Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Sparky got me Vivian Howard's cookbook for Christmas. (If you don't know who Vivian is, then look her up you lazy uninformed bastards.) And I decided to make one of her restaurant's most popular dishes, pimento cheese grits with salsa.

Confession #1 first though, when I moved south in 1974 I tried grits and I hated them  They tasted like paste mixed with sand. But later I found out that the problem was all the grits I tried back then were crap.  Don't ever eat Quaker Oats brand grits, especially the instant ones, they're fucking awful.  These days I love love love grits, especially Lakeside brand, they're made from yellow corn so they're nice and yellowy.  The best dishes begin with the best ingredients. 

I began by cooking my grits.  I cooked enough for the two of us, which is a half a cup of grits stirred into two cups boiling water.  You stir them until the grits absorb all the water and if you have to, mash out all the lumps. 

 Once my grits were done, I greased a cast iron skillet with butter.

Then I poured my grits into the skillet and let them cool completely.  

After I made the rest of the meal, I put my grits into the oven to bake.  I baked them at 375 F for about 15 minutes. Then I put the pimento cheese on of them and I baked them for 10 more minutes. 

After they finished baking I took them out and I spread some of my homemade canned salsa on them and I cut them into pizza like slices. 

I served them with fried chicken legs and some turnip greens.  

The verdict: DELICIOUS. The grits were fantastic and the pimento cheese and salsa complimented each other like crazy.  I am definitely making this dish again.

Confession #2: I didn't follow Vivian's recipe exactly, I used it as a template rather than something to exactly slavishly follow.  Mine turned out fine, even if they were a little less crispy looking then hers looked in her cookbook.

Sidenote, once I finish reading her cookbook I will review it here, so stay tuned.

Happy mother's day

I hope you got your mom something special today, because she's worth it.

Hot in the kitchen

I don't give a crap about molecular gastronomy.  I couldn't care less if some asshole figured out a way to spend six hours in a sweaty kitchen turning beets into something that's supposed to taste like chocolate pig testicles.  The fact that you can cook perfect soft boiled eggs every time in some kind of machine doesn't do a thing for me.  I hate all that crap, in fact go ahead and put it in a plastic bag, shove it in a boiler, and sous vide it up your classically trained French chef butt.

Also, Anthony Bourdain? What a insufferable asshole.  Braying, misogynist, overrated, lousy writing asshole.  He's the Guy Fieri of the gourmet food set.

In fact, most all TV food personalities make me stabby.  They make me ever so glad I cut off our cable years ago.  I can't stand most any of them except for one:

Vivian Howard.

How do I love thee Vivian?  Let me count that ways...

I love her because she's not pretentious.  She's not running around pretending to be something she's not.  I love her because she's no longer part of that uber awful New York city food world.  She's real, she's in North Carolina, and she's honest.

And she doesn't cook that pretentious crap that's been anointed as the next big thing out of New York that we're all supposed to fawn over, that's going to make us jizz in our pants, and make us whole once again.  She cooks great looking food that's been grown in her region of the country.  She takes the best of what's around her and she turns it into great looking edible food.  What she does, from what I can tell from her TV show, is art.  It's not rocket science, it's not pretension dressed up as supper, it's good looking edible food that doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

I also love her because she's in my part of the country.  I've been by the city she works and lives in.  I've been to some of the places she goes to buy food.  I've been to the beach towns she's been to.  And one day, I'm going to go to her restaurants and I'm going to eat her food.  I'm not ever going to those places that awful Bourdain raves about.  I'm not going to Emeril's restaurants so he can sweat and grimace over my food.  And no, I'm not going to go to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant because I don't want him berating anyone who's made my supper.  But Vivian's The Chef and the Farmer is within driving distance and one day I'm going to go in her place and she's going to make me something good to eat, something honest, something grown and raised near her.  And I'm going to eat it and be happy.

The twelve dishes of Christmas

Oh mid '60's cookbooks, your food could not look more unappetizing.

This year...

...please remember the circus peanuts during this holiday season.

Adventures in eating

We bought this cookbook at a used bookstore the other day:
And last night I made pollo al limone (chicken with lemon) and fagiolini Sant'Anna (green beans for Saint Anne's day).
Holy hell, was it ever good.
Nom, nom, nom.

Picky

The fact that I love to cook is a minor miracle, but the fact that I eat as wide a variety of food as I do is an even bigger miracle. I had two strikes against me from the beginning, the first was my mother couldn't cook to save her life and my crazy Aunt Rageaholic used to use threats, intimidation, and physical violence against me to try to make me eat the foods she wanted me to eat when I was a kid.

