{"id":1964,"date":"2013-10-13T19:27:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T01:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1964"},"modified":"2013-10-13T19:27:14","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T01:27:14","slug":"it-was-sufficient-excuse-playing-with-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1964","title":{"rendered":"It Was Sufficient Excuse…(Playing With Food)"},"content":{"rendered":"

…to buy a new pot, that is.\u00a0 (Two posts back…that was\u00a0 Friday.) \u00a0 Saturday I started a soup\/stew\/concoction sort of thing,\u00a0 realized I needed some things that neither R- not I had picked up at the store Friday,\u00a0 and that meant I needed to get to a big supermarket,\u00a0 not the little town grocery.\u00a0\u00a0 And if I was going to do that, then…why not go deeper into the city and buy a new pot?I had in mind the pot I wanted, having scouted the limited space in which to store it…an oval Le Creuset pot larger than my 5.5 quart round one, possibly in the warm golden yellow in the catalog…or maybe red like the ones I already have…or maybe blue.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Once I was at the store, the golden yellow just didn’t look good when I imagined it in my kitchen… I already have two red round pots (both smaller)\u00a0 and the blue is really a good blue (i.e., I like it a lot.)\u00a0 Of the sizes of oval cookers, the 6.75 quart fit nicely with the other pots I have–and I could lift it fairly easily and knew I could lift it when it had food in it.<\/p>\n

And having bought the new pot (and the additional groceries),\u00a0 today it was impossible not to use the new pot.\u00a0\u00a0 I cleaned out yesterday’s pot, packaged its concoction for the freezer,\u00a0 and started on the new concoction.\u00a0\u00a0 And this is how it turned out:<\/p>\n

\"New-pot-10-13-13-230\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m very happy with the new pot.\u00a0 I started on top of the stove, sauteeing two finely sliced onions, some garlic, and something over a half pound of (sliced) button mushrooms, in a little olive oil and with a little finely diced bacon.\u00a0\u00a0 Pulled that out, put in another tablespoon of olive oil, browned the meat (which I’d had in a mesquite-lime marmalade for about 15 minutes), added a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste,\u00a0 some Moroccan Tan Tan spice mix (was a birthday present)\u00a0 and some smoked paprika, then a quart of homemade beef stock. and\u00a0 scraped up the fond.\u00a0\u00a0 Put the onions and mushrooms back in with the meat, got\u00a0 it all simmering, added the last of the bottle of merlot (maybe a cup and a half), added sliced sweet peppers in three colors, cut up a carrot, some celery, then put in a couple of bay leaves and some red pepper flakes and some herbs.<\/p>\n

Moved it to the oven and let it alone a couple of hours.\u00a0\u00a0 Added two cans of black beans (drained and washed–I hate “can flavor”) , fiddled with the spices a bit, and worked in some yellow mustard and the juice of a lime, fresh-squeezed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Back in the oven another hour and a bit.\u00a0\u00a0 Now the meat was coming apart.\u00a0\u00a0 Added a cup of pearl barley and added a cup and a half of water (was a lot of gravy already)\u00a0 and put it back in the oven for another hour.<\/p>\n

We ate it for supper, of course, with a multi-grain dark bread for sopping.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I packaged a quart of it for tomorrow night’s supper, and the rest went into a bigger tub for winter use–too hot for the freezer now, but will cool in the fridge overnight.\u00a0\u00a0 The new pot’s clean and in its new home.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All that dark stuff above the food line comes off without scrubbing as soon as it’s in hot water.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s concoction had carrots, potatoes (diced red potatoes), diced tomatoes & green chilis, sliced sweet peppers in three colors, less than a half pound of the button mushrooms, sliced, the same celery\/onion\/garlic, but completely\u00a0 different spice mix.<\/p>\n

I think Paks would like both of these, but probably want that plate of fried mushrooms and bacon, too.\u00a0 And a whole loaf of the bread, and maybe a pot of honey.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…to buy a new pot, that is.\u00a0 (Two posts back…that was\u00a0 Friday.) \u00a0 Saturday I started a soup\/stew\/concoction sort of thing,\u00a0 realized I needed some things that neither R- not I had picked up at the store Friday,\u00a0 and that meant I needed to get to a big supermarket,\u00a0 not the little town grocery.\u00a0\u00a0 And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[112],"class_list":["post-1964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}