sends me the updated list that I scour to find things to throw into our meal plan. At this point, since fresh food is easily available in our markets, using some foods that we collected early on that have longer shelf lives, such as our 24 ounces of soy curls meat substitute or nearly 2 pounds of canned ground beef, is becoming a challenge. We loathe throwing food away, though, and sooner or later, we’ll get to these ingredients, but with fresh options easily at hand, it’s a bit difficult.

Pantry of John and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

The point of my blog entry here is that we have never been so aware of what and how much we eat on a regular basis. That wasn’t possible when the majority of our meals came from restaurants. Had you asked me a year ago what the percentages were, I probably would have said that 20-30% of our meals were at restaurants, but now, after so many months of cooking and cleaning dishes, I’d say that probably 75% of our meals were prepared by someone else.

To this day, we still do not opt for convenience by purchasing fully prepared foodstuffs aside from pasta sauce, some soups, or pasta. As much as possible, we use whole foods, starting with fresh, before we resort to frozen or canned. Today in our freezer are nearly 5 lbs of walleye filets, 5 lbs of perch, 9 lbs of ribeyes from Texas, a lamb roast, 4 lbs of pork belly, skirt steaks, filet mignon, chicken thighs, various sausages, scallops, and ground beef. Our pantry is still overflowing with a bunch of Chinese veggies, dried matsutake, porcini, boletes, red reishi, and morel mushrooms, six flavors of spam, and a bunch of other things that came from the shelves that others don’t typically shop from.

Where to go from here? I want an app that follows my eating habits and brings me into new food experiences. Finding recipes from other countries requires us to have an idea of what we are looking for when we may not have a clue as to what’s popular in the homes of the people from Pohnpei, for example. While we have almost every spice available in one of our cabinets, and I’m not afraid to shop at Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Asian, South Asian, African, and Latin American stores, I still feel that our reach into the various ethnic cuisines from around the globe is too limited. We have the financial resources to explore, but without the general curiosity of the masses for something similar, it doesn’t seem like there’s a market yet for tasting authentic flavors from distant lands.

Gochugaru

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Korean Red Chili Flakes or Gochugaru

A side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which I’m sure is the same for me as for others, is the amount of cooking we have been doing. We’ve always branched out of the foods we are familiar with, which over the years has brought us to eating things such as grasshopper, horse, donkey, veal nerve, duck tongue, bullfrog, javelina, pig eyes, brains, and ears, and most recently a Cajun Turducken.

Back in June, I made our first bowls of kimchi sundubu-jjigae and we fell in love with it. How in love with it? We just finished our second pound of gochugaru chili powder. At the base of this hearty Korean stew lies sundubu paste and that paste relies on a large amount of chili powder. I wasn’t very discriminating the first time I bought gochugaru; I went to a nearby Asian store and grabbed what I thought was “the real thing.” Getting back from vacation this week, I needed to make a fresh batch of sundubu paste which required me to revisit the YouTube video that got all of this going. I knew I would be finishing an opened bag of chili powder (our second bag this year), but I was prepared as I’d bought another bag at H-Mart some time ago just for this moment.

Watching the video the guy suggested going through the trouble of getting “real” Korean gochugaru. I thought I had the real thing as it had Korean writing on the package, so what else could it have been? It could be from China which was exactly what I saw on the older package and the new one I just opened. I consulted Amazon to rectify this and found out that authentic Korean chili powder is not all that easy to obtain. When I did find it the price made me think twice. The new “Korean Origin” chili powder costs $30 a pound compared to $10 a pound for the Chinese stuff. I had to remind myself that Asians pack and price spices different than the American market and on checking out my local store with the name-brand stuff on offer I discovered that a pound of regular old ground chili costs between $20 and $55 a pound when bought in those small bottles.

So, obviously, I was making sundubu paste because we were looking forward to our first bowl of kimchi and tofu stew since getting back home. For that, I needed to head out to H-Mart to get the rest of the ingredients but this time I decided to also stock up on about a month’s supply of silken tofu. The tubes are 11oz each or 312g; I bought 10 of them which will let us make 5 portions each of sundubu-jjigae. Come to think about it, we’ve eaten more than 25 pounds of tofu during this last half of the year. I needed another quart of kimchi, our 4th this year which is probably 4 times more than we’ve bought in our first 50 years on Earth. While this may sound mundane, I bought some fresh American- and Chinese-grown shiitake mushrooms; they were sold out of Korean shiitakes. My local “American” grocery stores don’t carry fresh shiitakes. If you sense a bit of incredulity in that, you’d have heard it right. Yes, my cynicism sometimes has me feeling like the local stores only sell Wonder bread, peanut butter, hamburger, chicken, frozen pizza, Ragu pasta sauce, and 94 types of sugary breakfast cereal.