I'm not sure why my mom was such a lousy cook but back then I didn't care. We didn't go hungry or anything, we just ate a lot of bad foods and convenience foods, it was the dawn of the convenience food era after all. Mom would cook that abomination called 'city chicken,' which was actually veal, as I've written about before, and she'd cook a lot of things like hot dogs, instant mashed potatoes, TV dinners, and lots of things that came out of tin cans. I remember eating lots of canned pudding, I used to love the lemon and butterscotch flavors, tamales in a can, salami and liver loaf sandwiches, sugar sweetened cold cereals, and store brand Twinkies, which were called 'Tiger Tails.' And of course we'd wash all that down with Coke, Kool Aid, and whatever store brand drinks were on sale. I'm guessing that having to look after five rambunctious kids and a mentally ill husband sapped her energy so much that she just took the quickest way possible to fill our always hungry bellies.

About the only fresh thing I remember eating was lettuce. Fruit, not so much. Back then I didn't know any better and I didn't care. I loved eating all that store bought crap and I loved it even more when we got to eat out at McDonald's or A&W.

Don't get me wrong I loved my mom dearly but she really didn't do me any favors in teaching me how and what to eat. She indulged us a bit too much and it was during that period of my life where I began to develop my bad eating habits.

But if my mom indulged us, my crazy aunt went in the other direction, which was just as bad if not worse. Since I went the first ten years of my life eating crap I had no idea what to make of the stuff my aunt made and forced us to eat when we moved in with her and her family after mom died. Suddenly I was confronted with a bevy of weird and strange looking foods. I had seen tomatoes in the grocery store but I had never seen one sliced up and put on my plate. I had had salad a few times at my Aunt Carol's house but when we moved out to the farm in Howell we had it every night and it was drenched in oil and vinegar, two liquids I had never seen or tasted before. Other foods I came into contact with at Aunt Rageaholic's house that I had never eaten before were easy over eggs, fritters, stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, fried chicken, parsnips, turnips, stewed greens, fried okra, perogies, beef tongue, liver and onions, and many more. And it was there that I was confronted with the food that made, and still makes me, gag and vomit, the cooked carrot.

What my crazy aunt should have done was let me come to these new foods on my terms and on my time, if I didn't like what she made for lunch or supper then I could have just not eaten it and gone hungry, but that wasn't her way. She lived for and loved to control people, that was her sole purpose in life, to control and dominate others, especially small children. She was one of those people who loved having a big family because having a big family gave her more people to control. And she was not shy about doing it either.

When she ran into a kid, mostly me, who did not like something she cooked she'd shriek, "You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it." My brothers and sister were old enough to appreciate all those new foods, I wasn't. I was a picky eater. I didn't want real mashed potatoes, I wanted those flake potatoes that came from a box. I didn't want fresh tomatoes, I wanted ketchup. And I especially didn't want cooked carrots because as I said before they made me vomit. But that didn't matter to my aunt. What mattered was that I bent to her will and that I did what she told me to do.

The Sunday morning ritual back then, and for many years hence, was before we all left for church, and she made sure we all went to church so everyone could see what a great Christian she was for having taken in me and my siblings, she would sear a pot roast, peel carrots and potatoes, and put all that stuff in a big pot. She'd leave it cooking on low while were in church and by the time we got home it would be done. Then she'd make a salad and we'd have a big meal around one o'clock most every Sunday. I'd eat the meat, the potatoes, and the salad but every week I would not eat the carrots. And every week she'd scream at me for not eating them. Some weeks she'd slap me for not eating them and some weeks she hit me, or get Uncle Adultery to hit me, with a belt to try to make me eat those vile fucking carrots. Some weeks I'd chop them up into tiny pieces and move them around on my plate to make it look like they were gone and some weeks I'd hide them in my napkin and toss it away before she knew what was happening. And most every week one or more of my cousins, her biological kids, would remind her that I had not eaten my carrots. They took perverse pleasure in seeing me get hit, screamed at, and abused for not eating something that made me throw up.

The Sunday meal that made me hate cooked carrots, my cousins, and my crazy aunt.

But all her bullying went for naught. I never ate those cooked carrots. No matter how loudly she screamed, no matter how many times she slapped me, no matter how many times she hit me with a belt, no matter how many times her kids snitched on me, I never ate those fucking slimy things. I still don't eat them to this day.

