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?)
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!
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.
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.
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."
I was going to complain about this recipe I just tried to make for Peanut Butter Banana Bread. My result was a lump of glop with a crust around the edges. Could have sworn I followed every step, but I checked the recipe one last time to see what I might have left out. Probably including 1 and 2/3 cups of flour would have made a difference.
There's nothing like relaxing on a Sunday afternoon with some salsa and things to dip in it, with Filmation's 1988 animated masterwork Bravestarr: The Legend screening in front of you. What could make it better?
I'll tell you what: having your laptop in your lap and posting a new picture of your store for everyone to see! That's right. The blog has been going so well that I've rented the empty former OfficeMax building on North West Avenue in Jackson, Michigan. (Not to be confused with West North Avenue. I know, confusing, right?)
In no way could I better capitalize on the success of this blog than by opening a "bricks n' mortar" storefront! I still haven't decided what to sell there besides my novel (Grand Theft Boblo, only seven bucks!), my short story collection (Dungeons and Dayjobs), and some crochet hats that I was unable to sell on Etsy. I'll probably put together something food-related to sell, or maybe photography-related. So exciting!
I thought you might enjoy the pictures of foodstuff from this pamphlet that came in my mail recently. Most years their promotional materials only show the Four Beasts and talk about The Endtimes, but this year they've added pictures of grapes and they're talking about health! So that's nice.
You can click on these pictures to see larger versions of them, or any of the photographs on my site. I didn't create this artwork or anything, just scanned the pamphlet.
Roar! Winged lions! I would like some grapes, a tomato sandwich with mayo and a dash of salt on it, and maybe a flank steak from that bear with the blades coming out of it's snout.
Do I place my new world order with a waiter or the maitre d' or someone? I don't know how those things work at new world restaurants. These are the kinds of questions I expect they will answer at the presentation. Also I would like to know how to prepare my immune system for the Seven Last Plagues.
So many nutritious possibilities! Now I'm hungry for some chimera roast with a side of fresh berries. Yum-mm.
When I think of spaghetti squash, I think of my Grandpa Northrup. He had a huge garden covering an acre or two around the edges of a swamp. He used to pay my cousin Jim and me a penny for each potato bug we picked off his plants. We'd show him a jar full of bugs, and I kind of doubt he really counted them all, but he'd get an estimate. I'm pretty sure we got paid, because we did it more than once, and we're weren't chumps. Grandpa also likes to point out that there's this squash that tastes like spaghetti, if you cook it and shred the inside and pour spaghetti sauce over it. The shreds look like noodles. Also good with just some butter, if you like squash.
Spaghetti squash photo by DocteurCosmos from commons.wikimedia.org licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Genericlicense.
Now Jim's wife Ame asked me to write a post about Spaghetti Squash. My first request! I am utterly stoked. And that's going to be a corker of a good post, probably next week.
Tonight I made Stuffed Pepper Soup from a recipe I found on Pinterest. Which doesn't actually host any recipes, it just redirects to other places. You probably knew that. Anyways, you can find it on a site called cookingclassy dot com. That's where the link on Pinterest pointed to. It took forever to load. Maybe it's just my wifi or something. Then when I tried to look at it on a different day, because I first pinned it like three days ago, today it was taking forever. I closed that browser tab and reopened and tried different things. Then it's crusted up with so many pictures and ads that it would load like two pictures, then I couldn't scroll down the screen any more. When I finally got down to the recipe, I was sick of friggin around so I copied the text of the recipe and pasted it into Notepad, then shut down the damn browser tab.
I don't get a lot of ground beef except for chili, because that stuff is expensive compared with chicken and pork. Depending on what cuts you get, you can still get bony chicken for $1 per pound, and bony pork for a buck and a half or two per pound. Beef is like pffeeeewwwww, $3-$4 per pound just for ground beef. What's the kind that everyone says you're supposed to get because it's higher quality or whatever? Ground chuck? I think they used that at Domino's twenty years ago when I worked there. We ran out and I had to pick some up from the grocery store, and the manager said make sure to get ground chuck instead of ground beef or whatever the other is called. Higher quality.
That stuff costs more. But the cheapest stuff is like $3 per pound for a roll that looks like an obscene sausage.
Is there a law in the food service industry that managers have to be assholes? Cuz he was. Not because of the ground chuck thing, I mean because he'd get stressed and throw things, slam the peel on a table. A "peel" is that thing that looks like a giant spatula or a flat shovel for pulling the pizza out of the oven.
So I had some chicken in the freezer, from a big ol' family pack I bought to save money. Why not, I thought, make Stuffed Pepper Soup with Chicken Instead of Beef? And take pictures? For my new blog which is called "Eat My Professional Photographs of Food Blog" which I started today and already I'm doing my second post. Enthusiasm!
