The Beef Stock situation, part 1

Soup stock has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I'm not sure why, but I have never really understood the science behind it. I know it is fairly easy and takes a long time to boil, but that has been the extent of my stock knowledge. Until recently. I have always wanted to explore making homemade soup stock and recently I did so. First I researched several recipes and methods including a phone call to my cooks-everything-from-scratch sister. The time allotted for boiling ranged anywhere from a mere four hours to a full 24-36 hour investment if you have a crock pot. I do not have a crock pot so I improvised a little. I started in the early afternoon and boiled for about eight hours. Then refrigerated everything and boiled around eight more hours the next day. But I am getting ahead of myself. First I collected the following ingredients:

Beef rib bones

1 Onion

2 Carrots

Some celery

2 cloves of garlic

and you are supposed to add about a quarter cup of vinegar or lemon juice to help leach all the calcium out of the bones.

Chop everything maybe once or twice. Don't bother peeling the onion or anything. Just throw it all in the pot with about 8 cups of water.

I brought all of this to a boil, put on a lid and turned it down to simmer. I regularly checked on it and kept adding a small amount of water as it boiled down. About four hours in, I realized that I had forgotten the vinegar. So I did. Of course having read so many recipes and heard so many suggestions, I accidentally added a cup and a half of vinegar. This is not recommended.

At this point I also drained out the veggies by pouring the stock into a strainer over a large bowl. I picked out the bones to add back in, but threw away the vegetables. I always thought this was a waste, but it turns out that all of the vitamins and what not have been leached into the broth/ water so now your stock is becoming really healthy and the vegetables have become pretty much useless. Yay. So I added the bones back it and put it all back on the stove, returned to a boil and put it back down to simmer some more.

Whew!

Once bedtime rolled around I let the broth cool, then poured it into a large bowl with a lid, bones and all and stuck it in the refridgerator.

The next morning I put it back in the pan, returned to boil and turned it back down to simmer for about another eight hours.

Stay tuned for part two!

Find the Food!!

Ladies and Gentlemen! Let's play "Find the Food"!! Listed below are actual ingredients written from a can of vegetable stock that I, GothGirl recently purchased.

INGREDIENTS: VEGETABLE BLEND (FROM WATER, CARROT, CELERY, ONION JUICE CONCETRATE), WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SALT, MONOSODIUM GLUTIMATE, DEXTROSE, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, NATURAL FLAVORS, DISODIUM INOSINATE AND DISODIUM GUANYLATE, CARROT POWDER, EXTRACT OF CARROT

Since 'from concentrate' isn't really real because it was first boiled down and then reconstituted, I don't really count that as food, and 'powder' isn't really real because carrots are not in their natural form, powdery, and extract isn't really real either because if it were the actual thing then that would be listed. And everything else is either a chemical or a sugar (or both!), so then the only thing left is 'natural flavors'. Hm. I can think of a lot of natural flavors that I prefer not be in my soup.

Let's say just say that I am henceforth jumping on the 'make your own soup stock' band wagon.

Meatballs, my way.

You will need:

1 to 1 1/2 pounds ground beef, turkey, pork, or chicken.
2-3 cloves garlic, diced.
2 slices of bread crumbs.
2 eggs.
Oregano
Basil
Sage

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl mix all ingredients including a generous sprinkle of the spices. I used my hands to mix everything. Then in a large 15x10 baking pan flatten out the meat into one large rectangle. Using a large knife divide the meat into 24 squares, then roll each square into a ball and place back in the pan. This should create uniform sized balls according to the Better Homes and Garden Cook Book. In my case it did not. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

The resulting meat balls are very garlicy and yummy. We had ours with spaghetti and a rather plain mushroom tomato sauce which complimented the meatballs quite well.

Mmmmm!

R.I.P. David Carradine

Some time ago back when I fancied myself an actress, I was working as a volunteer for an up and coming entertainment festival here in town. This was my second year working with it and this time they had hooked some pretty big name stars as panelists. The key note speaker was David Carradine, just shortly before the "Kill Bill" movies came out. Of course having dabbled in Kung Fu in my younger days I knew him from the epic TV show "Kung Fu" and "Kung Fu: the Legend Continues". For this venue however he was speaking as lead singer of his band whose name I cannot currently find.

Somehow when Mr. Carradine arrived, it was left to me to show him into the main room where the tables and displays were set up. Of course there was a subtle undercurrent of excitement when he entered the room followed by his entourage, but once we were all set up they had gone ahead to the table and I was leading Mr. Carradine down the hall towards the main doors. We passed by some young twenty somethings who blushed and fawned briefly and asked to shake hands with him. He graciously did so, and as we continued down the hall I couldn't help but ask him, "What's it like?"

He looked at me, "What's what like?"

"What's it like...to be on that side of it? All of these people here are looking up, but you are already there," (par.)

He smiled ever so slightly and said "You will see,"

That was the moment we reached the doors into the main room.

