If You're Indian or Italian, Don't Read This!

REGARDLESS OF YOUR NATIONALITY, welcome to this description of my first culinary mashup. I'd never had risotto before, but I dig the concept. I also dig curry. I decided to introduce them to each other. Oh, the heresy!

To backtrack, while eating the Whole Foods Indian hot-tray food this past Saturday, I reflected on the ingredients. There's a fair number of good veggies in various curries. Indian cuisine was my gateway to sampling cauliflower, for instance. I suspected there was a way to prepare Indian-style vegetables on the home front, if I had the right recipe.

I've also nursed a recurring fascination with risotto. I don't know how many of the local Italian restaurants offer it, so I suspected I'd have to make my own. It seemed labor intensive, but after reading about the basics of risotto in How to Cook Everything, I revised that impression.

Sunday dinner left me with a spare, whole Costco roast chicken. Lots of free meat. I'd also bought broccoli and cauliflower, in the hopes of digging up some way, on the Net, of making a veggie curry from them to serve over rice.

Then I thought, why not satisfy two urges in one pot?

Trader Joe's sells arborio rice and vegetable stock. (I often find chicken stock overwhelming, especially when reduced, as it would be in this recipe.) I grabbed both. I already had spices and some of the other elements of risotto. So I figured I'd give it a whirl, with a trip to the local pizzeria as backup in case I conjured a funky ruin.

The risotto recipes in Bittman called for butter as the primary fat, as do most Indian dishes, but I had also seen olive oil used in some online risotto recipes. So I started with 3 tablespoons of oil, which I heated over a medium flame along with 2 teaspoons of Penzey's Hot Curry Powder, to bloom the spices.

Once it began foaming, I added ¾ cup of arborio rice, or half the amount in one of the Bittman recipes. I'd also begun heating about half the recommended amount of stock, 2½ cups, in a saucepan. I stirred the rice until it was evenly coated with spicy oil, then let it heat until it steamed slightly.

At that point, I added my first ladle of stock. A plume of curried steam greeted me. The rice immediately began absorbing the stock, which led me to turn the heat down a touch. I added a couple of shakes of Penzey's Hot Chili Powder, a few grinds of pepper, and a bit of salt, then set the microwave timer for 10 minutes. I added more stock bit by bit, and then stirred the rice every so often until it began to "tighten up." Once it seemed a little more dry than wet, I added more stock. Very scientific.

At the 10-minute mark, I added 3 oz. of finely cubed chicken and a double-handful each of broccoli and cauliflower chopped small. An extra amount of stock allowed them to begin blanching. The rice at this point still had a crunchy core. I set the microwave for another 10 minutes, then continued to add stock and stir as before.

I eventually used the entire box of stock, as by 15 minutes, I was running low of the heated stuff in the saucepan, and there was about a half-cup or so left in the box, a small amount I couldn't imagine using over the rest of the week. The trick now was to get the rice to the proper level of doneness while cooking off, or inducing the absorption of, the remaining stock.

I managed to bring it home well at the 20-minute mark: not too loose, still easily stirred, but with tender rice all the way through. The veggies were cooked but not mushy, and the chicken was beginning to shred nicely. I didn't add any more olive oil at the end; some recipes call for a last dab of butter to finish, but I decided not to up the calories any further (this essentially is a starch-based meal, which I usually try to avoid for weeknight dinners). I filled a plate and sampled it.

This would've made a great cold-weather meal, as its physical and spice-based heat would've beaten a heating blanket soundly for warmth. I feel I succeeded in crafting a basic curry risotto.

And a helluva lot of it too: Even after two servings, I still had half a pan full of it. I'd heard that storing risotto and resurrecting it the next day was sometimes dodgy, but I just covered the pan and placed the whole thing, once cooled a bit, into the fridge. With any luck, there's still enough moisture in it to warm and loosen the mix tomorrow over the stove.

Considering this was a cobbled-together, unorthodox take on risotto, I feel qualified to follow a more traditional recipe for it, assuming this stuff is indeed good tomorrow. Leftovers are always nice. It also let me sample Trader Joe's vegetable stock, which might be a good base for a chicken curry or basmati-rice/veggie recipe. So my first experiment in cultural mix-and-match was a success.

I sense spicy doings ahead, and I haven't even gotten to Vegas yet.