Regarding the sundubu-jjigae with the “fake” chili powder: It turned out great, and now, with about a pound of paste in the freezer, it’ll be a few weeks before I can make a new batch but when I do, I’ll be using Korean-grown gochugaru. Maybe I’ll blog again about our experiences with this fantastically umami stew once the new chili powder comes in but how much can one write about this stuff?

Oh, there’s a downside to this return to blogging about normal life, each new post moves down my masterpieces of eulogistic praise regarding our recent trip to Oregon. I sure would like to recommend that you take the 2 hours to read the 32,956 words of my screed, but short of that you could also just check out the wonderful photos. I can’t emphasize how much more interesting that other stuff is compared to writing about kimchi and tofu stew.

Thanksgiving – Coastal Style

JWise Food, Photo of the Day, Travels

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

Let’s start with being thankful for last night’s dinner. Before dipping into this very American holiday today, we feasted last night on German grilled bratwursts from Heidelberg Bakery in Phoenix, Arizona. Our brats were wonderfully paired with some Mildessa sauerkraut. Two of the five brats from dinner and nearly half a can of the kraut ended up in our scrambled eggs this morning. We checked the internet last night to be sure we should try something that sounds kinda weird, but others were gung-ho about mixing these awkward ingredients together, so we gave it a shot and can assure you that we’d do it again. Pictured is the kitchen from the Cozy Cottage we found on Airbnb.

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

This was our bedroom last night before we pulled off the blankets and pillows to make room for our comforter and pillows from home. But we weren’t ready for bed yet, not even close. We had a hot tub outside waiting for us, timed to bring it to peak temperature at 8:00 in the morning and 9:00 at night. Even before we got into that under a moonlit sky, we took a pastry-wrapped brie loaded with huckleberry from the Blue Heron Cheese Company out of the fridge and threw it in the oven. With apples left from the dozen we picked in Gold Beach, Caroline sliced some up for our dessert extravaganza of baked brie, compote, and apples. How we didn’t pass out right then remains a mystery, but somehow, we found the energy to venture into the cold evening air to bask in the hot tub. Andre, the owner of our accommodation, even provides an outdoor shower for rinsing off after getting out of the chlorinated water.

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

This brings us to the here and now. Over to your right, and hardly visible, is our little red gate, which is a private entrance. To the right of that is the hot tub, which I hope to get a good photo of before we leave. Our turducken is thawed and ready for the oven; it will require 2.5 hours to bake, and we might be meeting a friend from up here later today, too. Right now, though, we are going for a mile-and-a-half walk (2.4km) each way down to the beach. The next photo you see is from that walk.

Forest floor in Nehalem, Oregon

We’d been back from our walk a few hours before I could muster the energy to start writing this stuff; maybe I needed a break after 15 straight days of writing. After lunch, I was able to load up the photos. And an hour later I managed to prepare them for posting and even uploaded them. Then they sat here neglected while I goofed off entertaining myself. Caroline’s been sitting behind me on the couch, knitting my socks while watching a documentary series about how we see things.

As for the walk, it was brilliant, perfect, wonderful, and every other superlative that I could list as I try to convey how much we appreciate these Thanksgiving Day walks along the ocean. Just take a look at the beauty of the sea and imagine yourself here on this gorgeous fall day.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

The other day, Caroline suggested we create a kind of “meta entry” about our trips to Oregon where we post an image taken from the 18 years we’ve been coming up here and feature them sequentially by location instead of date so we can see the extent of our stops. Today, we extended this to a meta entry about Thanksgiving, where we feature an image from all of the Thanksgivings we have photos for.

True, this little segue has nothing to do with this photo of Caroline cresting the grassy sand dune that will take us out to Manzanita Beach, but I’m at a bit of a loss to share anything else. I’m also aware enough that it isn’t so much what I write today that will be important as much as how it reads in the future when we are reminiscing about our longest-ever trip to Oregon. Minus drive time to and from Phoenix, Arizona, we’ll have been up here for 16 consecutive days. I wonder if this is possibly longer by twice than our longest previous vacations on the Oregon coast?

