Goblin Ear Stew with Tomatoes and Oregano

Spoilers: it's cabbage soup with some kind of meat added. No actual goblins were harmed in the making of this soup. Possibly derived from “glumkis” or “Gołąbki,” Polish stuffed cabbage. You ever notice the veins on cabbage leaves? If you don't slice them into thin ribbons, if you leave little squares or triangles of cabbage, they get all rubbery after cooking but they retain their shape and you can still see those veins.

My mom makes cabbage soup that might have been influenced by the Polish community in the white-flight ring of suburbs outside of Detroit where she grew up. Or maybe every culture gets around to trying cabbage with tomatoes and ground beef. She's three or four generations removed from Dutch and English ancestors.

Yes, I spill something over the eye of my cutting board
every time in homage to Watchmen. Sorry.

Ma has dozens of recipes committed to memory. When I asked how she made cabbage soup, she listed what she had used in the latest batch.

1 head of cabbage, chopped

8-10 Roma tomatoes, chopped

6 regular tomatoes, chopped

2 x 15 oz. cans tomatoes

2 big cans of tomatoes (28 oz. each?)

4 pounds ground beef

½ pound to 1 pound onion, diced or chopped

carrots, chopped

48 oz vegetable stock

32 oz beef stock

rice (optional)

If you've never seen a bowl of thawed ground turkey before, I took a picture just for you.

Why use canned and fresh tomatoes? Is there alchemical magic in that precise combination, or did she get sick of chopping tomatoes? Something special in the proportion of veg to beef stock, or is that what she had on hand?

Tomatoes look like this. Roma tomatoes are often cheapest.

I'm going to try to keep those proportions of cabbage to tomato to beef to stock, but I'm not doing a lot of math to get there. Also I don't need 30 servings, so I'll do:

½ head of red cabbage, thicker leaves shaped into spade or heart shapes as you imagine a goblin's ear might look; the rest sliced or chopped

2 pounds tomatoes

2 pound ground turkey (because it's cheaper than beef)

2 cups diced red onion

2 carrots, chopped

2 cups stock (I used no-sodium chicken plus sodium-saturated beef stock)

4 cups tomato juice

1 tsp dried leaf oregano (too much?)

salt & pepper to taste

a quantity of rice (optional)

Cook the ground turkey and onion over medium heat until the turkey is browned. Keep cooking until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring frequently for 10 or 15 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients except rice. If it doesn't look like enough liquid to cover everything, add more tomato juice or stock. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer. Let it go for an hour or so until the carrots are soft and the cabbage is magnifique. You could cook the rice in the soup if you want, but then it's going to absorb most of the water. I like it a little soupier, and I'm going to amortize my investment in that damned rice cooker as often as I can, so I start the rice cooking separately when I start the soup. I'll add the finished rice when the soup is done.

Before cooking.

I've thought about preparing a pot of Goblin Ear Stew to accompany a session of Dungeons & Dragons. Monsters in the game have captured your characters. If you're willing to eat some of their Goblin Ear Stew (in the game and in real life), they'll be amused and let you live longer. If you can't stomach it in real life, then your character can't stomach it in the game, and they'll add you to the stew.

The money shot with goblin ears displayed. Next time I'll skip the greenish outer leaves and use some purpler inner leaves. Also those parts where the leaf gets all curled up in itself really look like the folds of a human ear, or a bat snout. Perfect.

But I also want people to like it, and I know most people aren't fans of cooked cabbage or tomatoes. If they reject it, I might feel like a bad cook instead of a great prankster Dungeon Master.

If I was making this for myself, I would chop the cabbage into
1 or 2 inch pieces instead of shredding the rest.
Your mileage may vary.

So I'm going to test it out on my co-workers. We're having a soup & salad potluck. The department is mostly ladies, so they're a little more adventurous than guys are. They'll even do “mercy sampling” like I sometimes do: seeing a dish that's been untouched and taking some so the person who brought it won't feel unloved. I won't mention that I call it Goblin Ear Stew, but I'll share the recipe on Facebook and see if they notice. I'll let you know how it went.