Baking Words and Banana Bread

I HAVE CELEBRATED THIS first day of autumn with baking and prose.

With the weather cool enough to make evening use of the oven possible without risking heat stroke, and two near-moldering bananas at hand, I broke out my copy of Bittman's How to Cook Everything and my baking gear for a mess of banana bread. The result is cooling (far too slowly, might I add) in the kitchen. I am surprised at how far the bread crowned up. It's nearly as tall as the pan in which it baked. I have butter and milk at hand for when it cools to the point where I can sample it.

It's really into fall and winter where I do a lot more cooking. With only one window wall, I have no cross-breeze, and so virtually all heat generated in here, stays here. I tend to celebrate Labor Day by making pasta sauce or chili in bulk. Once April rolls around, the party's over, and I have to mark the passing of decent weather by making extra supplies and packing the freezer full, sometimes resorting to my parents' freezer in the basement for auxiliary space.

I also joined Amy in starting a new 100 Words month. The entries will be listed under Schizohedron, but only after I complete a full 31 days. I'm hoping I can equal the other two months' worth I did back in (gasp) 2004, which brought a smile to my face when I reread them. I wasn't blogging back then, but it did get me to write every day, which is never bad.

Oh, I'm eating the banana bread now. Shaking some cinnamon into the mix was the smartest thing I did all day. This is quite lovely. Still hot enough to liquefy the butter, and richly fragrant. This will be a good week.

Burning Down the Apartment

THIS DAY WENT TO HELL early, but this evening I came close to bringing the flames right to my kitchen. Nothing like a visit from the town emergency crews to wake a body up, to say nothing of the rest of the building's residents.

I bailed early on work, having no work to do and not needing to stick around either to monitor the outsourcing gang or to search for a job. I was looking forward to dinner — not just the eatin', but the makin'. As part of my plan to eat more wisely, I had purchased some beautiful Empire chicken breasts at my local Trader Joe's. My plan was to grill these on my cast-iron stovetop grill, making at least four meals' worth of protein for my accelerated gym schedule.

For those who have never visited my apartment, its major flaw is a lack of ventilation. My apartment building is a hotel-style structure, in that I have one wall of windows, the other being contiguous with the central hallway. I have a floor fan and an air conditioner, but they only blow air around and into the apartment. The fan over my stove only filters fumes, and has no port to the outside. On those few occasions when I cook anything smoky, I have to be quick about it, lest I set off my apartment's smoke alarm.

Being aware of this, I halved the breasts lengthwise to make them thinner. I then brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with McCormick Lemon Pepper & Herb Grill Mates rub. I brushed the grill with oil as well, let it heat up, and dropped on the chicken. At their thickness, I figured 6 minutes on one side, 5 on the other, and they'd be done.

I got through the first 6 minutes with minimal fumes. The smoke began collecting during the second stretch, mostly from particles of the Grill Mates shake that were carbonizing rapidly. Although I had my floor fan aimed at the stove to carry any smoke away from my main hallway, I still got a complaint from my smoke alarm. I turned the chicken, then aimed the fan directly at the screaming disc on the ceiling. It quieted down. I turned back to the kitchen to find it billowing with smoke . . . which promptly sparked the smoke alarm again.

I dragged my stepladder under the box and pulled it down from the ceiling, hoping to disconnect it. No dice; even as I did so, I remembered it was wired into building current. I had a black wire going one way and a white wire going another and it was still BEEP BEEP BEEPing in my hand with my other hand clutching my ear which didn't do squat. . . . and by this time I could barely think straight from the alarm, which I would like to say explains the inscrutable burst of logic that motivated me to open my apartment door, after turning off the stove, to let the smoke vent into the hall. . . .

. . . where the building fire system began shrieking.

The building fire system, which is wired straight to the town fire department.

I ran back to the stove, double-checked the OFF status of the burners, tonged the chicken (which looked quite nice, actually) onto a plate, and dumped the still-smoldering grill into my oven. Then I called the list of local resident managers (ours just got canned, so we have a trio of backups from other, nearby buildings) to let someone know the company wasn't in imminent danger of losing an apartment building. By this point, the town fire alarm, sounding like an air-raid siren, was echoing across the landscape. I knew I'd have guests soon. I decided to go downstairs to let them know there was no danger — and then a knock came at my door.