I have carried that memory with me as one of my greatest brushes with fame, as well as a kindred moment between two actors. Much more happened that weekend, not all of it suitable for blogland, but today I mourn with the Carradine family and friends upon his passing.

David Carradine, you were one of the greats.

Beef Broth and Local Veggies.

So I've been thinking about trying to be more stretchery with our food supply and my sister's blog gave me a bit of an inspiration. We recently enjoyed some ribs (homegrown at that) that my MIL brought us and I thought about saving the bones to make some stock. Seeing as we constantly have, like eight tupperware thingys of leftover vegetables in our fridge at any given time, I thought it might be cool to make some stock to throw together some soupage for lunches and what not. Stock, veggies and a handful of elbows just to round it out. Or maybe drop biscuits depending on my mood. I haven't made the stock yet but I will post on how it goes. First I have to go buy some onions.

That being said there is a fabbo little veggie stand on Southland Drive. She has said that she tries to sell at prices that rival the grocery store. She also stays out on days different than Sunday. I want to say Tuesday and some other day, but I can't find her website. I'll have to keep an eye out and find out.

It started with Carousel

I remember it plainly, the moment I evolved into a full fledged feminist. The day was warm, school was out for the summer. My emerging teenage intellect had decided it was time to expand my knowledge of movie history and I went through a phase of renting movies that I thought to be wildly grown up, scandalous and thought provoking. I was renting such films as A Clockwork Orange and the Graduate, watching with furrowed brow while examining the deeper meaning in all of it. This movie watching phase eventually expanded into genres with which I normally did not tread, and it was here that I watched Carousel, a popular jaunt by Roger's and Hammerstein.

It started out innocent enough. Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Then it started to veer off into some strange territory. During one scene in which the two romantic leads are having what seems to be a "heated discussion" regarding his tendency to gamble or run around with ne'r-do-wells or what not, he grabs her and lightly hits her on the arm. She retorts wildly that she is pregnant and he should not do that and suddenly the mood of the scene shifts. He drops to his knees and coos at her to sit down, fawning over her, asking if she is feeling alright, yadda, yadda, yadda. Even this scene if I am remembering it correctly had an air about it that the apologies somehow made up for his previous actions.

But this was not the moment in which my epiphany occurred.

Towards the end of the film, the male lead has died and gets granted one day to visit Earth. During this time he comes across his 12 year old daughter on the beach. Not realizing he is the spirit of her dead father coming back to make amends, she shuns him when he tries to give her a gift. She pulls away from him when he takes her arm and in the scuffle he lightly hits her. She runs off home to her mother.

Even this was not my epiphanic moment.

Once the girl returns home she is recounting the event to her mother. The dialogue is as follows:

Louise Bigelow: I didn't make it up, Mother. Honest, there was a strange man here, and he hit me hard. I heard the sound of it, Mother, but it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all. It was just as if he kissed my hand.
Julie Jordan: Go into the house, Louise.
Louise Bigelow: What's happened, Mother? Don't you believe me?
Julie Jordan: I believe you.
Louise Bigelow: Then why don't you tell me why you're actin' so funny?
Julie Jordan: It's nothin', darlin'.
Louise Bigelow: But is it possible, Mother, for someone to hit you hard like that - real loud and hard, and it not hurt you at all?
Julie Jordan: It is possible dear, for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all. [they embrace]

And their it was.

The light went off.

I had always known on some level that women in the past have had it worse then women today, but it never occurred to me that the moral statement of a very popular musical would be that it's okay to hit your wife as long as you are sorry for it later. The ramifications were staggering. My mind had been stretched further than it had been. This moment was the beginning of a path which would eventually lead me to seek out the meaning behind the phrase "rule of thumb", to examine the possible motives held by Emily Wilding Davidson when she flung herself onto an active race track, to pursue theatre with the hopes of injecting each character with a dose of reality, avoiding stereotype and caricature. It led me to allowing myself to realize on some level that no matter what I do, say or accomplish I would always be seen by somebody, somewhere as "just a girl".

Eventually, I decided that I was okay to live in such a world. I could handle it. However, Now that I have a daughter and a son I realize that I must do more. I cannot let them grow up in a world where labels are constantly thrown at them, saying here is how a girl or boy behaves. This is what's expected of you. Anything different is wrong or wierd.

The epiphanic moment that I experience that summer afternoon years ago has stretched accross my lifetime and I carry with my the outrage that I felt in that moment. Now I realize it is not enough just to feel that outrage. I must act on it. We must all challenge the notions handed down to us by faulty thinking. Examine why things are the way they are and what we can continue to do to change them.

Some time ago, I went to a henna party in which a good friend of mine had her very pregnant belly tattooed with a henna pattern. Each of us got our own little henna tattoo for the purpose of reminding us to pray for her whenever we saw the tattoo. Mine is here. It has since faded and my friend has since had her baby. But it was fun while it lasted.

This was mainly an excercise in learning how to uplead photos.