The Food and Drink Thread

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Vinagrettes are very easy - four basic components plus whatever else you want for flavour.
  • Something acidic such as vinegar or lime juice
  • Something sweet like sugar, honey or agave to take the edge off the tartness.
  • Some salt as a flavour enhancer to taste.
  • Oil.
Then add in whatever else you want to flavour. Something that has emulsifiers in it is desirable but not strictly necessary. Mustard is a perennial favourite (honey-mustard dressings) as it contains a natural emulsifier.

Balsamic vinegars are naturally quite sweet so you can make a dressing from just balsamic vinegar and olive oil. They're also quite nice on crusty bread. Restaurants in Italy usually provide these as condiments.

Get a container with a watertight lid. Mix everything but the oil up in the container, shaking as necessary. Taste and adjust with more sweet or salt if desired. Then add the oil last and shake up the resulting mixture. By and large it won't take more than a few minutes to prepare, and a little vegemite jar or so is enough for a family meal.

Some things like garlic are best left for a few weeks to steep, which can result in a lovely, mellow flavour. However, I've also gotten a bad case of Salmonella off a botched attempt to do this so YMMV.
 
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Vinagrettes are very easy - four basic components plus whatever else you want for flavour.
  • Something acidic such as vinegar or lime juice
  • Something sweet like sugar, honey or agave to take the edge off the tartness.
  • Some salt as a flavour enhancer to taste.
  • Oil.
Then add in whatever else you want to flavour. Something that has emulsifiers in it is desirable but not strictly necessary. Mustard is a perennial favourite (honey-mustard dressings) as it contains a natural emulsifier.

Balsamic vinegars are naturally quite sweet so you can make a dressing from just balsamic vinegar and olive oil. They're also quite nice on crusty bread. Restaurants in Italy usually provide these as condiments.

Get a container with a watertight lid. Mix everything but the oil up in the container, shaking as necessary. Taste and adjust with more sweet or salt if desired. Then add the oil last and shake up the resulting mixture. By and large it won't take more than a few minutes to prepare, and a little vegemite jar or so is enough for a family meal.

Some things like garlic are best left for a few weeks to steep, which can result in a lovely, mellow flavour. However, I've also gotten a bad case of Salmonella off a botched attempt to do this so YMMV.

Love me a good vinaigrette.

A good thing to remember:

A vinaigrette is usually three parts oil to one part acid.

You can mix and match oils and/or acids. A classic here at home (that I cribbed from a local restaurant) is two parts extra-virgin olive oil, one part shoyu and one part lime juice.

Salt and sweetener to taste; I don’t always use them.
 
The last time I went to the big grocery store down the road (as opposed to the little Mexican grocery store by my place where I do most of my shopping), I decided to try Sucker Punch brand dill pickles, which I'd never seen before. They lived up to the name. The initial taste is a nice, though not amazing, dill pickle, but then a very spicy aftertaste hits you. I liked them enough to finish the jar, but probably won't get them again.
 
The last time I went to the big grocery store down the road (as opposed to the little Mexican grocery store by my place where I do most of my shopping), I decided to try Sucker Punch brand dill pickles, which I'd never seen before. They lived up to the name. The initial taste is a nice, though not amazing, dill pickle, but then a very spicy aftertaste hits you. I liked them enough to finish the jar, but probably won't get them again.
At the local Sprouts Farmer’s Market (which is the same family behind Henry’s Farmer’s Market here in Cali) I found out Bubbies has Spicy Kosher Dills and Spicy Sauerkraut. The pickles are good haven’t tried the Kraut yet. Going to start getting into fermented stuff besides the occasional Reuben and KBBQ.
 
At the local Sprouts Farmer’s Market (which is the same family behind Henry’s Farmer’s Market here in Cali) I found out Bubbies has Spicy Kosher Dills and Spicy Sauerkraut. The pickles are good haven’t tried the Kraut yet. Going to start getting into fermented stuff besides the occasional Reuben and KBBQ.
I will have to check it out soon. I like Sprouts a lot; the only reason it isn't part of my normal shopping rotation is because there are equally good stores clustered together much closer to my home. Now I have a reason to make a special trip there!
 
I will have to check it out soon. I like Sprouts a lot; the only reason it isn't part of my normal shopping rotation is because there are equally good stores clustered together much closer to my home. Now I have a reason to make a special trip there!
Sprouts is the bomb, though a tad pricey. Now that I’m back in LA, I want to hit some carnicerias.
 