It was one of our local policemen. I quickly assured him there was no fire and no damage, that it was just a cooking mishap. (I also thanked my lucky stars I hadn't hosted poker the previous night, and have a table full of professional plastic cards and high-denomination chips in great lovely incriminating stacks to explain.) He seemed relieved. I told him I was going to meet the firemen downstairs to let them know there was no emergency.

Outside, the chaos I had inadvertently wrought was in full swing. The average age of the residents here is about 66. My dear elderly neighbors, bent over canes, trunding along with walkers, were slowly making their way out of their respective lairs, shuffling in pairs as though they had chosen fire buddies upon moving in, making their pained way down the stairs . . . I felt so awful. I tried to say to them it was under control, that there was no danger, that it was just an idiot bachelor overreaching the limits of his cooking abilities, but they just dutifully kept descending the stairs.

Around 15 of my co-residents had already gathered in the lobby, and were milling about trying to decide whether it was a real fire or a false alarm. I told some of the more attentive ones the facts, relying on them to spread the news. At that moment, two firemen came in, casually dressed rather than fully garbed for an inferno, and I quickly told them the basics. I led them up to my pad, now slightly less smoky but at least getting no worse, while the strobes and sirens screamed in the halls and still more stunned residents poked their heads out to see what the ruckus was. I felt like crawling under the rug.

Two more firemen, these guys actually in the traditional suits, arrived on my floor from the opposite direction, and their cohorts confirmed there was no need to escalate matters to ladder-and-hose work. They checked out the area, made sure my windows were open and the air conditioner was on, and deemed the place under control. One guy went down to check if the stairwells were vented, which — if they were — would enable them to shut down the alarm. Fortunately, they were, and in a couple of minutes, as one guy advised the team on the truck to stand down, the mind-shattering shriek from the halls fell silent.

I should add that each time I encountered another fireman, I apologized profusely for being such an idiot and dragging them out for nothing. In turn, they all told me not to worry about it, that it was no problem, and that it happened all the time. (Not to me!) I assume they were just relieved to find no full-fledged fire in progress and no lives in jeopardy.

The cop who had arrived first took my name and number, just for reporting purposes; I hadn't committed a crime, though I joked I was guilty of aggravated crappy cooking. I also went downstairs to thank the rest of the firemen for arriving so swiftly and, one last time, apologize. As before, they shrugged it off. Considering we just lost nine children from the same family in the city to a horrific fire this weekend, a simple stove mishap on the part of a solitary retard must have been a joy to find. I wandered back up to my place, telling any neighbors I ran into that I was sorry. If only to spare my enduring embarrassment for the rest of my stay here, I hope some of them lose the details of today's events to senility.

Alone at last, I steamed some broccoli, dropped two pieces of chicken onto a plate with it, and ate.

And for all of the tsuris its creation evoked, that chicken was pretty damn good.

Sticking to the Menu

I'M NOT TOO HAPPY to admit that I have been a massive slacker this week, particularly with respect to my dining options. I bought bagels for breakfast each morning and purchased something in the city for lunch each day as well. This adds up. Though my spending records show I did better than last month in eating as many grocery-born meals and saving cash, I honestly try to keep from buying food in the city down to once per week, if not once per pay period.

Worse, this wasn't the best food on the planet to eat while keeping my weight under control, if not reducing it. Bagels are basically simple-carb globs. I got a burrito on Monday and Tuesday from Chipotle, and pizza today. I did manage to hit the gym last night, and tomorrow is my next workout day, so I'm at least staying active. Nicer weather and brighter mornings are luring me out of the house to the gym more often. Soon I'll even be able to take some good-length walks.

Still, as I have seen in many forms across several fitness-board posts, the war against overweight is won in the kitchen. I've got to admit the last year was lacking in that respect.

I attempted to institute a weekday vegetarianism. I kept meat to the weekends, and also tried to bring food as much as possible. This effort wasn't altogether successful. I didn't gain as much muscle weight, even with the protein shakes after working out, as I had wanted. Dropping fat is a two-step process, both increasing cardiovascular activity and building lean muscle.

I was better off when I was bringing carefully planned omnivorous meals into work, as I did back near the beginning of this blog, here and here. I think I could do better on the nutrient ratios, perhaps go for a 20% fat and up the complex carbs by 10%.

