Thursday Gourmet

I like spicy foods.   Especially chili pepper-based spicy food.  I’m not all that fond of horseradish or mustard heat, just the chili peppers.  My family (and (((Wife)))’s family) know that I like spicy food.  Which can create a minor problem. Sometimes I receive a gift consisting of a jar of dried chilis.  Some of these I love — crumbled cascabel, mulatto, or jalapeno I can and do use.  Chipotle peppers, dried and smoked jalapeno, are pretty good, but their flavour is so strong, so overpowering, that I find them hard to use.  Which means that I have a couple of jars of minced chipotle sitting in my cupboards. 

What to do, what to do.

Wait, I’ll make a chipotle sauce.  And here it is:

The Thursday Gourmet: Hungarian Goulash

When we lived in Arizona, my folks noticed that I had an affinity for mud.  Not the nice clean loamy mud of Maryland, but the sticky gluey clay mud of the high desert and pinyon-juniper forests.  The kind of mud which can pull off a pair of canvas All-Stars and then pull of the socks for good measure.  I loved the mud.

After a heavy rain, or as the snow melted, I could spend hours creating canyons, alluvial fans, oxbows and rapids in the muddy rivulets.  So my parents bought me a pair of galoshes.  And I galoshed through the mud for the five years we lived on the Coconino Plateau.  And, being a kid, I conflated Goulash and Galosh. 

So here is my recipe for

Hungarian Galoshes Goulash

The Thursday Gourmet: Uncle Bill’s Chicken

I like garlic.  Hell, in our house, garlic is considered a vegetable.  I’ve been known to go through as many as 10 bulbs of garlic in a month.  Not cloves of garlic.  Bulbs. 

This recipe comes (in a roundabout way) from a garlic cookbook (a collection of recipes from the  Gilroy Garlic Festival) in which it is listed as ‘Uncle Hugo’s Chicken.’  My name is not Hugo.  I have no uncle, much less an uncle by the name of Hugo.  I am an uncle, though, so to her I am Uncle Bill.  Thus, my altered version of the recipe is called:

Uncle Bill’s Chicken

Hunger is Not a Positive Motivator for Children

Yesterday, I posted an older story about a religious cult in Baltimore in which a 21-month-old boy was starved to death because he would not say ‘amen.’  Starving a child is a notably ineffective way to change a child’s behaviour (and starving him to death even is even less effective).  Sadly, one state representative from Missouri would disagree.

Thursday Gourmet: Chicken With Wine, Onions and Grapes

My freezer is chock full of chicken.  Well, not chock full, but there are at least five packages of chicken breast fillets in there.  What to do, what to do, what to do?

You Can’t Make This Shit Up: Dieting with Jesus

Since I left the army, I have, I must admit, struggled with my weight.  I won’t tell you what it is, but I struggle with it.  I had no idea, however, just how easy weight loss could be if I only believed.  Jesus will help me diet via a (I really cannot believe I am typing this) Diet Jesus Fridge Magnet.

Thursday Gourmet — Popovers

My mother grew up in the Boston area.  One of her family dishes, a good New England dish (though I’ve also read that they are popular in, of all places, Arkansas) — popovers.    One day, my mom announced that she would be making this family specialty.  She had made them before, when we lived at Death Valley, and I vaguely remembered how good they were. 

I do not get my subs here.

I (occasionally)  grab a sub (or torpedo, or grinder, or hero, or Italian) on my way to work.  This is one place that I do not get my lunch (and yes, I know someone has messed with the letters, but it has been like this for a year (or more)).

Church Orgasm, Jell-o and Cheeze Whiz

Earlier today, while perusing PhillyChief’s excellent blog (I done casted aspersions ’bout his Chiefs, so I gotta get on ‘is good side), Quantum Flux, in the comment section, made a comment (the comment:  “What next will the crazy holy rollups think up next!? Jesus causing female orgasms?”) which sparked a memory from my childhood.  Well, not actually childhood, more like teenager-hood.  And not a pleasant memory, either (thanks a lot).

Thursday Gourmet

Even in Arizona, finding different kinds of chili peppers was difficult.  Hell, finding any peppers was tough:  green bell peppers were about the only thing in a Northern Arizona grocery store.  All Mom’s Mexican cooking was based on McCormick Chili Powder.  And it was good.

Then, in the mid-1980s, grocery stores (by this time we were in Western Maryland) discovered that there is more than one kind of pepper.  Red bells and even fresh jalapenos showed up in the vegetable bins.  We began using the fresh peppers.  And it was good.

A few years after we moved to Northeastern Pennsylvania, Wegmans opened.  And they carried (and still carry) lots and lots of different peppers.  And they carry dried chili peppers.  I quickly began experiment with neat things like ancho, pasilla, cascabel, and anaheim chilis.  And it was really good.

Anyway, here is a recipe for some of those dried chili peppers:

Black Bean Chili Mole with Pork