Back before my heart attack when I still would go around her and her family they would make references to me not eating cooked carrots. They would call those references 'carrot jokes,' as in, "Hey make sure he gets an extra helping of carrots with his meal!" And they'd all laugh uproariously, and point at me. To them it was a joke, to me it was a reminder of how I grew up a third class citizen in what was supposed to be my home. After my cardiologist told me to reduce stress levels in all areas of my life in the wake of my heart attack five years ago I cut my crazy aunt and her kids out of my life because every time I saw or was around them they'd bring up cooked carrots and other stupid stuff from my childhood. My life has been much more peaceful and good without them in it.

But happily I didn't let my bad experiences with food scar me for life. I've grown to love fresh fruit and vegetables, mostly because my girlfriend Sparky was patient with me when we got together and she introduced eating fresh tasty food to my lifeless diet. And I've also grown to love cooking with fresh ingredients.

So if you have kids who are picky eaters now, whatever you do, don't hit them or sceam at them to try to get them to eat whatever foods ghey won't eat right now. Nine time out of ten they'll grow out of being picky and they'll learn to eat and appreciate a wide variety of foods. Being the stirct unyielding parent bent on dominating them to your will will only fuck them up in the long run. Trust me on this one, even though I don't have kids I know what I'm talking about.

Here's that coupon I saved for you

I wash my Mug-o-Lunch down with Jonestown flavor Kool-Aid.

Rating some of the TV chefs

Okay, I admit it. I watch the Food Network from time to time and I've actually tried some of their recipes. It's been a mixed bag when it comes to results though.

Here's my top tier of TV chefs:I find Giada annoying to listen to but she's easy on the eyes and on the palette. I've made two or three things she's made and they've all been great. Clearly she knows what she's doing in the kitchen. But if she's in a non cooking show, I won't watch her because like I said, she annoys me.
We're both Jamie fans here at Monkey Central. We watched all his 'how to' shows, we've watched his other shows (the ones about school lunches, starting his restaurant 15, and the one where he went to Italy), we own a couple of his cookbooks, and despite it costing almost ten bucks, we bought the first issue of his magazine. Everything either one of us has made of his has been good and it's easy to make. I've learned quite a bit about cooking by watching and reading Jamie's stuff. As he likes so say on his shows, "Go on, my son."

The good but not great tier:

When she speaks her voice is like nails on a blackboard to me. I want to make her stop talking forever when I hear Rachel ray giggle and say, "EVOO." But she's made a few things that I've liked after I tried making them myself. But the chicken breast in balsamic vinegar topped with a dollop of sour cream dish she made one night came out nothing short of vile. Basically, I can take her or leave her.

The holy hell these people should be tried for crimes against food tier: I tried to like Marcus Samuelson but I just can't. His accent is freaky and his food stinks. Everything I have made of his has been bad. I made a fish cake dish recipe of his one night and it made our old condo smell like mustardy burnt ass. Seriously, ick. Yes, I know the dark haired one is dead but I'm not about to let the Two Fat Ladies off the hook. These broads never met a piece of string or fat, or small woodland animal they didn't want to deep fry or boil to within an inch of their lives. I made a ricotta and honey pie from one of their recipes one night and it tasted like sweet swamp debris. Maybe I dislike them so much because the one holding the carrots was slagging Jamie Oliver in the British press a while back, or maybe I dislike then because they made shitty looking food that put British cooking back a couple hundred years.

Also in this category are Paula Deen (because she is such a negative southern stereotype who never met a piece of pork fat she didn't want to slather all over something) and that dude with the spiky bleached hair do that does that awful show about diners on Food Network (seriously, Food Network, that guy has all the charisma of a muskrat who's gnawing his leg off to get free from a trap).

And finally the female chef hotties I like to watch but who's food I have not tried to make yet: I find Ina Garten to be inexplicably hot. I like that she's a little round woman who cooks up sinfully rich food. And then there's Nigella. Need I say more?

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

I have a confession to make. Remember how I said I was going to go vegetarian after the first of the year? Things have not gone the way I planned them. Not everyone at Monkey Central is on board with going full bore vegetarian so we've held off for now. But while we are still eating some meat we have decided to eat even less of it this year than we did last year. So there you go.

Here's a mostly vegetarian meal I made for supper last night, it's spicy veggie flat bread sandwiches with acorn squash and a salad.

