A serious competitor to soylent

We will get to what Soylent is in my next post. It's not people. But this story starts a few months ago when Trina had a friend over and I decided to make pork ribs. 1 hour before the friend arrives, Trina reminds me that she's a vegetarian. So I decided to try some fried tofu. I've been thinking of trying to replicate Annie's shake and bake tofu. So I go to the store. It's the first time in my life that I've bought the stuff, so also the first time the price tag sinks in. $1.39. "Fuck!!" I say to myself, "If I could find a way to make this that I like, that would be a lot like finding money." So I fry it, and it's way too salty, takes way too long and isn't very good, but the price tag and the nutrition info sticks in my mind. So I give it another try, this time in the oven so that I don't have to do any flipping and I can just let the oil do the work. I cut it into sheets about a half inch thick and then I cut those in half like so.

Then I cover the bottom of a sheet pan with garlic powder, salt, pepper and chili powder. I lay the squares on top of the powder and apply the same powder mix to the top. Then dribble olive oil over them until each square is about half covered in it.

Then bake at 350 for an hour. Later I made that 2 hours, and that's how I got this batch which I just scarfed down. I've made it about once a week since, 50% of my household loves it. There are 4 of us, so it's a really good money saver.

It has fat, fiber and protein, add some dried fruit and a multi-vitamin and you could live on this. It dehydrates you like nothing else, drink plenty of water and don't eat it right before bed

Two new experiments

Crispy fried tofu

I've never been a good host to my vegetarian friends before, so today I finally do something about it. I've been thinking about Annie's shake'n bake tofu and how it is my favorite tofu dish, and also wondering if I can fry it crispy in such a way that I will like it. I generally wish tofu was firmer every time I try it. So I mixed some flaxseed meal, which I have because it's part of the hacker school soylent recipe, some garlic powder, onion powder and salt together and I rolled my tofu slices, which are about 1/4 inch thick, and I put them in some olive oil on low for a while. We will see how this turns out.

Update: So the fried tofu was way too salty, but I liked it pretty good. It had about the level of crisp I was going for, but at a way longer cook time than I had expected. I won't be doing that again soon, I have to figure out the process.

Stovetop spare ribs

My favorite way to do ribs has always been cover them in spices, wrap them in foil, and stick them in the oven at about 200, for six hours or so. This time, I decided to try it in a frying pan. The store next to me sells spare ribs cut in these thin strips that make this more doable, but you could cut back ribs into pieces that would work this way too. Instead of the effort of distributing the spices over the surface of the ribs, I just toss all of the rub components into the bottom of the pan, throw in some water, boil that and then throw the ribs in. I will wait until the liquid boils down into a thick sludge, then roll the ribs in it and put a lid on the pan and see what happens.

Update: This was a much better success, in fact, a total success. Ribs turned out pretty much the same as they do by my foil wrap in the oven process, but prep time was reduced by making the rub into sauce in the pan, and by having only a frying pan to clean at the end. Next time, I will take the rub-as-sauce concept farther and thicken it with cornstarch or flour until its good and thick then blob it onto the ribs so that they can be left there and forgotten for the next six hours as they are when I do them in the oven.

GO HAWKS
I'm not sure what the latest line is but the kid at work tells me Payton Manning is going to walk over Seattle.

Franco's Instant macaroni

glazed garlic in red sauce over linguine with wok-fried top sirloin and chopped salad with white balsamic vinegar and oil dressing and a $12 bottle of wine

time on task, 35 minutes from cleaning and spinning salad to plating macaroni and meat

cost, about $8 not including wine.

feeds three slobs or four regular eaters.

mmm, fast and de lish. 

for an extra couple bucks you can lay out some bread and a pad of butter.

you don't like it you can eat in the garage.

Braised Brats

I am the least foodie of all in this family, My favorite recent culinary development is Soylent. I've been trying to get the girls to switch over to that with no success yet. On the other hand, I have a few more conventional food tricks that I can do really well. Brats are one of the easiest and all around best bang for the buck in both time and money. These have been a major hit at our game nights. I haven't researched any official recipes for Brats. This one might be exactly like someone else's, or not.

First I get two packs of Johnsonville brats. Johnsonville are the cheap ones in every store. I will eventually try it with fancier brats, but it's good to see what you can do with variation in the process before you start also varying the ingredients. I cut them in thirds and put them in a pan with a lid with 12 ounces of beer. I have tried it with dark high-brow micro brews and I didn't like the result as much. PBR, or something else light and uncomplicated has produced my favorite brats so far. My recent batch was made with Korean Hite. A foreign beer cheaper than PBR was something I had to try. Cutting them in thirds is optional, I just like to create a bit more surface area to crisp. I bring the beer and brats to a boil, then turn them down to low and simmer with the lid on. I used to do it for at least 3 hours, recently I tried it simmering for one hour and found it didn't make a difference. I always like recipes where the margin of error is big like this. Once they have simmered for an hour, if you still have a lot of liquid, you might take the lid off and turn it up so that you have mostly just pork lard, and only a little of the water-based beer + collagen mix, then add onions and put the lid back on. Stir a few times until the onions are not too crisp and not too mushy. The result is amazing over rice.

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