A nostalgia explosion

Someone combined two of my favorite things from childhood. The TMNT action figure van and an NES. I present to you, the TMNT NES!

What should Sawsheezle's next recipe post be?

Any suggestions fur friends? No doughs or anything crazy though. Can't really do anything smoked. I have a few things I have prepared before to varying levels of success such as:

1. Caribbean jerked pork with ginger rice and black beans
2. Pulled pork burritos with cilantro and onion chutney
3. Deviled eggs

Your thoughts/wishes are welcomed. I am trying to branch out now that I have tried a continental recipe with success. Just leaves your comments in the comments section.

Red beans and rice

capital_prototype indirectly challenged Sawsheezle to try and make some "non-Mexican" food. He suggested a cajun staple: red beans and rice. These are the results:

The setup:

I found a recipe online link and tried to follow it for some initial attempt. Ingredients are

1lb dry red beans
1 green bell pepper
1 bunch celery
1 onion
some garlic cloves
smoked sausage (I could only find kielbasa for cheap)
3-4 bay leaves
1tbsp thyme
1tbsp sage
2tbsp old bay seasoning

Firstly, I cooked the red beans in my pressure cooker similar to how I prepared the black beans. I cooked them under pressure for about 30 mins, but they weren't quite done, but that was ok because I would simmer everything together for awhile anyway. I chopped up the "top" and "bottom" of the celery (leaving almost the entire "heart"), the onion, and added the pressed garlic to some oil in a hot skillet. The bay leaves were thrown in as well.

At this point, my kitchen smelled like Chinese food. Must be the frying celery. I thought I would be clever and "brown" the smoked sausage at the same time.

Then I tossed the veggie mixture, the sausage, 2 or so cups of water into a big stock pot and turned it on high. The thyme, sage, and old bay were added ad things got to a boil. Then the beans were added. Everything was brought to a boil and then let to simmer while things thickened up and the flavors intertwined.

I kept this in the fridge and heated up a single portion, cooked some rice, and poured cajun mixture on top of rice. Added a bit of parsley for a nice photo and here you go.

The verdict? It's good. It's not Mexican food though. Also, Tabasco, which I consider to be the only hot sauce for eggs, just doesn't work here. Maybe I'll try to get some Louisiana or Crystal brand sauce? This thing was screaming for a nice salsa verde though to complement the spicy bean stew. Perhaps I'll just have to make some green salsa then?

Frijoles referitos y'all

Sawsheezle promised refried beans and Sawsheezle delivers. The "refried" is easy, but needs to be shared for all the gringos out there. First one has to cook beans though before one can "refry" them. This is an attempt at Cuban-style black beans...don't freak out....the process work for pinto beans too! First gather ingredients and take a picture:

Here we have:

1lb dried black beans
1 onion
several garlic cloves w/ fancy garlic press
rice wine vinegar
bay leaves, coriander, cumin to season

Cuban-style calls for bell peppers as well, but I didn't have those. I diced up the onions and added everything to my pressure cooker. Didn't measure the vinegar, but I put in a few tbsp I suppose used generous helpings of coriander and cumin 1-1.5 tbsp each. After adding water, everything went into the pressure cooker and cooked for 40 mins under high pressure letting the cooker cool off on its own. After they were done I tasted them and they were a bit bland. Note that salt may be a key ingredient when preparing beans from scratch. This recipe could have used more of everything and I will seek to add chile powder and other Caribbean spices to it in the future for perfecting things. Also, the amount of water you use is somewhat debatable: you don't want to use too little or your pressure cooker will dry out and you don't want to use too much or things will over flow. Once you find the right amount make sure to keep the water around for the refrying part...we need the startch! Let refry things now! Get oil/lard/whatever and heat it up in a skillet and then take a boring photo. Don't use olive oil though...wrong flavor profile. Lard is traditional, but I'm just using a vegetable oil, sunflower specifically.

Can't see the super hot oil? It's in the skillet. I put in enough to cover the bottom of the skillet. You will have to experiment with how much oil you use. Also, I read that adding more seasoning to the hot oil is a great way to really extract some more flavor from any additional seasoning you may add at this time. Now it is time to add you beans and begin to fry. Add them in a thin layer and try not to add too many...you can add more later.

 

We're trying to make a sort-of-roux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux which is a thickening agent made from starch and boiling grease. Thanks what we're trying to do. Once things are frying you can begin mashing. I didn't cook my beans with enough water so I added a bit (1-2oz) to help thin things out a bit.

Just keep mashing and using the masher to stir a bit. The heat is on high and things are cooking.

Once things are well-mashed, let the beans cook until then are bubbling a bit leaving behind small craters. Stir occasionally while cooking to help keep things from burning on the bottom. And don't use a teflon skillet with a stainless steel masher gringos! The consistency should be a bit runny once you turn off the heat, but it will quickly thicken up as it begins to cool. Here is a sample meal idea:

Refried black beans, scrambled eggs, cheese, tomatillo salsa, served with limes and cholula of course.

Keep on cooking gringos!

Stupid Dumb Excel

Copy a cell. Go to paste to another cell. Realize I need to create a new column.  Try to create a new column. Excel wants to paste something really bad.  Proceeds to try and paste the cell into every cell in the new column we created together for infinity.  Excel freezes up and dies.