... It went well. I took pictures with big "goblin ear" leaf shapes at home, but cut them down to size and mixed them in before taking it to work. I only mentioned the name "Goblin Ear Stew" to a few friends after they said they don't like cabbage anyway. The crockpot was half empty at the end of the potluck, so about a quart was gone. Four people said they liked it, and one asked if I had used something to sweeten it. I couldn't remember any particularly sweet ingredients except maybe the carrots or the chicken broth base.

Please let me know if you make it, or if you have any comments or questions or suggestions. 

Share and enjoy!

Universal Facebook Recipe

No thanks, Aunt Sally. I don't read recipes on Facebook anymore, because I have ALL OF THEM at my fingertips right here in my Universal Facebook Recipe meme! Please share this photo on Facebook or any social media site that has covered your nightmares in cream of mushroom soup or packets of ranch dressing dust.

Chicken chili crockpot photo is by flickr user Lesley Show, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

In case it's too small to read, here's what it says:

Universal Facebook Recipe. Pick one meat from Column A and three seasonings from Column B. Add all Required Ingredients from Column C. Stir in crockpot* & cook on Low for 9 hours or High for 4 hours.

Column A: Meat
Ground beef, pre-cooked
Chicken
Pork chops
Li'l Smokies

Column B: Seasoning
Cream of Mushroom soup
Onion soup mix
Ranch dressing powder
Chili powder
Italian seasoning
Balsamic vinegar
Jar of salsa
Coarse Kosher salt
Himalayan sea salt
Star Trek security crewman turned into a cuboctrahedronal block of salt by an alien.

Column C: Required Ingredients (add all)
1/2 cup onions, diced
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
Bag of spinach
Bag of frozen hash browns
All of the cheese
Three more tablespoons of salt

* Federal law prohibits mentioning what SIZE crockpot you should use for any recipe, because people who can't afford large crockpots deserve to overflow. If they want to make crockpot recipes like normal humans, they should just get better jobs, harvested from a Better Job tree in the Land of Better Jobs.

Thirty Years of Wondering What the Alcohol in That Video Game Tasted Like

Thirty years ago I played a game called Castle Wolfenstein on my Commodore 64. The graphics weren't top of the line, but the style of the game was unique.

Not a straightforward shoot-em-up, because you had a limited supply of bullets, and firing on the Nazi guards would alert other nearby guards to your presence. Also pretty creepy because the simple graphics look like a starving skull on top of the vertical striped uniform of a concentration camp prisoner.  I don't think I ever reached the end of the first level (finding the secret war plans and escaping the castle with them).

What I remember is that you could search trunks and the bodies of dead guards to find more bullets, weapons, money, bulletproof vests, grenades, bratwurst, and something called Liebfraumilch, which is apparently a wine made in Germany. It's not a brand but a type of wine associated with a region, like Champagne, Merlot or Riesling.

Pretty sure I saw a bottle of this on top of my grandparents' fridge way back in the '80s. I can't remember if I asked them about it or told them I was fascinated with it because of the video game I'd seen it in, as if they should also be excited for that reason. Sounds like something I would have done. Hell, here I am still doing it, just to a different audience.

You might recall from the German words that filter into American pop culture via Scooby-Doo or whatever that "lieb" means love, "frau" means lady, and "milch" doesn't come up much on Scooby-Doo but it means milk. Love that lady's milk! Actually it means Beloved lady's milk, as in the Virgin Mary, and it was the semi-sweet white wine "produced from the vineyards of the Liebfrauenkirche or 'Church of Our Lady' in the Rhineland-Palatinate city of Worms since the eighteenth century." (Good ol' Wikipedia.)

I thought they were calling me and all their customers pigs for drinking this, but "Qualitatswein" on the label means quality wine, not quality swine.

I don't drink, because fucking look at me -- do I look like I have a lot of self-control? But I'm willing to try alcohol every once in a while, just to say I've tried some obscure kind, like hard root beer. Consequently, I've never been drunk or experienced a hangover, never developed a yen for alcohol, and I've never gotten used to the horrible taste of it. Really, you're not kidding anybody. If you're a connoisseur, your goal is finding the least worst tasting toxin to get you intoxicated. The only way to make it really bearable is to make a girly drink cocktail with so much fruit juice and sugar that the alcohol isn't noticeable.

