Cooking Sunday-Mushrooms Only a Dog Would Like; Book Review-2 Books on Jonbenet Ramsey; TV-The Apprentice

 

It's a Cooking Sunday

And here's a Cooking Joke to set the mood.

BLONDE COOKBOOK


MONDAY:
It's fun to cook for Tom. Today I made angel food cake. The recipe said
beat 12 eggs separately. The neighbors were nice enough to loan me some
extra bowls.

TUESDAY:
Tom wanted fruit salad for supper. The recipe said serve without
dressing. So I didn't dress. What a surprise when Tom brought a friend
home for supper.

WEDNESDAY:
A good day for rice. The recipe said wash thoroughly before steaming the
rice. It seemed kind of silly but I took a bath anyway. I can't say it
improved the rice.

THURSDAY:
Today Tom asked for salad again. I tried a new recipe. It said prepare
ingredients, then toss on a bed of lettuce one hour before serving. Tom
asked me why I was rolling around in the garden.

FRIDAY:
I found an easy recipe for cookies. It said put the ingredients in a
bowl and beat it. There must have been something wrong with this Recipe.
When I got back, everything was the same as when I left.

SATURDAY:
Tom did the shopping today and brought home a chicken. He asked me to
dress it for Sunday (oh boy). For some reason, Tom keeps counting to ten.

SUNDAY:
Tom's folks came to dinner. I wanted to serve roast but all I had was
hamburger. Suddenly I had a flash of genius. I put the hamburger in the
oven and set the controls for roast. It still came out hamburger, much
to my disappointment.

