Our Acidic Friend 1

Well, its been awhile, sorry about that. One day randomly my lovely computer decided to fry and I could not get it fixed until slightly after new years. I know this does not explain why I'm posting so late, well its a mix of procrastination and not knowing what I wanted to cover next. I still don't know, so I decided to just introduce an ongoing series on vinegar.

I love the stuff and its got a special place in my heart, but most people only know the basic vinegars and while I'm going to cover the most common type, at least in my house, there are many more exotic vinegars.

Lets first state what all vinegars are: wine gone bad. I know its a crude way of putting it, but its the easiest way to explain. Grapes ferment to wine, then wine will ferment to vinegar. You can nearly see it in the name, but that will wait for another vinegar blog. So we have the basis of how vinegar has come to be. Well not really, but all you need to know is that it is quite possibly the best mistake ever made.

*cue theme from Jaws* Our vinegar today is white distilled vinegar. Our most basic, cheapest, and common vinegar. What you don't have that in your pantry? Psh come on, we all have it whether we would like to admit it or not. Its universal and cheap, who argues with that? I know lots of people love to use it as a cleaning aid and yeah I can't argue with that, but I like to stick to food. I don't know why people dismiss it so much it has no flavor other than that vinegar tang, which makes it perfect to give food a tang without adding necessary flavoring.

Now I would love to include its history, but the internet has not been that nice to me today maybe another blog will handle that. Ok so whats the one use you remember using white vinegar for as a kid? Yup, Easter eggs, but they aren't the only ones to hold the handle for it today. I have found many vinegar recipes for this, the most disturbing being a Vinegar Pie...yeah I had that look on my face too. So I know you don't want a dessert to hold your vinegar, but trust me its got so many more uses other than Billies science project. How many salads have you had with vinegar? Most of them. Now I know that most call for your fancy shmancy foreign vinegars, but with a little creativity and great ingridients I'm sure you can make one even better with white vinegar than white wine vinegar.

Of course you can use it for pickling and canning, but where's the fun in that? Try adding a bit to your arsenal of sauces. I'd never suggest excedding a tsp, but a small glug to that tomatoe sauce going over those pork chop? Yum! My favorite recipe? Well Sauerbraten, its a way to marinate a meat for three days in vinegar, turning halfway every 12 hours. There is more to it, but I haven't managed to steal the recipe from my mom. I'll add one on here in a few days.

Are you going to use it now? What no? I see you pushing it to the front. Well I'll get to your fear one day, but for now, I have to find something warmer to wear. Buh-Bye.

Your dedicated foodie,
Zeni

Simple and Comfortable Chicken and Rice

So here comes our first recipe and its incredibly simple, I believe even Bianca will be able to do it. Well as the first recipe I guess I should explain how I will set these up. I will write the recipe simple, and basically, no added comments, but at the end I will write some tips I use in this that are either going to make something easier or a way to get some extra flavoring. After the tips, I will give some recommended alterations. Another fact you should know is that there is very little "new" recipes anymore, its like how there are no more new story lines, the creativeness comes in the details not the main idea.

Simple and Comfortable Chicken and Rice

Serves 4 to 6

1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
2 1/4 cup cooked rice
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenders
2 tbs. Sweet Paprika
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 cups water

• Preheat your oven at 350 degrees F
• Take the cooked rice and spread it on the bottom of an 8 1/2 x 11 inch casserole or cake dish.
• Mix your soups together with the water.
• Pour 3/4 cup of the soup mixture over the rice and mix; and add more soup if needed.
• Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
• Place the chicken on the rice and soup mixture and add the rest of the soup mix over the chicken.
• Sprinkle with paprika and then cover with foil.
• Cook for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until the juices run clear or the chicken has reached an internal temperature of 165 to 170 degrees F.

TIP: Cooked rice takes a really long time to wait already for so when I do this I normally skip a corner and cook it a little bit to tender them and then let the soup mixture do the rest in the oven. Just cook the rice till its got a soft outside, the inside will finish by the time you pull it out. Another shortcut would be if you have left over rice just use that.

TIP: When you mix the the water with the soups use the cans like you would if you just made the soup. You'll save one dish getting about 2 cups water (don't worry about exacts) and you get some more of the soup into your mixture.

TIP: I didn't put the measurements for the chicken seasoning because its a taste thing. The best way for you to probably find out the amount you need is to season it and grill it or fry it, then eat it and find the taste you like. Now since this would be so simple, I would suggest using it for a salad or sandwich. I also put kosher salt, but just use the salt you like to cook with. The same idea follows through with the pepper, I personally use a pepper melody in a grinder. You don't have to buy a grinder if you don't have one, its all for personal tastes.

TIP: Don't worry about measuring the sweet paprika, it won't drasticly alter the flavoring, but will give the rather bland looking meal a little more color. If you don't have sweet paprika and have smoked paprika it will alter the flavoring a bit, just making it a little more smokey, this can be a good thing to do if you enjoy those flavorings.

