The Whine thread.

[Alelou]

Yep.

[Linda]

I never tried to make Pad Thai, just had it eating out. Think I will stay away from ever trying to make it myself now. I do stir frys in my wok, but that is just throw together things with a little soy or tamari sauce. Woks work great over camp fires as well as the stove! Duh, that was probably where they first were used, right? Guess this wasn't a whine, just a response to a whine.

[Alelou]

Honestly, it's not that hard. The first few times I made it, it was fine. It's just not second nature dealing with rice noodles.

I think I know where I went wrong. I put in so many noodles that I couldn't cook them properly, and I didn't increase the seasonings enough to account for that, and I used tofu that said it was extra firm but really wasn't, because I hadn't gotten it at the Asian market where they really know how to make firm tofu, and the eggs kind of got ecchhy all over everything because there was so much stuff in the pan it wasn't hot enough anymore. I also have a propane gas top that unfortunately doesn't really burn hot enough for stir frying or deep frying anything properly so overloading it just makes that worse. And I also waited to cook until I was too hungry to think straight.

Sometimes less is more...

I also seem to get a lot of liquid off cooking meats these days. I don't know if it's because the burner's not hot enough or because they're defrosting frozen stuff at the market or what, but there's ALWAYS extra liquid when I try to stir fry. Anyone else noticed that meat seems to throw off a lot more liquid lately? I always have to throw corn starch into all my regular stir fries to deal with that. It's annoying. In Pad Thai the noodles soak up the extra liquid, but too much of that and it gets gummy fast. In fact, I might just do the meat and noodles separately next time and only throw 'em together at the end.

[Aquarius]

I haven't really noticed the extra liquid thing with the meat because I tend to cook my meat separately if I'm adding it to something else, so I can drain the fat off. I also rinse my meat thoroughly before cooking, as several years ago I saw on a health segment on the local news that said this reduces carcinogens in the meat by about 80%, and marinading it reduces them even further.

Obviously rinsing is hard to do to ground meats, so I just cook it up and drain off as much as possible and hope for the best.

[Alelou]

Well, I don't want to clog up the drain, so I don't tend to do a lot of rinsing unless something is really disgusting, and in that case I drain it into a container. I'd rather clog up my arteries than have to have to pay some service to come dig up the pipe in the front yard like my next-door neighbor did a few years ago. The plumber told her that when you use hot water to say, rinse out the fat in a colander full of hamburger meat, it travels down into the pipe until it gets cold, and then it congeals on the pipe. We must have been lucky in Florida that the pipes never really got cold, because my mother sure rinsed a lot of hamburger fat down the drain.

I think fat in moderation is no big deal, nutritionally. They fill you up and you don't need to eat as much. And although I'm a cheapskate in a lot of areas, I only buy good quality fresh oils in glass bottles and real butter. It's overheating fat and using rancid or weirdly chemically altered fats that I'm wary of.

[Aquarius]

When I drain the fat, I throw it away, I don't send it down the sink for that reason. If you rinse it while it's still raw, you don't get the aforementioned cloggage, you're just rinsing out the dyes and stuff the store put in it, and traces of whatever in the meat, but the fat doesn't really come melting off or anything. I don't use hot water to do it, just cool-tepid.

[Linda]

Yes I seem to get liquid when I stir fry. I pour it off if it looks too much. The meat I put in a stir fry, I cut up in small strips first. Nothing fancy, usually whatever is at hand. I wonder if I got the wok hotter before I put the vegies in, if that might produce less water in the bottom of the wok?

[Alelou]

Some veggies always do that to me too -- and yes, hotter helps but with zuchini and the like, I don't think anything helps. Throwing in mushrooms helps -- I find they often absorb all the liquid.

Tonight I retreated to the pasta I understand better but I used a new recipe -- linguini armetriciana. Oh man. It tasted just like the stuff at the restaurant. And I ate too much of it just like the stuff at the restaurant. I always assumed it had cream in it or something but it's just tomatoes & onions cooked to heck and back in bacon fat and olive oil, then mixed up with some grated cheese and crunchy bacon. HEAVEN.

My Atkins husband is in Puerto Rico this week. It's pasta time, baby!!!

Guess this isn't whining anymore. Well, maybe about my full belly. And using the last of my frozen tomatoes.

[Asso]

http://website.lineone.net/~traditio/amatriciana1.html
Opponency is impossible.