GOOD NIGHT DEAR DIARY. This has been a very exciting week. I am eager for tomorrow to come so I can try out a new recipe on Tom. If I can talk Tom in to buying a bigger oven, I would like to surprise him with Chocolate Moose.

~~~~~~~~~~
Cooking Sunday in May 1005

Some of the menu items to be prepped on this cooking Sunday included:

strawberry pie
strawberry cake
marinated mushrooms
quiche

Also prepped that day was, of course, the mandatory home made iced tea, the dogs' food of noodles and canned food, a roast beef and prep for the weekly "breakfast/dinner". The items above have recipes included in this post.

With comments on the taste of the finished product, the stupid changes the cook made to the original recipe and below, pictures of the results.

 

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MORNING CRUSTLESS QUICHE

INGREDIENTS:
5 eggs
1 cup half and half
1 cup grated Colby & Monterey cheese
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped red pepper
1 Tlbs. corn meal

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients except corm meal in medium bowl. Coat a greased pie pan with corn meal. Pour in egg mixture and bake for 45 minutes or until
top of quiche is golden brown.

Yield: 4 Servings

This little recipe turned out nice and re-heated well in the microwave. I didn't have red pepper so I used green pepper. It tasted good but I would have preferred the eggs a little "wetter" than the result. Next time I am going to shorten that cooking time by ten minutes.
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Marinated Mushrooms

1 pound small fresh mushrooms
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground mustard

In a large saucepan, combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, uncovered, for 6 minutes, stirring once. Cool to room temperature. Transfer to a bowl; cover and refrigerate overnight.

I had no white wine vinegar. Indeed I've never heard of white WINE vinegar. So I used rice vinegar which, oddly, I had. I didn't like the taste of this dish at all although it was a vaunted dish featured by a guy cook in a recent Taste of Home mag. Though hey, it could have been that rice vinegar thing. My problem with the dish is that the ingredients were too bland. Said ingredients being nothing more than, essentially, mushrooms and onion. I suppose it could be doctored but I'll not bother.

Oddly, the dogs quite enjoyed this dish, at first questioning this mushroom thing. The larger dog generally eats first and asks questions later. Thus the mushrooms and onions were consumed before she had even a hint of what she was swallowing. The second time she had some mushrooms in the bowl she stopped for a fraction of a second, pondered these mushroom things again, then swallowed them down.

The dachshund, a bit more discerning in his taste, circled around the fine pile of mushrooms and onions as if they were the enemy. He sniffed, walked away, came back and sniffed again. He was just about to walk away completely from the mushroom things when the larger dog started making advances towards his bowl. The dachshund then scarfed all the mushrooms down in one quick gulp as he would eat cat poop, and often does, before he will allow the larger dog any chance at his leftovers. Even if he disdains the offering.

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Fresh Strawberry Pie

Prepared single pie crust
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons sugar
1 to 1-1/2 quarts fresh strawberries, sliced

GLAZE:
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
dash salt
1-3/4 cups water
1 package (3 ounces) strawberry gelatin

In a small mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar and remaining milk until smooth. Spread over the bottom of crust; arrange strawberries over the top.

In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt and water until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Removed from heat; stir in gelatin until dissolved. Chill until partially set. Pour over berries. Refrigerate until set.

This is a favorite pie of my husband. Who has one of the biggest pie holes this side of the Mississippi. The only problem I have with this recipe is the pie crust tends to get gooey after a few days. An entire pie lasts a week around here. With ingredients of cream cheese and that very wet filling the gooey crust is inevitable. Though I'm tempted to do a two crust bottom next time in keeping with thinking outside the box. I might invent an entirely new thing here.
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Layered Strawberry Cake
1 cup half & half
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
dash salt
2-8 oz pkgs cream cheese, room temperature 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 pint whipping cream
red food coloring (if desired)
1 pint of fresh strawberries, cleaned and sliced

Heat half & half in a saucepan until boiling, add butter and set aside.In a bowl blend sugar, vanilla and eggs, beat at high speed until mixture is very light and fluffy. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt, add egg mixture, then add half & half mixture, mixing
well after each addition. Pour batter into a well greased and floured springform pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 55 to 60 mins, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool slightly and remove from pan. Let cool completely then cut cake into three even layers. Brush away any loose crumbs. Whip the cream cheese until very smooth, beat in the powdered sugar and whipping cream, until mixture is creamy and fluffy. You may add a few drops of food coloring if desired to tint frosting. Spread frosting between each layer, place sliced
strawberries on each layer. Then spread remaining frosting on top and sides of assembled cake. Garnish with strawberries on top and on sides.

I went and messed with this recipe so much I almost ruined it. Though it does make a very nice cake without fuss of a special purchase for cake flour and such. The topping is especially tasty and I'd use it for other cakes, without the strawberries of course.

I baked the cake in an 11X9 inch pan. This change evidently reduced the cooking time required as the cake came out a bit too dry. Beyond a slight reduction in the baking time this does translate into an easier to handle cake if a flat cake is desired.
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Ending With a Little Kitchen Wisdom

Thanks to the Busyrecipes Yahoo newsgroup:

LONGER LIFE FOR YOUR KNIVES

SHARPENING & HANDLING

A dull knife can be more dangerous than a sharp one.It requires more pressure to make it cut, which in turn increases the chances of slipping. So sharpen your knives frequently. There
is no such thing as a knife that stays permanently sharp.

Use a steel, a rod used for sharpening, every time you cook. Steels- -and other maintenance tools such as ceramic rods and whetstones-- will realign and smooth the knife's edge. This is
what's known as honing. To sharpen a knife, hold the steel and the knife a comfortable distance away from you, then applying pressure, draw the full length of the blade across the steel
at a 20-degree angle, alternating sides four or five times.

You may also may want to get your knives professionally ground at least once a year, assuming you use them daily. Try your local hardware store. The electric home machines dedicated solely to sharpening do a good job if you closely follow the instructions; avoid combination knife sharpeners and can openers, which can damage a blade.

No fine knives should be put in a dishwasher; the banging around can nick the knife's edge. High heat can also change the temper of the blade and harm the wooden handles. Good
knives should be kept in a knife rack, in a protective partitioned drawer, or on a magnetic bar.