Okay, I was half done before I started taking pictures. No big deal. Surely you know what it looks like to dice veggies and sautee them. Cook some chicken. I kinda browned it for ten minutes, then cooked it in two cups of water for like thirty minutes. You should probably only do that for fifteen or twenty, I guess. Make sure it's cooked enough. With a thermometer or something.
Chicken on a plate before I picked it off the bones.
Everything in the pot except for rice and the first few pieces of chicken.
Picking up some of the soup on a spoon makes a more dynamic photograph.
Nice composition here too.
These are honeydew melon seeds that I toasted in a skillet with garam masala.
Not part of the Stuffed Pepper Soup, just something I made a few days ago.
Thought you'd want to see it.
Instead of two cloves of garlic like the recipe calls for, I took like six little cloves. I cut them in tiny pieces in my fingers and put them back into the little bowl where the rest of the cloves are sitting. When I went to toss them in the pot, this one was uncut in there under a layer of minced garlic. Oops.
This is the plate after I picked the chicken bones clean.
Only parts left are some gristle and sinew.
I put the lid back on the pot for thirty minutes like the recipe said to do.
This is the pot of soup as seen from above.
Lens got steamed up on my Coolpad Arise phone from Scratch Wireless.
It's so cheap, you have to download a separate app if you want to block someone.
Oh well.
I realized that my flash wasn't working before, because I have a phone case made for a Motorola or something and it has a hole for the camera lens, but not for the flash. So I took off the case and here you can see the blue reflection from the flash.
Spoons are dynamic. Yum! Tomorrow I'll post a picture of the finished bowl of soup, if I can get my phone to finish sending the damn photograph. Or maybe it's my wifi router, I don't know. Technology is frustrating even when you are Eating My Professional Photographs of Food Blog!
Share and enjoy, please.
Not the food, I mean share this post with other people,
so I'll get on Food Network's Next Blogger or something.
I should start centering all the text on here, shouldn't I?
It was a foggy autumn day when I was struck by the idea to lay out a lot of words, delaying you from getting to the substance you want to see, namely recipes. Here's a photo of something I made before, but there's no recipe for it. Wait for the fifteen photos below to load before you can scroll down to the next paragraph of text.
I grew these jalapeno peppers in my mudroom.
This little lady got away with my toe, but the joke was on her because I got her eggs.
This little buck was afraid I would eat him.
So I will feature my professional photographs of food that I make, sometimes food that other people make, sometimes other people's photographs, sometimes things that could be food but that I didn't eat or cook. For example:
A red spot sunfish that I decided not to eat. Almost ten inches!
Here's a largemouth bass that was not big enough to keep, so I released it. But it's good to know I could get some protein other than squirrels and geese if peak oil or nuclear war or catastrophic climate change or capitalism destroys our civilization. I think about that sometimes. Shooting geese with bows and arrows. Because there are a lot of them around, for now.
I could have made a meal of this, but the black mold inside indicates I was a little too late. At least a squirrel or something ate on it.
Berries I picked along the bike trail. Yum!
This is funny.
Shrek Stroganoff answered a lot of my prayers.
This was in the ad paper for Hutch's in Spring Arbor, Michigan, USA. That mason jar contains a "Barbecue Sundae," consisting of pork n' beans on the bottom, a layer of cole slaw, a quantity of pulled pork that was probably barbecued, and a pickle spear down the side. So creative!
And of course you'll get to see my professional photographs of food that I have made, such as the below ----
Chicken Rice Tomato Parsnip Okra Peas Carrots Onions Stew made by Rob "Eat My Professional Photographs of Food Blog" Northrup.
Finally got my cookie press to work right. Cookies by Rob "Eat My Professional Photographs of Food Blog" Northrup.
That's all the pictures I took today. I'll post some more tomorrow. Please follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Condoleeza, Portnoy, Protnyo, Kabala and IG Farben intranet. My name is "EatMyProPhotoFood" or some variation of that on all of those platforms. Share with your friends or you're not really my friend! Ha ha, no pressure. But it means a lot to me because this is my only source of income now, so if the kickstarter for the comic book vape candles doesn't pan out, I really need people to read this blog and subscribe and follow on RSS and iTunes and Stitcher. There's an automatic service that turns your blog posts into an audio podcast read by a robotic voice of Bea Arthur. She even describes the photos, but I think the cookies look better than she says. It's expensive, but worth it. And the saleswoman for the service said, "You have to spend money to make money!" I know that's right.
More tomorrow! Thanks! This is Rob Northrup signing off. Send me your ideas and recipes and sculptures. I can't pay you for them or give you credit for them, but I will use them if they're good enough!