Since I had the camera my phone out, I also took a picture of this pot of Transylvanian Goulash. Fairly low carbs.

How did my first glass of Liebfraumilch taste? It tasted like wine. If it doesn't have a ring of sugar crystalizing around the meniscus, it's not sweet enough for me. And even then, we're still talking about alcohol. I'll use the rest of it for cooking some time. I scanned the wine racks at my local Meijer Thrifty Acres for ten minutes, had almost given up, but I found this one brand of Liebfraumilch on my way toward the check-outs. Five bucks was cheap enough to satisfy thirty years of curiosity and give me something to post about on your friendly neighborhood Eat My Professional Photographs of Food blog. For the rest of the night I'll be burping goulash and alternating between my impressions of Andrei Codrescu and Slavoj Žižek. (I know, Žižek is Slovenian. Can you really tell the difference?)

Share and enjoy!

I Want To Tell You a Story About the Last Time I Was in Portland

You know you're reading a real-ass food blog when the post starts off with a bang. I mean, right off the blocks, she's all like:

Several months ago, my dear friend Heather called me on the phone.

I'm on the edge of my seat, and that seat is covered with saliva, so I'm about to slide off the side of it. You're probably thinking, FOOD. I want to read about food. I'm ready for a recipe. I followed a link from Pinterest to this page. Give it to me.

That's because you're not subtle. You're a gourmand, not a gourmet. Why do I even waste my time on you?

. . . Just kidding, lol. I greater-than three you!

Anyway, I bought some ricotta cheese at Walmart and I have to use it up, so I'll probably make a pot of lasagna soup. This blogger is demonstrating a great Paula Deen recipe with lots of pictures and LOTS of text in case you just ran out of Alphabits and alphabet soup and you needed more words.

Keep coming back to Eat My Professional Photos of Food Blog every day in case I ever get around to it!

Insert Catch-phrase Here!

Spaghetti Squash With Mushrooms and Parmesan, But Without Cancer!

You asked for it! And by "you," I mean Ame. She suggested that I write a parody of all the annoying spaghetti squash recipes she sees on social media. I can't remember if she said Pinterest or Facebook, but I'm sure they both have their fair share.

I looked for some spag-squash recipes on Pinterest, and I love fungus, which is what mushrooms are, so I picked this one from Caroline on Pickledplum.com. Spaghetti Squash with Mushrooms Parmesan. It's gluten-free because you're using squash instead of pasta. That's good if you have gluten sensitivity or gluten superstition or gluten hypochondria. Is there a phrase for "cheesy vegetarian," like if you avoid meat but you're okay with cheese? ... Yes, Wikipedia says it's called "lacto-vegetarian." That describes this recipe too.

So let's get down to the pictures!

This is a spaghetti squash. I'm confident of that identification because of the sticker that was on it. The recipe calls for a two pound squash.

This was probably 3-4 pounds, so I saved half of it for another day.

Have you seen mushrooms before?

That's what these are.

White button mushrooms.

This is what mushrooms look like after you slice them.

I minced some garlic into this steel thing that's supposed to be used for poaching eggs.

We tried poached eggs once and it was a lot of hassle without much pay-off,

so I just use them like ramekins. I mean, I guess people cook things in ramekins.

I use them as little containers to hold spices or minced garlic or stuff like that.

Whoa, that tablespoon of thyme is so fresh, you can't even get it in focus.
When I started cooking the garlic and thyme in oil, this stuff was popping and spitting and leaping out of the pan. But it did have more flavor than dried thyme.

Have you seen mushrooms sauteing in olive oil in a pan before?

With garlic and thyme? Here's what mine looked like.

Here's the spaghetti squash after I baked it for an hour at 380 degrees F.

Does your oven have a setting for 380? Mine doesn't.
The recipe on pickledplum.com linked to another site with

basic instructions for baking spaghetti squash.

Most people cut it in half or quarters, then bake it.

It's hard to cut through the skin when it's raw, but easy after it's baked,

so they recommend just bake the whole thing and cut it afterwards.