~~~~~~~~~~

 


Two Jonbenet Book Reviews

It was never my intention to become an expert on the Jonbenet Ramsey case, but given my complete and total absorption in the two books most recently read following the colon, I must say I'm pretty much up to snuff on all the players, suspects and victim: "Jonbenet" by Detective Steve Thomas; "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" by Lawrence Schiller.

Let there be no mistake that Steve Thomas has a grudge he's working on. He believes with the passion of a police officer that Patsy Ramsey killed Jonbenet, and he also believes the Boulder's DA office totally screwed up. Anyone watching even a news snippet during the Jonbenet brouhaha probably knew this. It wasn't any big secret that the Boulder DA in the form of Alex Hunter was working closely with the Ramsey lawyers, one time even arranging an interview in an assistant DA's home. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? Police don't normally cotton to this kind of stuff and this average citizen can understand why.

The Thomas book was very subjective to state the obvious. He liked Detective Commander Eller and disliked his replacement, Beckner. He thought Detective Arndt, the first detective to arrive at the crime scene that December 26, 1996 totally mishandled everything, the consequences of which botched the case forever. Surprisingly, Thomas was especially kind to Lou Smit, an investigator hired by the DA's office and proponent of the theory that an intruder to the Ramsey house murdered Jonbenet.

There were a few heretofore unknown scoops (at least by me) in the Jonbenet murder investigation revealed in Thomas book. I had no idea the Boulder police went out and hired their own lawyers to advise them on the investigation. Then again, the DA's office hired their own investigators and neither scenario makes much sense to me. I also had no idea that Alex Hunter had been so cozy with Globe tabloid reporter Jeff Shapiro.

 


Schiller mentioned this Shapiro fellow in his book quite a bit and as an aside, what a character this guy has to be. Sort of a tabloid Colombo as I like to think of him, he managed to get himself all cozy with both the DA and the police in this case, so much so that Hunter regularly phoned the fellow direct to his cell phone and the Boulder cops even taped a confession by Shapiro that he was in cahoots with the DA's office. Shapiro managed to weasel in all cozy like with some other of the Ramsey witnesses, bumbling along, even joining the Ramsey church at one point, professing to a desire to convert to Christianity. What a hoot! I wonder how all these folks feel now that their rather weird association with a Globe tabloid reporter is known to the world.


The Schiller book was more objective than the Thomas tome. I admired the way the author avoided editorial intrusions while at the same time I was infuriated. I wanted someone to tell me who killed Jonbenet and all Schiller did was delineate the events for the reader to conclude. Schiller effectively used quotes from some odd yet telling sources: friends of Jonbenet, suspects interviewed by the police and Jonbenet's teachers. Schiller wanted to align the politeness of the town with the manner in which the investigation was handled. The effective use of the quotes created the over-view of Boulder, Colorado he was trying to achieve.

One scoop before unknown to me and revealed in the Schiller book, was the little tidbit about the white blanket. Seems the thermal white blanket in which Jonbenet's corpse was wrapped was one that had always been ON the bed, under her comforter. Yet in a picture from the crime scene, the bed was made. The Ramsey housekeeper told the police that the blanket shrouding Jonbenet should have been on that bed in the picture, UNDER the comforter. The only time that blanket wasn't on Jonbenet's bed was when it was in the wash after a Jonbenet bed wetting incident.

After reading both books and now having a handle on who is who, following is my synopsis of the players in the investigation:

Boulder DA Alex Hunter-hopelessly undecided on everything, including which underwear to don. The guy needed constant reassurance and during a time when the city was looking to him for a decision, old Alex was quipping it up with Jeff Shapiro, a Globe tabloid reporter. Thinks one of the Ramseys committed the murder.

Steve Thomas-Boulder detective investigating the Jonbenet murder. Dedicated cop. Constantly stewing about the murderer of Jonbenet living free while the child lies cold in her grave. Lot of street sense, a good cop. Believes with all of his heart that Patsy Ramsey murdered Jonbenet.