Sprouts is the bomb, though a tad pricey. Now that I’m back in LA, I want to hit some carnicerias.
I agree that Whole Foods, Sprouts, Mothers, etc are both nice and way overpriced for basic food you can get elsewhere. We have a general rule; Costco does the "heavy lifting" for basic, common groceries while we get the specialty groceries at the more expensive fancy shops.

I am fortunate to be surrounded by many ethnic and specialized food shops. I hope these small businesses are able to stay afloat through Covid.
 
The "Southwest chicken salad" I impulsively got from the grocery store for today's lunch was better than it had any right to be, except that the quantity of dressing was entirely insufficient for the quantity of salad.

I had an extended weekend, so I cooked up a storm and put most of it in the freezer in portion-sized containers so I can eat at home on my lunch breaks when the weather gets a little better. Red beans and rice, jambalaya, chili, pulled pork, garlic-and-thyme chicken, and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting. I had to go out and buy more Tupperware in order to store all the food.
 
The "Southwest chicken salad" I impulsively got from the grocery store for today's lunch was better than it had any right to be, except that the quantity of dressing was entirely insufficient for the quantity of salad.

I had an extended weekend, so I cooked up a storm and put most of it in the freezer in portion-sized containers so I can eat at home on my lunch breaks when the weather gets a little better. Red beans and rice, jambalaya, chili, pulled pork, garlic-and-thyme chicken, and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting. I had to go out and buy more Tupperware in order to store all the food.

Here at home we're trying to abandon Tupperware as containers of hot food, in favor of glass containers. Tupperware is lovely but once you store tomato sauce in it, it turns red forever, and once you store beans, it smells of beans forever. Gets old after a while.
 
Here at home we're trying to abandon Tupperware as containers of hot food, in favor of glass containers. Tupperware is lovely but once you store tomato sauce in it, it turns red forever, and once you store beans, it smells of beans forever. Gets old after a while.
I can confirm that his is very much true.
 
I go with the really cheap stuff or reused containers such as black plastic takeout containers. After a few times or a stain, they get tossed. Also, if something got pushed to the back of the fridge and is rediscovered months later, I feel no guilt about tossing it without even opening it.
 
Here at home we're trying to abandon Tupperware as containers of hot food, in favor of glass containers. Tupperware is lovely but once you store tomato sauce in it, it turns red forever, and once you store beans, it smells of beans forever. Gets old after a while.
A couple years ago I was staying at a friends house while apartment hunting, and in order to keep our tupperware containers seperate, I kept mine in my empty containers in my sock drawer. One day I held a bunch of garlic in one of the containers, and despite extensive scrubbing atempts, it continued to smell like garlic. So every morning when I would open up my sock drawer, I would get a blast of garlic right in my face.
 
One of my favorite hot sauces is bajan pepper sauce. I've made it from scratch several times. The inside of my food processor is forever stained yellow from the fresh turmeric. Hell, my hands were stained yellow from peeling it for weeks.
 
According to Google, that sentence has never been said before in the history of the internet.
Thousands of years from now, when future digital archeologists are combing through the ruins of the old net, they'll come across that quote as the only source of written information from this century.
 
Speaking of hot sauce, one of the places I worked had a great recipe for something they called voodoo sauce. It's about half fresh habanero peppers by weight, with a healthy leavening of sugary and citrus notes. Wonderful. I made it at home once and the rest of my family had to clear out the floor and hide until the fumes died down.
 
Pork cutlet marinated in Franks Red Hot sauce, dredged in a mix of flour, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, fresh ground black pepper, and sea salt, egg wash then a second dredge and cooked in the air fryer.

Sandwich: sourdough, pepper jack cheese, Famous Dave's Spicy signature pickle slices, and pork cutlet.
served with a small green salad using up the last various bits of veg.
 
So I was going to make cabbage rolls for dinner. I got home and realized I'd forgotten to freeze the cabbage. No problem, I'll do it as a casserole. But the big cassarole dish has some teenage dessert concoction in it. Well shit. I'm now down to deconstructed cabbage roll saute. Sigh.
 
A little under the weather at the moment, so I just finished fixing up some chicken tortellini soup, with plenty of carrots and celery, along with some minced garlic and some crushed red pepper. That, along with the remaining half of a leftover wheat baguette and some heated apple cider, is my comfort food for the night.
 
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