Cooking thread

What about water. I hate to comment on something as prosaic as water but lets face it, in many areas of the country tap water tastes terrible.

What can I add to water to flavor it that doesn't involve adding sugar? I'd prefer a strong rather than subtle flavoring as I do not have an educated palette.
It could be something rather complex such as root beer, birch beer, sarsaparilla, etc. or something a bit less strong such as a very potent lavender oil or leaves, but I need something to kill the taste of alligator excrement.

On the other hand, I keep thinking up laborious, complicated recipes.

For next weekend I want to cook something quick and simple, emphasis on quick. I want to get through all the cooking in under 3 hours. So I thought, "how about spaghetti with sausage, bacon and vegetables in red sauce. Perfect. Now how about soup? Let's see, tomato soup? No! Bell pepper soup? NO! Potato soup? NO!!" Like that <sigh>

I may wind up buying some can of Campbell's. It feels like cheating.

Anything I can but on a turkey burger that ain't sugar laden. Ketchup and mustard seem to have too much sugar these days.

Quote: Fleastiff

What about water. I hate to comment on something as prosaic as water but lets face it, in many areas of the country tap water tastes terrible.

What can I add to water to flavor it that doesn't involve adding sugar? I'd prefer a strong rather than subtle flavoring as I do not have an educated palette.
It could be something rather complex such as root beer, birch beer, sarsaparilla, etc. or something a bit less strong such as a very potent lavender oil or leaves, but I need something to kill the taste of alligator excrement.

It's not what you can add: it's what you can subtract. Get a Brita pitcher and filters. Your water should get quite a bit better. Using the pitcher, ours is refreshing with a little bit of a mineral flavor, just slightly hard.

I made a very interesting discovery.

It turns out if I go to the supermarket at 10 am on Sunday, and then cook two rather simple dishes, I can be done with all the cooking (which includes washing everythign afterwards) by 1 pm or so. Amazing!

I made spaghetti with soybean sprouts, bell pepper, onions and mushrooms, with store-bought sauce. For the entree I made sausages and beans with tomato sauce. That's a lot of tomato, but it's supposed to be good for you ;)

The thing is I have the rest of the day, including all the afternoon, to myself. So I can take a nap, work out and catch up on email, for instance. Rather than spend the afternoon in the kitchen. It's something to think about.

I've been cooking mostly old recipes, but also experimenting on new ones. I'm close to a good recipe for Paprika Chicken. I tried a creamy sauce, then a tomatoey one, then a creamy tomatoey sauce. I think th elast oen is the winner, but I want to try it again with Ricotta rather than Cottage cheese, and I think I exceeded the paprika limit <w>

I have the chop suey down, too, but I need to learn some aptience to cook the soybean sprouts all the way through.

Another thing I've been doing is to see what's in the fridge and pantry, and try to cook something with it. I do this from time to time. I wound up with sausage and barley with veggies in tomato sauce. Pretty good, but sausage goes better with beans. This time the reason was that I had a bad, bad cold and didn't wnat to go shopping (that's how bad it was).

Speaking of shopping, it's frustrating that I have 4 supermarkets within 2 kilometers of my place and still some weeks I don't find all the ingredients I need. This week I couldn't find Ricota, last week it was soybean sprouts. This happens with supplies for the office, too. Sometimes there's no coffee of the brand we use, or not in the size we use. Sometimes I can't find generic aspartame, or not in the 200 little envelope pack.

I just nuked some turkey burger patties in the microwave and had a heck of a lot of grease at the bottom of the microwave bowl ... anything I can do with it that is simple and useful?

Yesterday I succeeded with potato soup at long last (hint: no flour), and I found that ricota cheese is a better base for creamy sauces, and I managed a chococlate-based topping for cheesecake that did not solidify. All in all it wasn't a bad late aftrnoon's work yesterday :) I should be posting recipes later in the week, assuming I can take pictures of the dishes.

Oh, I also made some progress on the omelet front, but not enough.

Quote: Fleastiff

I just nuked some turkey burger patties in the microwave and had a heck of a lot of grease at the bottom of the microwave bowl ... anything I can do with it that is simple and useful?

Same thing happens with beef burgers getting nuked or if I put them in an aluminum baking pan and bake them at 350 for about two hours or so. There is lots of fat at the bottom of the pan... can I do anything with it? (I meant from a culinary perspective!!!).

Quote: Fleastiff

Same thing happens with beef burgers getting nuked or if I put them in an aluminum baking pan and bake them at 350 for about two hours or so. There is lots of fat at the bottom of the pan... can I do anything with it? (I meant from a culinary perspective!!!).

Not really, it turns rancid very quickly. You could clarify it, but that's more trouble than it's worth; if you were the type of person who would benefit from clarifying cooking grease, you would already know how to do it and what you would want it for.

Poultry grease is called schmaltz. It is used like melted butter in traditional Jewish cooking.
Bacon grease is awesome for clogging your arteries. Use it for frying almost anything: eggs, potatoes, onions, steaks, whatever. Store it covered in the refrigerator, about a month.