Tom Koby-Boulder police chief. Eventually fired by the city manager. A 'New Age' cop, despised by his rank and file. Terrible media presence. Thinks the Ramseys did it.

Linda Arndt-Boulder detective first to arrive at the crime scene. Sort of a victim, witness her lawsuit against the Boulder police. The woman called and called for backup for over three hours. It was the day after Christmas and hunting someone down was tough. Then she was trying to manage a house full of people and don't forget, most of the time the detective was there, the crime was believed to have been a kidnapping. To fault her for not handling the crime scene as a murder scene is a bit unfair. Believes John Ramsey murdered his daughter.

Detective Commander Eller- Handled almost everything wrong. Hated the DA's office. Fired a sergeant early in the investigation for leaking to the media when it was the DA's office doing the leaking. Failed to defend Arndt. Was definitely not ready for prime time.


 


The Apprentice-Two Left But One is Terrible

I am now surprised at the two contestants left out of the original eighteen. Not because they aren't the best of all the contenders on The Apprentice, year 2005. Yet I wonder are they really the best? Yet again, I can't name any of those eliminated who are better.

Tana is a vaunted Mary Kay Cosmetic salesperson who has been very successful at it. She is the last of the team considered "street smart". Tana is a bit older than her remaining competitor. She is in her mid-thirties.

Kendra is quite young, a mid-twenties contender with a degree in linguistics. She is a successful real estate broker. She is the last of the team considered "book smart".

The show dealt with the last male contender, Craig, in short shrift. A few executives whose opinions The Donald allegedly cherishes all announced that Craig needs to go.

Which he did.

I, for one, am not at all impressed with Tana and never have been.

If I were hiring either Tana or Kendra it would be Kendra hands down.

For while Tana is the older of the two, her actions are very immature. This past episode (5/5/05) Tana did the most childish of all. She called her team "stooges". Which wouldn't be so bad but she said it in front of Caroline. Caroline is one of The Donald's 'right-hand' people whose opinion he also values. She, however, is a Trump employee.

No matter what, no matter the logic, no matter how righteous, never spout an opinion about other people to someone in Caroline’s position as Tana did. Tana had no idea what Caroline thought of her chosen team mates. If Tana was looking to get a break by mentioning early on that she was saddled with stooges it was a stupid move and will be viewed by just what it was: an excuse.

A mature person doesn't engage in such unprofessional behavior. At least not in Tana's position. The Donald, Caroline and George might sit in the Boardroom all day and knock the candidates as stooges. For Tana, who hasn't been hired for goodness sake-she can still be off the show-, such comments do not reflect well on her.

Yes Tana's assessment may be true and fair.

She should have kept her mouth shut.

I am also reminded of the episode when Tana went to bed and left her team leader Kendra, alone to finish the assigned task.

In this past week's episode, her team could not find a parking space. They phoned her up with the dilemma. Okay, I must think, no one thought ahead about that matter of parking in midtown Manhattan much less the team leader. And okay again, those dolts were too dense to at least drop off everyone but the driver should a parking space never appear. But Tana, even though she risked rancor by taking a cell call during her meeting with her event's coordinators, didn't suggest it either! Employees call their leaders for guidance. All Tana did was mock the "stooges" rather than effectively offering a sensible solution.

 


Not that Kendra is the perfect choice for The Donald’s next apprentice. But as one member of The Donald's cherished corporate interviewers mentioned, she is young and "mold-able". Kendra does have a tendency to "whine" in that manner of her age group. Maturity will take care of that. I can't imagine Caroline whining like Kendra does.

As the contest winds down, Kendra is to arrange and organize a Sony play station competition. Tana is to do the same for an athletic event intended to demonstrate New York's ability to effectively host the 2008 Olympics. While it might have been insinuated that the finale is this coming Thursday-(5/12/05), the final winner will not be announced until 5/19/05.