Chupaqueso.com

I got tired of moderating away comments posted by a rather persistent spammer flogging a diet pill. The site has always been set to hold for moderation any comments with too many links, and so the spam was never actually seen by anyone but me (and possibly Howard). Now, any comment with the name of that particular often-spammed diet pill will simply be refused.

And now, to forcibly drag this post on-topic…

Note that I spelled it “spam”, not “SPAM”. The latter is a registered trademark of Hormel Foods Corporation, which has been remarkably clueful as corporations go about its use on the net: basically, as long as you make sure not to use the capitalized form, they don’t have much problem with its use to describe the scourge of the Internet. I believe that those of us on the net should honor their wishes.

The canned meat product that’s the subject of the trademark is not one of my favorite foods, but I might get a can, chop it up into little bits, and try it on a chupaqueso.

There. How’s that for trying valiantly to stay close to the actual topic? Or should I give up and just post a picture of the latest chocolate and jalapeno creation?

Ah, syrup-food. Breakfast treats with sweet, mushy innards and mapley goodness drizzled over the top. They’re oh-so-strictly verboten under my current diet.

So I make do with this recipe:

Ingredients
1/4 cup “quark” (yogurt cheese) or cream cheese
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp butter
maple flavoring
banana flavoring
2 packets of Splenda

To begin: soften the butter, add a packet of splenda and a couple of drops of maple flavoring. Mix well. This is the topping.

Beat the egg and add the milk. Add just a sprinkle of Splenda.

Add a drop or two of banana flavoring and the rest of packet #2 of Splenda to the quark (yogurt cheese, which must be made with UNSWEETENED yogurt, or you’re getting sugar in your low-carb meal). Cream cheese will work too, but quark (pronounced “kvark”) is better.

Now… heat your griddle or large skillet, and pour the egg into a thin layer. When it has cooked mostly through, gently spread (or “carefully glop”) the artificially-sweetened, artificially flavored qvark onto it in a line near one edge. Roll it up, let it heat just a little more, and then slide it off onto a plate.

Drizzle the maple-splenda butter over the top, and eat it right now, because it is best served hot.

Carb content is about 5g - 1g/oz in the quark, 1g per packet of Splenda, and 1g per tablespoon of milk.

Chalain and I joke about low-carb dieting all the time. See, we know it works for us, but both of us “fall off the wagon” from time to time.

I’m not sure of the origin of the “on the wagon” metaphor, but it’s very visual for us. See, when I stop low-carbing it’s usually because of stress, and I begin to crave comfort foods. That means chocolate, french toast, and big bowls of fried noodles. And from there things usually progress into a diet where I’m living off of “spaghetti toast” (toast with marinara sauce) and chocolate milk.

And Chalain and I describe it not as “falling off the wagon” but as “leaping from the wagon, stripping naked, and running off into the woods to play with the faerie folk.”

Low-carb dieting, for me anyway, is a discipline that helps me break my addiction to dancing naked with elfkin.

For the last three weeks I’ve been stressed, and I’ve made it further and further into the woods. The brownies and I had quite the mosh pit last week, and Saturday I realized that I was back up to needing two naps per day, and still not having any energy. So Sandra and I agreed it was time to get back on the wagon.

Firing up the low-carb diet is not easy, because I have two days of comfort food cravings. This can be offset with medication (mostly caffeine, ibuprofen, and chromium) and exercise, but the side-effect is 18 hours of being wiped out in weird ways. Chalain and I describe THAT not as “getting back on the wagon” but as “getting on the wagon by standing in front of it, letting it hit you, and then getting caught up in one of the wheels.”

So… today I’m back under the wagon. The theme-song? “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round.”

In the Perfect Nines thread someone commented about why cookbooks recommend not cooking eggs in cast iron: they discolor (sometimes).

I’ve cooked eggs on the cast iron griddle, and not noticed discoloration (though my success at basting them there has been mixed — see the linked thread above for details). My guess: if you keep your cast iron freshly seasoned and use it often, your eggs will be a healthy white-and-yellow rather than brown and green.

But that’s not the issue here– the issue here is the difference between new cookbooks and older cookbooks. I was reading a recipe for eggs “over easy” in a new cookbook over at Chalain’s place, and was APALLED. It said that after cooking on the first side for 2 and a half minutes, you flip the egg over and cook for another 90 seconds.

I’ve got news for you… if you cook your egg that long, it’s not over easy. It isn’t over “medium.” I wouldn’t ever call it over “hard.” I’d just say it’s “overcooked” and throw the rubbery thing into the sink.
Why for the love of all things tasty would the chefs at Better Homes and Gardens or the kitchen priestesses at Betty Crocker (I forget the brand name of the cookbook) tell us that “over easy” is done this way? Well, the answer was in the back.

It’s a CYA: Cover Your (Attorney). They don’t want you to have the slightest bit of not-completely-cooked egg in your diet, lest you contract salmonella and sue Better Homes & Betty for mal-recipe-practice.

I’m guessing these same cookbooks will not give accurate timings for rare steak, juicy chicken, or (Betty forbid!) raw cookie-dough ice-cream. If the trend keeps up the only place you’ll find preparation instructions for steak tartare or sushi will be in the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

We have a 20-year-old “Joy of Cooking” book, and the recipes in there are SOLID. But I’m not sending that book to college with my kids 10 years from now, lest it get confiscated by the under-cover, under-done police.

For me, the perfect skillet is determined by three things:

1) non-stick surface.
2) Nine-inch diameter.
3) A lid that fits.