[Alelou]

LOL. Well, I stumbled into that one. I like the onions, though!

Meanwhile, at the restaurant where this was my favorite dish -- except they used ziti -- it was called ziti armitragiana. Or maybe THAT really does have cream in it? I'm almost afraid to ask! I do think the ziti is better, with the little ridges to hold more sauce.

[TPoptarts]

Whine: stupid evil cramps as usual. I barely managed to drag myself through work today. And now I'm really hungry and I don't have any food that doesn't require cooking. And I'm really in no condition to cook. Or stand. Or move. I wish I had chocolate. Or ice cream. Or both. Gah I'm hungry

And another whine: last summer we had like the worst bedbug infestation ever at the zoo and they had to replace all the old beds with metal beds, and of course spray spray SPRAY so often and no one could even be here, well since then I haven't had bedbugs at all. But then Zombie left and Darth Vader moved to my room. And like it's supposed to be a staff room so we're not really supposed to get any guests in here unless there's no other rooms. But a couple days ago Vader decided to put some chick in our room because she thought she was "cool" or whatever. I dunno I never actually talked to her but she and Vader acted like best friends since kindergarten even though they just met. Then she left. And today I wake up with frelling bedbug bites on my face. Grrrr WTF why couldn't she put that chick in another room. Now our room is like contaminated because of that. And the manager wanna spray it again. I frelling hate Spray Day and I hate having to breathe that toxic dren all the frelling time. And Vader says it's "harmless to people" yeah right, I KNOW they don't use the "harmless to people" stuff, they have to wear frelling hazmat suits just for spraying this dren around for crying out loud, and Vader goes like "if it's harmful to people how come no one ever died or got sick" like dude just because it's supposed to be more harmful to bugs still doesn't mean it's healthy for people. Because it's really not. I frelling hate this stupid zoo.

[TPoptarts]

OKAY WTF!! This is a frelling staff room for crying out loud!! And this stupid bitch in the office just checked 2 chicks into our room now it's frelling full!!! What there's plenty space in other female dorms!! The zoo is far from full!! When Vader had the dorm for herself or with another staff member no one EVER put guests in her room!!! How come I'm the only one who's never allowed to get some space and peace and quiet around here!!

I HATE THIS PLACE!! I HATE THIS PLACE!! I HATE THIS PLACE!! AND I FRELLING HATE EVERYBODY!!!

[Alelou]

We're finally switching to cable internet service because we can and it's cheaper now (it wasn't even an option when we moved in here) ... which means Verizon's hold on my MSN/hotmail address makes it disappear from the face of the earth when I disappear.

So I'm currently switching over years of my calendar, email addresses, favorites, the whole schlemiel ... and sharing this experience so that just in case you were ever thinking of going with Verizon & MSN premium -- you should know they'll do their level best to make you SUFFER if you ever decide to leave.

I'm a new google fan. Yay, gmail. Cool planet theme for the inbox too.

[Aquarius]

I don't understand; I thought Hotmail doesn't care what ISP you have, because it's on their server and not your isp's?

My whine: work kicked my ass today! They taught me how to shrink-wrap stuff, and lemme just say, next time, me and that machine are gonna FIGHT!!

So now I'm drinking beer and I'm soooooo tired.

They offered me extra hours tomorrow, so I'm taking them. So it's off to bed at 10 pm like a lame, up at 5 am, work from 7-12:30 at the plant, come home just long enough to change clothes and fix my hair, run to the beauty supply to pick up my client's color, then work from 2-8. And I know I'm already booked up at the salon.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm lucky to even have a job. Luckier to get extra hours, and blessed to be booked up and making money. But by the time it's over I'm gonna want to kill people, but I'll be too tired to do anything about it!!

[Alelou]

Bleah. Sorry. It doesn't sound like you get sick time, so remember to give yourself enough of a break to keep from getting ill. Short term extra money could cost you longterm basic money.

Normally hotmail isn't an issue -- but because I signed up through Verizon that hijacks it. They'll release it back to Microsoft after six months or something, at once point I will no longer care in the slightest about having it again. Or so I've been reading online. At any case, I can't afford not to make the switch in case it happens, since most of my clients deal with me primarily via email (not that anybody's doing much dealing at the moment, grumble, grumble). I'm just glad for things like LinkedIn because I KNOW everybody doesn't update their address books when you send them a new address.