Alterations

• Substitute one of the cream soups for another cream soup such as shrimp, cheese, potatoes, ect.
• Add something more to the chicken seasoning. This would be something you would use for simple seasoned chicken. In my family this means adobe and for just me I would add paprika to the chicken also.

Giada's Evil Talent

This is probably a given, but I love cooking shows. I can watch almost any one of them, but for some I have to learn to ignore certain aspects. Giada de Laurentiis's shows happen to be a few of these shows. Of course I do love her shows, the recipes are delicious. Its the food stylists that drive me crazy and Giada was a food stylist before she became a food star.

It never use to bother me because I never paid it any attention. Perfection is not my goal and I also know what goes into food perfection. It came to my attention on Thanksgiving when I was discussing these shows with my god brother, Luis. He wants perfection when it comes to making food for people other than himself and sadly sometimes even himself. Now even foodies don't even know what goes into this "perfection" process. Just remember that your food will NEVER look the same as a magazine or food show. That picture is just a selling point to get you to buy what they're selling. Now there are reasons for this, some understandable and some just odd.

Reason 1
If it doesn't look desirable no one is going to want to make it or buy it. This one easy to prove, most people will already understand. Just take fast food commercials. Who honestly has had something that tastes as good as the food on its commercial looks? It looks so delicious on that commercial that as much as you know its bad for you, it just drives you to get it anyway and then you get disappointed because what you really wanted is not what you really got. You can also take oatmeal, that bland hot cereal that when actually paired with the right ingredients can taste rather delicious. As much as it might taste well, it will never look good. I mean have you ever seen a commercial for oatmeal that is all about the oatmeal and how it looks? Not me, the ones I always see focus in on the family and lifestyle.

Reason 2
Its not fully cooked. Those steaks, yeah they are quite a bit rarer than you want. It all looks like its cooked, but food looks best right before its done. This is used more with vegtables thankfully. See if you cook most vegetables till they are tender and moist and juicy, they loose a good bit of their vibrant coloring, it doesn't look as appealing. Now with items like meatballs this is also a really good technique for food stylists. A delicious meatball to me, will form a bit of a crust from the fat, but it tends to almost look like you burnt the meatball, it tastes a lot better than it looks.

Reason 3
Most of it is real food, then there are some things that just don't work real. Hence that ice cream you see, its really just a combination of shortening, corn syrup, and powdered sugar. This mixture when scooped makes the same exact cracking as real ice cream, without the melting part. Other than that food stylists would probably be sitting in a freezer to get those ice cream images. They also tend to add extra coloring to foods making them more vibrant and fresh. Speaking of fresh remember that almost everytime you see a vegetable or fruit its misted with water or even shined to look more appetizing. Natural ingriedients definatly don't look that perfect.

Reason 4
Airbrushing is no longer just for models. I'm not going to say this reason for just food, but everything. Every picture in a magazine is airbrushed. Every piece of film, other than the news, is digitally editted. There is no reason people should ever aim for perfection from these. That is all on this reason I even care to go into.

Reason 5
Your ingredients will never look the same or even perfect. Ok thats kind of wrong, because with all these advances on making plants and animals grow quicker our produce is looking more and more alike. In an ideal economy I would only buy from the farmers market and the organic section, because well I don't have to worry about adverse effects. Either way our ingredients still have some diffrence in how they look. I have yet to meet a pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that hold a relatively similar look. The only thing you want to be about the same in your ingredients is that your meat or cut up vegetables are about the same size so you don't have a bunch of diffrent cooking times for the same thing.

All that said perfection is not in how the food looks. Its all in the effort you put in making a meal for the people you care about. Who cares what it looks like if it tastes amazing? Its the reason I don't let people see the food before they smell it, more often than not it smells amazingly better than it looks.

Your dedicated foodie,

Zeni

An Intro to the Mind of this Foodie

Many factors have come to the build up of this blog. The main one being my love for food. Which should be obvious, why else create a blog on food. Another major influence is anthropology. I know its random sounding, but food is essential to our lives so its history is entangled with ours. Other reasons I'm writing this is to introduce food to people, not complicated or fussy, but enjoyable and relaxing. Now that I've explained my reasons I can go on about its future.

This will be one of my babies, a nice non needy one like the dogs and plants. Anyway I will write about food, duh, but more the history of it and reasons we do what we do to it. I realized this was slightly useful the other day when my friend Bianca, asked me the diffrence between baking soda and baking powder. I would get into this, but its an introduction and I do plan to explain it in one of my first actual articles. Another part of this will be little tidbits of information, or one liner facts.

I will answer any questions that are in my capabilities, which shouldn't be that limited. Of course if there ends up being an abundence of questions I'll start picking the most popular or the most intresting. Well thats all I can really say about questions...I really thought there was more, oh well.

Actually thats all I can think to put in this intro, other than my plans are to update it atleast once a week.

Well farewell for now, your dedicated foodie,

Zeni