Here's one of our favorites, ya gotta add whatever proportions sound good to ya.....we be cookin' here Billy, not measurin'...this ain't Food Lab.
Stewed Okra and Tomatoes (for specifics and variations, go to cooks.com)
Tomatoes and juice or broth or water or wine (I always add some wine)
Onions...lots of em... and garlic...lots Sliced Okra.....lots and lots Green Pepper.....or red....or not.
Simmer sliced okra in water for five minutes, drain, set aside Saute onions nicely as well as peppers Add garlic last minute or so Add tomatoes and liquid and okra and simmer til ready (20 mins or so) Season with something hot and cajun like.....Essence is always good.
We ladle over brown rice and then I get stupid with hot sauce. Tabasco Chipotle is one of my favorites. It is good on everything.
Instead of boiling in a pot on the stove, my wife now puts it in a dish of water in the microware and just brings to a rolling boil. It is not near as "slippery" cooked this way and more people like that!! To me, I was raise on it boiled on a wood stove until it was almost falling apart, so either way is good to me. I also like it sliced across in 3/4" or so pieces, battered in corn meal and fried crispy!
Yeah, I'm surprised Billy hasn't killed me yet about the *fry* comment...lol! cholesterol anyone? At least I don't fry them in lard like my grandmother used to do!
Hey to you too! Been thinking of you, glad to see you round these parts again. Let's a person know you're doing ok. Yep, this winter has been a long one for me, even though I haven't been snowed all in like some of my friends up north and west. I'll be glad for the warmer weather to stay around, if only for the fact that it means I can take the kids outside and my house can stay a bit cleaner! lol! It's a nice 70 degrees out right now, and I am waiting for the kids to wake from their nap so we can spend a little time outside. Nice day to saddle up and ride for awhile. We've got Wyatt handling his own mount now, so the littlest one can ride with me, and I take the lead rope to Wyatt's pony and they follow or at least stay beside me. Wyatt's got it in his head right now that he wants to ride bulls...I kinda hope he "grows out" of that one...I love to watch it, but I don't know how I would handle it having to watch my baby up there on one!
Saw your recipe, you are right, it is really good stuff! I do something similar, but of course I don't use any wine in it. Also have to leave out the peppers now. Hubby's been having trouble with peppers (bell or hot) causing heartburn so he tries to avoid them now. But for some reason, he won't leave the hot sauce alone! I didn't offer any recipes because like you, I don't measure anything, I just *do*. Plus I didn't think about this one when responding to Mr. Billy....thinking I might need to start taking something for memory, this cabin fever's trying to take over! lol!
The problem is perhaps best identified, and exposed, by the answer to the question "Cui bono?" And this is the question we should be asking ourselves about most issues that confront us.... ideas, techniques, illnesses, products, services...ad infinitum.
Cui bono. Who benefits. Adam Smith wrote "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
Pollan, among others, has nailed it, but as you have observed, and experienced, the vile masters have done their best in luring us into a situation that very nearly precludes any choice in the matter. Or, for most people, any desire to make choices contrary to the popular wisdom.
More of a Huxleyian situation than Orwellian, I would say.
You asked about my breakfast. Grandson stayed over last nite and for breakfast he wanted bacon, eggs, and toast. Lovey and I had grits also....with butter. Lots of grits with lots of butter. Cui bono? We all did. We had a great time extolling the virtues of bacon, and mini-bacon toast sammichs and toast strips dipped in runny yolks, washed down with milk (organic, mind you) and mugs of coffee for the Elders. Carrying on about the smell of bacon frying and coffee making.
Is this healthy? The health police would tell you it isn't. But what of the benefits of the fun we had at table, the gastronomical delights, and the laughter. When it is all said and done, I wouldn't trade longer life for the joy of life we had this morning. And I'll do it again.
The easy times are coming to an end, my friend, and I am damned sure gonna enjoy every little minute like this morning.