I think next time I will cut it first though, because with their way, you end up

pulling out a lot of the good stringy parts to remove the seeds.

Here's what it looked like as I pulled out the good parts of the squash.

You don't have to work hard with the fork to shred it.

The stuff just naturally comes away in shreds,

plus it separates easily from a very thin skin that's left over.

So it's not like you're wasting a thick rind or something, like with watermelon.

Can you believe people make sweet pickles out of watermelon rind?

I guess it's edible, but that sounds like somebody was running out of food

and got desperate and just pickled anything they could.

Cubans supposedly marinated grapefruit rinds and grilled them like steaks,

during the "challenging period" after Russia stopped subsidizing them.

I totally want to find that recipe and try it someday.

Here's another pic after half of the squash was scraped clean.

See what I mean about the thin shell that's left?

If you follow that recipe, I guess you're supposed to turn off the mushrooms and set them aside while the squash finishes baking and then after you scoop out the squash, you add it to the skillet and bring it up to high again for one minute? That seems silly. I'd bake my squash to start with, then wait til it's cooled to room temp, scoop it all out into a container. Then start off sauteing garlic and thyme, add mushrooms, finish off with the squash and Parmesan. Obviously that's the cheap kind that comes in a container pre-grated. I also totally skipped parsley because it doesn't impress me much.

Here's what the final thing looked like in my black bowl.

Not as dark as the stuff in Caroline's pictures, but it turned out good.

Caroline also has a picture telling what she thinks each ingredient will cure or ailments that they are supposed to help you with. I'm guessing parsley is not a substitute for chemotherapy, but your mileage may vary. Have you seen any studies proving these foods will NOT cure cancer?
I rest my case.

That's all I got!
Fake us on Licebook!
I mean Like us on Facebook!

And by "us," I mean me.
Follow me on SupDown (username %NotAllArmpitGrowths )

as well Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Condoleeza, Portnoy, Protnyo, Kabala and IG Farben intranet.

Share and enjoy!

Amazing Tropical Citrus Detox Treatment!

People focus on the ingredients in a recipe, but the real alchemical magick is the process in which ingredients are brought together. That's what makes this new treatment I've developed so uniquely special. It draws on traditions from the North Caucasus Mountains as well as North Africa. Keepin' it Northern, ya'll! I didn't even know there was such a thing as ancient Caucasian alternative medicines, but here you go!

From my research, I've learned that these "immune-boosting" wonder foods "build good gut health and [are] full of electrolytes,"[1]; as well as aiding digesting, capable of "stabilizing blood sugar; lowering cholesterol; healing; hydration; and even replacing blood plasma in an emergency."[2] Coconut has been recognized as antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial. They can also keep wrinkles at bay, regulate hormones, zelate your metabolism, raise energy levels, prevent tooth decay, and good for hydration.[2]

The health benefits of citrus include "weight loss, skin care, improved digestion, relief from constipation, eye care, and treatment of scurvy, piles, peptic ulcer, respiratory disorders, gout, gums, urinary disorders," "help[s] to cure rheumatism, prostate and colon cancer, cholera, arteriosclerosis, fatigue and even high fevers,"[3]; a super-food that helps diabetes, heart disease, and eye health.

'Salted Limes - close up' photo by David Pursehouse is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The process of this treatment involves fermentation, which is known to convert "natural sugars and carbs into bacteria-boosting agents"[4]. Some fermented foods increase brain health while diminishing depression and anxiety. Is it possible for a food to be probiotic and antibacterial at the same time? We'll find out!

For my purposes, the most important health benefit was relieving stomach ailments, as described by several doctors.[5]

Amazing Tropical Citrus Detox Treatment 
recipe

The first step is to make Moroccan preserved limes, which takes 3-4 weeks. You'll need:

2.5 pounds of limes
.25 cups pickling salt
glass jar or food-safe ceramic vessel

Normal table salt or other kinds of salt may have additives that prevent fermentation. Thankfully, pickling salt is cheap.