I sliced some zucchini, some onion, a few mushrooms, and some red, orange, and green bell peppers. I also mixed together some Dijon mustard and some mayo made with olive oil. I had already put my squash in the oven to bake about 40 minutes before I started making my sandwiches.
I then sauteed my onions, peppers, etc, in olive oil and some tandoori spice mix. While that cooked I made a salad out of spinach, shredded carrot, cherry tomatoes, and I added to it three diced up anchovies. Be careful you don't over power your salad if you use anchovies, I only use a few to give it a little kick sometimes.

Next I turned off my oven when I saw the squash was done and I put some flat bread in the toaster oven to heat up. When it got hot I put the mustard/mayo mixture on it and I filled both pieces up with the peppers, onions, etc and I folded it over. I added the squash to the plate and then I put the salad on them as well.
It was all very tasty. Later for dessert we had some apple pie, which Sparky baked yesterday, with ice cream on it. Mmmmmmm.

You better watch your back D Cup

F Cup is gaining on you.

Need something to go with the canned meat?

May I suggest diced rutabagas? No?

Okay then, move along please.

Hey, I've got an idea

Let's go get some:

And then after that we'll grab some:
But I'll get low fat frozen yogurt if you don't mind.

Feed Me Seymour

As I was cooking one of my new favorite dishes, pasta with sauteed egg plant and other in season vegetables and herbs (red bell pepper, onion, basil, banana pepper, and tomato) topped with a lemon olive oil sauce, I thought to myself how that type of dish would never have been served to me when I was a kid growing up in Michigan and in Virginia.

Why is that you ask? For two reasons.

The first reason is my late mother was a lousy cook. No seriously, she could not cook to save her life. That's why we ate things like hot dogs, pizza (mmmm greasy cheesy take out pizza with pools of grease on top), Twinkies, canned pudding, well you get the picture, she couldn't cook for shit so she fed us mostly convenience foods that were either take out or canned or boxed.

I honestly thought all pudding came out of a can and it was supposed to have a metallic taste to it. I also thought that all enchiladas came out of cans.

When she tried to do the right thing and serve us fruit and vegetables we rebelled like crazy. Of course it didn't help that one of the veggies she tried to get us to eat was the despicable product known as Veg-All. If you aren't familiar with the horror that is Veg-All, just know that it's corn, green beans, and other boiled to death veggies all in one can. It's disgusting.

So I did not learn good nutritional habits as a young lad. We ate badly and we did not know that we were setting our selves up for trouble way down the line.

The other reason is that after my mother passed away when I was ten we went to live with my crazy rageaholic control freak aunt, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Auntie Dearest (and yes feel free to draw any comparison you like between her and the film Mommie Dearest) and she was diametrically opposite to my mother in the cooking department. She was a good cook but since she had to control everyone she would not allow anyone to cook anything that she did have a say over.

She also had such crazy ass control issues that she would threaten us children, and by us children I mean only me and my brothers and sister, with physical violence if we did not eat all of whatever she served us. This was problematic for me since I can not eat cooked carrots with our vomiting. She would fix cooked carrots every Sunday with our regular after church meal of fatty greasy pot roast. I would try to not eat the carrots because they made me sick but every time she would threaten me and at times would whip me with a belt to get me to eat those fucking carrots. She also encouraged her horrid children to snitch on me if I did not eat all the carrots she tried to force down my throat.

I also had problems with drinking the unpasteurized milk she used to buy from a local dairy farm. I never was a big milk drinker and that milk she used to get was foul tasting, not to mention usually warm by the time I was forced to drink it down because I would let it sit because I hated it so much.

Auntie Dearest had to try to control everyone at all times, even at meal times. As long as you ate what she fixed and praised her to the heavens she was fine, but as soon as you said you did not like something that she fixed then she was in your face screaming that "You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it!" And she usually had a belt in her hand to back up her point.

After I got out of that madhouse and on my own and cooking and shopping for myself I did not adopt the best diet in the world. I hardly ever ate fresh fruit or vegetables, I remember buying iceberg lettuce and then tossing it a month later because it went bad. One of the dishes I used to make that I thought was somewhat healthy was something I invented called mac and cheese salsa burger. I'd make a box of Velveeta shells and cheese and put ground beef and salsa in it. It had all the basic food groups, meat, vegetables (via the salsa), dairy, grains (via the pasta). I hardly ever had a salad or a fresh tomato, or a banana, or anything that was good for me. Of course after eating all that transfat and boxed and canned foods filled with preservatives I developed an even bigger pot belly than I had before. The fact that I drank soda filled with high fructose corn syrup didn't help matters either. My diet history was leading me down Heart Attack Highway at about 100 MPH.