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

A faint rainbow but a rainbow nonetheless. This could portend rain coming soon or that it’s moving on. Our positive vibe produces a feeling that whatever the weather did, it would have proven to be the perfect scenario for creating memories that will stand out as having helped form the best vacation ever. Until the next vacation to wherever it is, we go will win the mantle of Best Ever.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

To the south and from the north, the sky looked foreboding, but right overhead, the happiness of John and Caroline created a bubble of delight that everyone else on the beach was able to enjoy with us. How do I know it is us that are responsible for this phenomenon? Just ask Caroline for proof as she’ll join in my story that somehow, when we travel, we seem to have the perfect conditions and that a day rarely goes by, even in the cold seasons, when the sun doesn’t come out and smile upon us. To be honest, while probably needing to knock on wood, we never really understand other’s vacations where they complain that seemingly everything went wrong.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

Okay, there was this issue of too many people on the beach, but that happens every Thanksgiving. We can be out for a walk along the ocean the day before and the day after, and there won’t be a lot of people with us, but just before the feasting begins at midday, the throngs come out to build their appetites. You can see from the density we were all quite aware of the social distancing requirements.

Jellyfish at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

There were a few jellyfish onshore and some tiny little baby jellyfish. You can see the individual grains of sand, so I hope you glean an idea of just how small this transparent bubble of jelly was.

Caroline Wise at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

Taking a moment to think about the time we brought Jutta, Caroline’s mom up here, we checked to be sure it wasn’t too late in Germany and gave her a call from the beach. After that family connection, we called Caroline’s father, Hanns, on WhatsApp and were able to show him our location. I wish my mother-in-law was even a little tech-savvy like my father-in-law, as there’s so much more we could share with her. All the same, it’s always nice to hear her voice.

Oysters at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

We saw a guy inspecting something on the beach; from afar, it looked like the carcass of a fish. As the surf came up, he dragged it ashore. We still couldn’t tell what it was, but we were heading right for him. He was on a video call showing a friend what he’d found: a large bag with hundreds of oysters in it. We asked for a peek into it as we’d never seen such a thing, and with that, he offered us all we’d like to take with us. Thanking him profusely for sharing his treasure, we only nabbed five of them, but before we got further down the beach, four of them found their way back into the sea. One came to the cottage with us.

We’ve had great oysters along the way during our travels, places we’d go back to because of the oysters. One thing we’ve never had is to eat an oyster that’s only been out of the ocean for an hour. For Caroline, this was a milestone because not only did she eat this mollusk, but she pried it out of its shell. No hot sauce, no lemon, just a bit of the seawater that was still in the shell, and she loved it.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

We were over 5 miles (8km) on our walk by the time we got back to the cottage, hungry and ready for some lazy time. Around 3:30, our Creole Pork Turducken Roll from the CajunGrocer in Louisiana was placed into the oven. At four pounds, it was recommended we cook it for 2.5 hours. Caroline nor I have ever had Cajun pork sausage stuffed into a chicken, stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey, but we were willing to try it.

It’s 6:00 p.m. as I write this, and our Thanksgiving meal is sitting on the stovetop, resting for the recommended 20 minutes. It smells great, just like a traditional turkey dinner, really, but a taste test will need to happen before I can offer more. Yesterday, we made a Cranberry Jello Mold, an old recipe from my mom that features chopped cranberries, celery, and walnuts, with shredded apples, a bit of orange juice, a box of raspberry Jello, and while it may sound strange, it’s an all-time favorite of ours. Lastly, we also have a sweet potato to add a veggie to our dinner.

Cajun Sausage Stuffed Turducken from CajunGrocer in Louisiana

We’d do this again; the same cannot be said about the Tofurkey we tried years ago. The only thing missing was some gravy but we weren’t that prepared out on this journey for getting that detail-oriented. We have enough leftovers to add to our scrambled eggs with the last packet of Chinese pickled veggies for breakfast, and we have four slices for sandwiches. Come to think of it; maybe we’ll have open-face turducken with melted smoked brie for lunch if we are near the cottage.