Gmail Questions I Could Probably Google The Answers To

When I email a photo taken on my phone to myself,  when I download it from Gmail the default image viewer cannot keep the images save name our allow me to save the image.  Is this because the defaults setup with Gmail are bad,  or does my phone save the file in a bad format, or both,  or something else?

What's for Dinner?: Competitive post

Scrambled eggs huh? This was my Wednesday night meal:

Carnitas: pork with chile and pineapple sauce. Tomatillo salsa, cilantro and onion, served with limes on corn tortillas. Delicious.

Scrambled Eggs

Now that I am a real deal blogger, I thought I would go full on pinterest and share with y'all my favorite quick meal.

First the ingredients:

Pictured: Carrots, Cucumber, Rice, Eggs, Soy Sauce, Toasted Sesame Oil, Chili Paste

Step One: Cook your rice.  I use bagged rice from Trader Joe's as it cooks in 3 minutes.

Step Two: Scramble eggs, I tend to scramble two eggs. I've never heard of a person not being able to eat two eggs.

Step Three: Grab the food slicer of your choice.

Pictured: Japanese Mandolin Slicer, my choice

Step Four: Slice your vegetables with the food slicer of your choice.

Step Five: Assemble all ingredients.

Pictured: Added rice to the bowl. Sliced vegetables over rice.  Mixed in Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Oil.  Mixed everything.

Pictured: Top with scrambled eggs and home grown tomatoes and jalapenos.

Last step is to just mix it all up and eat it.  This takes about 5 minutes to cook.  Obviously substitute vegetables with what you have and add whatever leftovers you have, like chicken.

Sawsheezle vs. The Remote

Ok. Sometimes you just get to that point where you begin to question your sanity: is this thing broken or are the batteries just dying or am I ever going to make money off of my Greek dry-bulk shipping investments? The thing is question is my AV receiver remote and while I may watch my Greek shipping stocks crash and burn this quarter, I was able to conquer The Remote. Here's the problem:

What button do you think is the most commonly used? Answer, the only button I use other than power is the volume button on the far-right. Now obviously the engineers at Onkyo corporation would design such a button to withstand a disproportionate amount of use right? No. Every button is essentially the same: some rubberized shape with electrical contacts on the bottom that, when depressed, make a connection on the circuit board inside the body of the remote. My volume button stopped working so I knew it wasn't making contact with the circuit board inside the body. Solution: get that thing out of there!

 

And you can see the darn circuit board in there. After so much use it got warped and the button couldn't "touch" it anymore. After tearing the rubber around the button I was able to put it back in its slot and it was free to fall into place.

It works great! Of course it can and does fall out from time to time, but I just try to never toss the thing around. You should always respect your equipment dawgs.

In summary, if you use a button on your remote too much and tried to get it to work by pressing even harder on said button, you have probably warped the circuit board under the button. A simple fix is to rip the button out and put it back in. Sawsheezle 1, The Remote 0.

Meal 1

I promise, I'm not going to blog every lunch, but I thought I might document day 1 for a few reasons.

1. It might be a challenge to document lunch costs.  The photo above, depending on what metrics you use, was practically free. I got the hot dog for free from my father-in-law, the chips probably cost some money, maybe forty cents or so? See the next bullet for the cole slaw and bread.

2. Another reason I felt day 1 might be worth documenting is because the bread was the last piece from the last loaf.  We bought a new loaf of bread for this week.  I dont know if the bread would've gone stale, but its certainly possible, especially if I would've eaten 5 meals of my week out.  The coleslaw I also made with some cabbage and carrots that we bought for another recipe.  I used up the cabbage making coleslaw and, like the bread, this very well might have just turned bad and ended up in the compost (dump).  I think that these two points highlight some of the other stated goals of the lunch budget, is to use up what I already have, and not let perfectly good food that I already paid for go to waste.  With some minor constraints, and a little motivation I am thinking about how to use the leftover items to make something that I actually enjoy for lunch. It may or may not be worth mentioning, but not buying hoagies for the hot dogs was a decision I made. That is, to use up the sliced bread we had rather than loading up on more bread for one specific purpose.

3. The goal of the lunch budget is not just to save a grand every year, but to save a grand every year and eat just as well (or better).  Honestly, this lunch approximately as good as going out to a hot dog cart and buying a hot dog, some cole slaw, and a bag of cooler ranch doritos.  I am not trying to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday, but I'm sure there will be a quite a few of those just based on ease, cost, and taste.  The goal is to eat as well or better for less while reducing waste and being more productive.

Let's Talk Lunch

I'm a fan of frugal living lifestyles and one thing that I'm interested in is budgeting.  I have been thinking about a good entry point to get into budgeting and I think the easiest place to start for me is weekday lunches.

The Numbers:
By going out to eat everyday, I would be spending anywhere from $2,000 (50 weeks @ $8/day) to $2,500 (50 weeks @ $10/day) on lunch a year.

I am going to set the new lunch budget at $20/week.  If I can manage this budget, I will be spending $1,250 on lunch per year, or savings of $750 to $1,250 a year.

I think that $1,000 saved in a year is not bad, we could all use an extra $1K right?  An added benefit is not having to go out and wait in elevators or in line, which can really annoy me sometimes. Negatives include losing lunch as a nice break from the work-day and potentially reduced social interaction.

I intend to write a follow-up post in a few weeks.