Then I met my gf who taught me how to eat properly. She had grown up eating fresh garden grown foods and she ate a sensible balanced diet. She taught me to incorporate green vegetables, fresh tomatoes, fruits, and other healthier foods in my diet. But even though I ate better after I met her we still ate far too much red meat and we liked our chocolate cake and other transfat filled foods. So for awhile I ate better but still not great.

Then almost four years ago I had my heart attack and quadruple bypass and I got put on a low fat low salt diet. The low salt part did not bother me since I rarely added salt to my food anyway, but the low fat part of my new diet was tricky.

A low fat diet consist of eating no more than 20 grams of fat a day. To put that in perspective for you the sausage biscuit I used to get every morning from McDonalds has about 25 grams of fat alone. On top of that biscuit I would usually eat a fast food lunch as well during my work day and a candy bar or two on top of that. Then I'd go home and eat whatever sensible thing I'd cook for us for supper that night. So before the heart attack I was probably eating about 75 to 100 grams of fat a day, maybe more, day in and day out even though I was also eating things like steamed broccoli, spinach, grapes, and other fresh fruits and veggies.

But we learned to adapt and to cut out the fat. We bought low fat cook books and I learned to make good tasting recipes from them. I also learned to cook ethnic dishes like Aloo Sag, Kashmiri Chicken, various Thai and Chinese dishes. I love the Asian cuisines because when I cook them here at home I can cut out the salt and be skimpy on the fat but go wild with the flavor.

We also eat more organic foods now, even cereals and meats, as well as fruit and veggies. We also try to buy as locally grown food as possible because it is better for us and because less fossil fuel is wasted getting it to our table. We avoid, for the most part, food that is in cans, with the exception of certain beans and legumes, most processed foods, though we do have a fondness for frozen yogurts and low fat ice creams when it gets really hot like it is now. We also try to avoid genetically modified food like the plague. And sorry to the farmers in Europe, Australia, China, and parts of South America, but we try not to eat anything you guys grow, not becasue we don't like you but because we don't think we need to be eating food that has come to us from that far away.Here's a picture of some fresh food I bought yesterday at the farmers market here in town:

They don't sell bananas at the farmers market so I had to get them later at the grocery store.Mmmm, doesn't that look good?

Lastly in an effort to not be a big ass hypocrite I gave up drinking soda to show my solidarity with the guy I consider my brother, Samurai Frog. He writes about his battles to lose weight and live a healthoer life most every week and I figured if I was going to offer him my thoughts on his diet in the comments section of his blog, then I better get off my high fructose corn syrup soda sucking ass and do something to be even healthier too, so as of last Saturday I am Mountain Dew free. I have been drinking a can or three of that swill every morning since college and I know it's been a big part of my post bypass weight gain. I have not missed it but I am still not completely soda free. I have been drinking one and only one of these a day since I gave up the high fructose corn syrup sodas. It's organic and it is sweetened with natural cane sugar not chemical laden HFCS. I don't miss the caffeine in the Mtn Dew like I thought I would, I'm naturally caffeinated I guess. But I do still like the cold carbonation. Soon I'm going to switch to just lime or lemon lime flavored sparlking water and I'll see how that goes.

I want to eat and drink healthier to live longer yes, but I also must be honest and admit that it would also be nice to look like this:

Mmmmm

Who's up for some strawberry shortcake?

Who ordered the ham?

Come on 'fess up, was it you?

I'm sorry...

I seem to have forgotten who ordered the chicken. Was it you?

True Cardiac Tales!

A couple of months after I got out of the hospital after my bypass I was in a grocery store with my gf. We were walking down an aisle and chatting about what to buy for supper. I saw a guy a little older than me and his wife walking towards us. He kept picking up things and saying, "Is this okay?"

His wife would look at the nutritional label and say, "Nope."

(Whatever this label is from I could not eat. It has too much fat and too much salt in it.)

The husband and wife kept going back and forth and as we were about to pass them I said to the husband, "Heart attack?"

He nodded. His wife said, "You too?"

"Yep," I said. "Low fat, low salt diet?"

He nodded. His wife said, "He wants a cheeseburger but he sure as heck ain't gettin' one ever again."

I said, "I'd almost kill for a big old cheeseburger too." I gave him a smile of commiseration.

"Oh well, I guess those days are gone," he said wistfully. "Take care now," he said as they continued shopping.

I said, "You too and good luck finding stuff you're allowed to eat."

In a bid to make me feel better about not having many more cheesburgers in the years ahead my girlfriend ended up buying us some ground turkey and we had turkey burgers later that night.