1. Cut the ends off the lime rinds, but don't cut into the yummy part inside.
2. Cut down from the top as if you're going to quarter the limes, but don't cut all the way through. Stop cutting about a quarter or half inch from the bottom, so the segments are still attached to the rind at the base.
3. Rub salt into the cuts you made in each lime. Stack a quarter of them in your glass jar or container.
4. Use a potato masher, wooden spoon, or some other implement to mash the limes. The juice will combine with the salt to form a brine. You want to get them to release enough juice so that the limes will be submerged in the brine. Any piece of rind or pulp or fruit that sticks up above the level of brine may turn moldy. Some people set weights on top like a plate or saucer with a rock on top to hold the fruit below the level of brine. If you have a jar or smaller container, you might try a plastic bag full of water set on top of the fruit.
5. Continue stacking and mashing in layers until you fill the container.
6. If you didn't use all of the .25 cups of salt, toss the last of it in the jar with the limes. Note that using plastic or steel containers instead of glass or ceramic can interfere with the fermentation process, or may corrode the steel. With plastic, you might never get the smell out.
7. Leave the vessel of limes at room temperature for three to four weeks. Check every few days to tamp down anything sticking above the brine. Supposedly these can last 12 to 24 months with no refrigeration, but I stick it in the fridge when it's done fermenting because I'm chicken. Mmmm, chicken!


The second step is to brew up some coconut water kefir. You'll need:

.25 cups kefir grains or water kefir starter
6 cups coconut water, the younger the better
.5 cups fresh-squeezed lime juice

1. Combine coconut water and kefir grains in an hermetically sterilized glass jar. Some people prefer to cover the jar with cheesecloth, but you may be keeping out healthful dust that way.
2. Leave the jar at room temperature for 48 hours.
3. Strain the coconut water kefir. You can use the grains to make another batch of kefir later.


Are you ready for the final step?

1. Put the lime in the coconut.
2. Drink them both up.
3. Put the lime in the coconut.
4. Drink them both together.
5. Put the lime in the coconut.
6. Then you'll feel better.

Of course the best ways to get this treatment into your system rapidly would be using it as a colonic, or a urethral cleanse.






Footnotes/links
1. http://thecoconutmama.com/coconut-water-kefir/
2. http://undergroundhealthreporter.com/coconut-health-benefits/#axzz3nbYgGA9E
3. https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/health-benefits-of-lime.html
4. http://www.earthclinic.com/remedies/fermented-foods.html
5. http://secondhandsongs.com/work/12291/versions


Disclaimer: Although there are people who proclaim most of the health benefits listed in this blog post (as you can see from the actual links), I don't necessarily believe any of them. Neither should you unless you find reputable sources to back up the claims. If coconut water kefir mixed with Moroccan preserved limes accomplishes anything other than tasting good, it would be news to me. And I wouldn't even vouch for it tasting good because I haven't tried this recipe. It's cobbled together from Coconut Mama's recipe for Coconut Water Kefir and Nourishedkitchen.com's recipe for Moroccan Preserved Lemons. Those sound like perfectly good recipes. I don't mean to imply that their blogs make far-fetched health claims like the kind I've made here, although you should approach their claims with the same healthy level of skepticism you'd apply to any claims.

If you took any part of this post seriously, please recalibrate your bullshit detector. I'd suggest any time you hear or read terms like "detox" or "super food" or curing cancer, you should assume they are untrue unless they can prove it. I'm suspicious of the word "cleanse" except when used in promotional materials for Mr. Clean. Listen to the song "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits several times. It may help you recognize when people are selling you hogwash, or at least serve as a reminder that hogwash salesman are everywhere.

Some of the completely fictional ideas I added to this post are:

• that coconuts can "zelate" your metabolism. I thought I had made up that word, but apparently it means to love ardently or become zealous. 
• I have no idea how you would "hermetically sterilize" a jar or what benefits it gives, but that is a real thing. 
• Although I'm too lazy to put cheesecloth over jars of fermenting food, I doubt there is such a thing as "healthful dust."
• Urethral cleanse? Just NO.

Look at What This Individual Had for Lunch

pic.twitter.com/hOsYr8tHRd

— someofmyblurst (@someofmybest) April 29, 2015