This is because when I’m not low-carbing, my favorite breakfast in the world is two basted eggs with two pieces of toast, buttered, for dipping in the yolks. Other sides may accompany it — orange juice, grits, and bacon complete the “hearty” variation — but basted eggs and toast are the key elements.

With the impending Teflocalypse (Teflogeddon? Teflognarok? Find me a word that says “the end of the world if the world depends on Teflon”) I need to find a skillet that will work as well as any one of the four 9-inch teflon pans I’ve had over the last sesquidecade.

See, a basted egg BEGINS just like a fried egg — you take a yolk-intact egg and drop it gently into a hot pan, preferably with some butter already sizzling in there. (Note: in terms of timing, this is also the point at which the plunger on the toaster must be depressed). The egg is allowed to fry for a moment, and then the steam-basting begins.

You take the lid for the pan, put about 2 tbsp of water in the lid, and then dump the water in next to the egg. Now pop the lid on and wait for the toast to come up.

Yes, that’s how I time it. So very scientific, I know. It’s more of a performance art.

Anyway, when the toast is done, the egg is done (assuming you like your toast done the way I like mine done, and your toaster works like mine does, and you have the heat set right… so many variables, so many assumed values) and you put both of them on your plate.

If, that is, you can get the egg off the pan. See, with a good teflon pan, the boiling water will lift the egg from the surface, and the whole mess slides right out, no trouble. With stainless steel it just plain WON’T WORK.

The question — will it work with cast iron? I’m not about to go buy a 9″ cast iron skillet to TEST with, because I’m short the disposable income. I hope it works, though, because within five years both of my 9″ skillets are going to be due for replacement, and by then the Fourth Angel will be Brandishing His Spatula and Cleansing the Griddle of the World with Fire and With Olive Oil. Or something like that.

I swear, I didn’t plan this. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I posted about how much longer lasting cast iron is when compared to teflon… and now I hear that the EPA is seeking to eliminate teflon completely within 10 years.

Here are a few news links…

ABCNews.com - Dupont ceasing teflon-related emissions by 2010

MSNBC - Teflon emissions and cancer risks

Tuberose.com - (giving us a pile of anti-Teflon facts that I know to be true because I read them on the internet)

Apparently there is an increasing body of evidence linking one of the chemicals used in the production process, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), to cancers in laboratory animals, as well as to a number of health problems in humans.

The EPA and Dupont assure us that there’s no PFOA in teflon itself — the chemical is used in the PRODUCTION of teflon. But there’s also a growing body of evidence showing that when teflon overheats it emits ammonium perfluorooctane (also a potential carcinogen), among other (reportedly toxic) things.

I could read up on this all day, but I’ve got cartooning to do. Y’all go dig around and tell me what you think.

–Howard

(hat tip to “Dragon” for this one)

There have been a couple of comments in other threads about a special “omelette pan” that enables you to trifold your omelette without a spatula. Chupaqueso Reader Ford Finley stayed up all night watching TV just so he could track the thing down. Here’s a web address for Chef Giornali’s Omelet Pan, brought to you by the folks at humbly-named “Smart Inventions Inc.”

I’m not recommending any of you buy this thing. I see two problems with it:

1) It’s teflon, so it’s got a limited life expectancy.
2) It’s teflon with moving parts. I bet that life expectancy is measured in weeks if you make a couple of omelettes a day.

That said, if any of you want to buy one and review it for us, how you use your disposable income is no business of mine. But we’ll upgrade your chupaqueso.com WordPress account so that you can submit an article for our editorial staff to review.

(I probably shouldn’t accuse “smartinventions.com” of hubris in the same post where I refer to Jay and myself in the third person as an “editorial staff.”)

After dinner, I still felt like something dessert-oid. Howard’s posting about the chocolate chupaqueso, along with a memory of reading about chocolate-dipped jalapenos somewhere, combined to inspire me. Here’s the result:

That’s a cheddar shell, with Kraft pizza cheese, sliced jalapenos, and Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate syrup. This turned out suboptimally: the chocolate got too runny to allow picking it up and eating with the hands. Even so, it was yummy. The jalapeno bite was a bit blunted, and the chocolate wasn’t overpowering.

Next time, though, I’ll use chocolate chips.

Howard’s written a fair amount about low-carb eating in the context of the Atkins diet. Far be it from me to dispute the effectiveness of the diet, given his success with it. I should note here that my interest in the chupaqueso is rather different.

Like many others, I have type II diabetes. I am very thankful that I’m not insulin-dependent, and every day I can stave off that fate is one more day I’m happy. (I’m a former paramedic. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I intensely dislike getting stuck with a needle.) For the non-insulin-dependent diabetic, controlling blood sugar is principally a matter of medication, exercise, and consistent carbohydrate intake from one day to the next. I’m not as good about the exercise as I should be. I am doing better than I ever thought I could with diet, though.

Part of that success is consistency in carbohydrate intake. Here’s where the chupaqueso comes in: it’s a snack I can have without affecting my blood sugar. This is a Good Thing. That’s also why I’ll use ingredients that are not cheese and meat, although in small quantities. It works well and really knocks out the munchies.

I’m about to start upgrading the site to WordPress 2.0. Anything you post or comment between now and the time the upgrade is done may disappear. You Have Been Warned.

The site theme will also change, mainly to get rid of a layout bug that seems to mainly affect Safari. Since I use Safari, that bug obviously has to go.

Update: Upgrade complete. Have fun.