Speaking of lard.....I recently bought a pound to season a new dutch oven and rehabilitate some old pieces I acquired and damned if they hadn't gone and ruined lard by hydrogenating it. Bastids. When did they start that crap? Gonna have to season me cast iron with organic pig bacon, it seems.
In a similar vein.....other than olive oil, should one trust the oils we have been led to believe are healthy? Canola, corn? Last I heard, none of Canada's canola can be certified as organic on account of GM contamination. One can assume the same for corn oil.
Today we made a large pot of vegetable zoup and had cornbread with it. Guess what Lovey decided to use in the cornbread? She substituted the bacon grease from this morning for the "healthy" oil. OMG......it's been decades since we had cornbread that good.
Ha! Here's a market niche fer ya, Billy. Lard, from organic, grass-fed hogs. Oh, the irony!
Hell, I keep this up, I'll be waitin' for *you* on the otherside of this situation.
Oh sacred, inspired madness. Good on you Charlie, you unleashed the muses. I admire your Sisyphusian bravery but the clock keeps on running. The problem is, the older you get, the fewer days you have to barter. Intimate moments at four traded off against adolescent support at sixteen? We'll never know. I hope your wager was a good one. As I always say, you're not a real man until your first heat attack. But then, I like to play to my strength.
Oh hell, just add plenty of salt to the oil or lard and scrub out the pan. Don't rinse. If it is a long time before you re-use the pan, repeat treatment and rinse.
Indeed the clock keeps running, and I too awaken at three, in the dark hours, and am gripped by terror, sheer terror, of dying, and I try and comfort myself with platitudes and fine thoughts and bargaining and all the five stages rush past in quick succession.
Sisyphean.....indeed it is, though not in the sense of pointlessness, but in the sense of repitition......this is a daily struggle at our age, old friend. What was once taken for granted is now grasped at on a nearly daily basis.
But what do you do? Do you try and bargain for time by following the advice of those whose primary interest is profit or do you try and take control of your destiny based upon other things that are important. How do we get all zen on this? Maybe it is my problem with "them" and my willingness to remove my nose inspite of my face. Pride cometh and all that you know.
I really do understand your point, and oftimes feel as if I am simply whistling past the graveyard, and I hope that putting things into words will solidify my desires/beliefs and attain solidarity with others who feel the same.
If I didn't fear the end, why would I be concerned about the quality of food we ingest, or the virulent way that we are destroying the biosphere upon which we depend? For my descendents? For sure. For myself as well. I fear the end as much as anyone, and hope I have the strength to face it with courage and dignity.
I'm just not sure any longer that what I have "learned" in the last few decades is valid, and feel as if I am mostly alone in the wilderness.
I mean, is trading abstinence of bacon and coffee and barleywine worth a few years and missing many years of ecstasy worth it, when in the end we all achieve the same goal? I don't know.
Hell, maybe it's just time to go to bed and hope I'll arise again in the morn and start this all over again.
Maybe I'll sleep the night without having to pee more than once and escape the night fears.
Not likely.
May you sleep well and dream of tomatoes as large as the moon.
Your request was granted. I started awake at 1 AM, sitting in front of the computer. I had been sleeping well, comforted in the shadows of that great, orbiting Solanum lycopersicum. Only the heater cats on the federbett could complain as I slid between the sheets to continue my nocturnal wanderings, unburdened of the details of how and why.
Get out and carp that diem my friend. I think you've already done what was intended of you. You've passed on the gift of life, as well as your dream of the Eden that is possible. From here on out, it is an adventure. There really aren't any bad endings, if ending isn't bad enough. Gotta get outta the way so that life can try again to survive.
Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniel Midlands, and the other unspeakables may try to foist their faux food on the harried masses but at least, in places like this, a candle has been lit (for the promise of clean air, food, and water, and community) to stave off the darkness of which Adam Smith wrote.
In regards to the chin wag about cholesterol, I've found a source of truly free range chicken eggs. Now I can put Pollan and his grass feed chickens to the test.
Gonna be a chilly day to lean on the fence. It's the third day of a serious overcast.
Oh, yeah, been meanin' to compliment you on your new pots;-)
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