ODG Eats

 One thing I've started doing this year is buying whole chickens instead of packs of chicken breasts/thighs/wings/legs/whatever. The reasons are fourfold: It's cost effective: for $10-$15, I get 11-12 meals' worth of meat It's good practice: breaking down a chicken helps strengthen my knife skills It provides more variety: if I buy a pack of chicken breasts, I get to cook and eat chicken breasts. This way, I get to switch it up every night It reduces waste: I use all of the chicken There are some great video guides to how to break down whole chickens. I learned a lot from watching Gordon Ramsay do it. The problem is, he does it in 30 fucking seconds, says something like, "Okay, got it? Now you do it," and that's...it... So I do it a bit more slowly. Tonight took 16 minutes (I mean, I was taking several pictures), but I'm usually around 6-7 minutes now. When you compare that to the 15-20 minutes it took me starting off in January, it's a pretty mark...

 So recently, because I was on the internet, I saw an argument about nonsense. In this particular case, someone said they liked peanut butter on their hamburgers (I think they were talking about on the bun), so, naturally, detractors were honor bound to convince him he was wrong. Meanwhile, I said "Yeah, I'll try that." I should note that I did not go with the idea of putting peanut butter on the bun; I decided that the peanut butter should be mixed into the patty because of course that makes sense, right? So today I made 3 burgers, all of them about a quarter pound of beef. The first was my control group: I just seasoned the ground beef with salt and pepper; the second was my first experimental group: I mixed about a tablespoon and a half of chicken liver pâté into the beef with no other seasoning; the third was my second experimental group: I mixed about a tablespoon and a half of peanut butter into the beef with no other seasoning. ...

 Depression has as many symptoms and causes as the people who suffer from it. For me, it doesn't present as lying in bed and crying (usually), but more so a sometimes overwhelming combination of apathy and lethargy, a general sense of hopelessness, a nice little bit of paranoia, and a heavy touch of loneliness. One of the downsides is that I almost can not cook at all. I find no enjoyment in cooking, I have no energy or drive for it. I pressure myself to eat so I can keep living and make the hungry feelings go away, but I have no passion for it. But tonight I had to cook. I hadn't turned on the stove since Sunday, either eating out at night or eating leftover rabbit for lunch. I had thawed a lamb chop and a chicken breast because I needed to cook lunch for tomorrow and dinners for tonight and tomorrow. I had to make food, so I forced myself to do it. I also had some veggies: carrot, wood ear mushrooms, radish, garlic, red bell pepper, spinach, and radicchio. ...

 One perk of getting a whole animal for cooking is that you can cook multiple meals out of it. One perk of drinking a big-ass margarita at lunch is that I'm less worried about how food is going to turn out. One perk of trying to keep your mind occupied is that you can come up with several ideas. So today, I cooked a rabbit three different ways. I looked up no information on preparing rabbit before I started, not even how to break it down, just to keep myself on my toes. I just kind of...looked at it and thought, "hmm...this looks like it should be cut here" and then started cutting. Ultimately, I ended up with the two front legs, the two back thighs (I call them "haunches" because that sounds like the kind of thing you'd call them), then chopped the torso into three parts: the ribcage, the middle part with the flaps, and the ass end.  Preparation 1: I decided to braise the middle part with flaps. The meat was all pretty le...

On my way in to work this morning, I had a Big Idea™ for dinner tonight. The plan was to cut a lamb shoulder chop into rectangular slices and sear them. These slices would rest on a bed of sautéed sliced onion, slivered garlic, diced radish, and julienned purple and yellow carrot. On the side would be a small "salad" of wilted radicchio with diced yellow bell pepper, chopped wood ear mushrooms, and sliced garlic. Sounds great, right? I was so excited all day long about how amazing dinner would be. Mistake #1a: I cut the lamb before I cooked it. I had this vision of searing sexy slices of sheep in sizzling oil. Instead, I had to take them out before they properly browned to prevent overcooking them. Pro: I didn't dry out the meat; Con: it didn't look as good and the flavor didn't really pop. Mistake #1b: I cut the lamb before I cooked it. Getting the bone pulled out became quite an ordeal as opposed to cutting it out of a cooked piece of mea...