Cranberry Jello Mold

Other than using cranberries for scones, this is the best dish ever for cranberry lovers. Because we’ve been doing our best to self-isolate on this trip, we brought our frozen cranberries with us instead of picking up fresh local ones. We couldn’t even be certain we’d find local cranberries as although the Oregon coast is a popular place to grow them, we don’t know what’s found in the local markets. Next up, a dip into the hot tub before heading to the bedroom where the TV is; we’ll be watching My Octopus Teacher and sharing a bag of microwave popcorn. I’m sharing this because all three of these activities are out of the ordinary for us.

Burmese Curry Paste

JWise Food

Burmese Curry Paste

How many times have I heard, “Yeah, I don’t really like curry.” It’s inevitable that my response to that is, “Oh, which one? Or do you mean all of them?” At its base, curry means ‘sauce’ but in its breadth, it incorporates traditions from at least 20 countries, each having its own variation that is often nothing like a neighboring version. For example, when we look at the four main types of Thai curry we’ll see Red, Green, Yellow, and Massaman and each has its own flavor profile. Red curry starts with red chilies while green emphasizes basil, green eggplant, and kaffir lime leaves. Yellow curry is all about turmeric, lemongrass, and galangal while Massaman starts with a Persian influence bringing palm sugar, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, and peanuts into the recipe.

The American idea of curry likely comes from a spice mix in grocery stores called “curry” and focused on turmeric (found in mustard), cumin, and coriander (common in Mexican food), ground ginger, along with black pepper. I’d venture to say that most who decry the savory dishes made with a variation of these ingredients are actually voicing their intolerance for the particular aromas of the dishes that they are unfamiliar with, and that has more to do with their xenophobia that is still rife in our society. So, from just having eaten a lunch of chicken and green bean Tikka Masala curry and hoping to cook a Rendang (Indonesian beef curry) later today, I’m here to share how to make a Burmese curry base.

Burmese Curry Paste

This recipe is turning out to be difficult for me to convey as my 10-year-old notes were only 25 words long. Faced with walking away forever from Little Rangoon’s pork belly curry and jackfruit curry, this was one of the first things I made, even before they closed up shop. It’s incredibly easy to make and freezes well, which is good because while its preparation is simple enough, it takes a lot of simmering before it’s done. There are no out-of-this-world aromas that arise from a wicked blend of spices, it doesn’t even really look all that appealing, but when Burmese curry wraps up its ingredients you are presented with an incredible dish with crazy amounts of umami that will turn any dish into comfort food.

Burmese Curry Paste

As you can see above this all starts with onions, lots of onion, red onions to be specific. You’ll need a deep pan to cook this curry base because when you start the onions still have a lot of volume but are going to cook down, way down.

Ingredients:

  • 10 pounds of red onions
  • 1 bunch of cilantro (maybe 2 for your liking)
  • 1 cup of paprika
  • 12 bay leaves
  • 1 cup of oil such as peanut, canola, or avocado

Preparation:

Chop onions into large slices, this will be blended later so uniformity is irrelevant. Chop the cilantro and keep in mind that a fine chop here is not required.

Heat oil over medium heat and add onions and cilantro at any time. Stir in paprika and allow this mass of onions to cook. Along the way, you may have to add more oil and with no hard rules as to how much there should be, I wouldn’t worry about ruining your curry base with too much or too little. The same goes for the amount of cilantro and paprika you prepare this with.

Once the onions have cooked for about an hour and are looking similar to the middle photo, remove them batch by batch to your blender and puree the onions and cilantro.

When you are finished blending them, return them to the cooking pan adding the bay leaves, and simmering this mixture on medium-low heat for another hour. Place it in jars and freeze what you won’t use in the next month. As I write this it reads strangely that I keep this in the fridge for about a month, but it’s worked for us for the past 10 years, so your mileage might vary.

That’s it but we’re not done here yet as I had a tip written in the margin that is important to fish dishes you might make with this curry base. Double roast your paste by cutting a stalk of lemongrass into 3″ pieces and crushing them with a mallet. Finely chop a thumb-size piece of ginger and add it and the lemongrass to a frying pan with hot oil in it. Fry this for about 30 seconds, add curry base and 1 Tbsp of paprika, cook over low heat until the flavors are merged. It was also noted that you could add garlic, cilantro, and a bay leaf if you desired.

Up next, recipes for Burmese Jackfruit Curry and Burmese Pork Belly Curry. You’ve been warned.