This would also help regiment my weekends more. I was making nice prepared meals for the week on Sundays with solid regularity. I also brought sandwiches for lunch, healthy ones with lowfat cheese and mustard instead of mayo. Spending some time shopping, cooking, and apportioning became a habit, one I can resume. And of course, all of this helped me get the hell out of the house faster in the morning and damn well saved me some coin. It was working, too; my percentage of body fat dropped, and some muscle was beginning to grow.

I do recall dropping out of the habits, however, and finding it tough to resume them. That was the same fall/winter in which I was too exhausted to organize the holiday party. I went through a difficult emotional separation whose details need not appear here. Still, there was no use to pile up excuses so high that I could not climb over them.

I am entering my final month of employment at the current place. It's not too late to exercise some self-control, both over my exercise and eating. I'll need both when I am on my own, especially if it takes some time to get employed again. And there's also that not-dying thing. This month saw the anniversary of Nick's death, and although I know that had nothing to do with physical fitness, I am doing myself no favors by remaining at this weight. Carrying extra weight exacerbated a knee injury my mother received 10 years ago, and she has steadily lost mobility and endurance as a result of not dropping any pounds. Furthermore, if I go out on my own as a freelancer and have to get health insurance, a slender frame will cut costs. All manner of reasons to go back to what was working.

If I am relegating the meat of the job hunt to weekends, I can stuff the mornings or evenings with exercise, and at least look presentable in interviews and at the two weddings I will have the pleasure of attending this coming spring. At which, of course, I will be sliding right off the wagon in both diet and temperance. Those days excepted, I can surely do myself a solid by easing back on the extreme of vegetarian weekdays and at least bringing balanced meals, with a limited amount of lean meat. Hell, I've read a number of obits recently with folks living to 100, and my own grandparents made it well into their 80s, two of them after lifetimes of smoking and drinking. I can be better to myself in some ways, but in others, I think I can fall back on a good set of genes.

And maybe a safe-deposit box full of stents.

Schizohedron Bullet Points! for 11/8/06

• ICING ON THE CAKE: As a nice topper to last night's Democratic election wave, today came the news that the architect of the failed Iraq war, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, had announced his resignation. I can still remember, in the early months of 2001, how "Rumsfeld's Rules" were being bruited about as a pragmatic lesson on applying business leadership to government and military bureaucracy. In practice, this approach revealed Rumsfeld's tin ear for constructive criticism and dissent, and cost the Cabinet and the Pentagon a number of voices who might have helped close the Afghan campaign with authority and either approach Iraq with a definitive, massive, multilateral force — or shunned it as the quagmire that studies and simulations showed it might become. Rumsfeld's departure from the sinking ship of the Bush Administration has the feel of Martin Bormann sneaking out of the Führerbunker in the last weeks of World War II, with Soviet guns thundering ever closer and a sure trip to the gallows awaiting him. Some believe Bormann escaped the Reich, and managed, for decades, the secret network of flight capital as he restored Germany to its economic power. If modern political necromancy has taught us anything, it is that Rummy will find a new grave to haunt — though certainly none of those of the men and women who died in Iraq on his watch.
  

• WORK INSANITY GROWING: As recorded here, pressure over our impending switch in how we produce newsletters and journals is rising. My immediate supervisor has been trying to point out flaws in the process that could bite us in the ass on schedules, printing, or resourcing this shit online, for which she is slowly being made a pariah. The manager of this switch has pawned her off onto a consultant — no doubt well compensated — for all answers. Trouble is, this consultant knows next to nothing about the way we currently do things. The managers who set this system up are not designers, and have shown declining interest in hearing why there might be snags. The switch to the new, in-house printers has been a nightmare of pointless, cc: everyone passive-aggressive email abuse on the part of the customer "service" rep with whom we've been saddled. And our new boss is more or less saying, "Just lie back and enjoy it." Contrary to what I believed in the other entry, the company is not paying her education tab, so she is free to bail as soon as she feels financially able. With her instructors being wheels in the magazine and packaging design industries, she could get work in a heartbeat. Now I am wondering how long I will want to stay, whether she leaves or not. She actually exerts a quiet, unconscious mellowing effect on me, whereas by this point I would have forced confrontations for the answers we don't seem to be getting. Should my boss leave, it will cost the company dearly to retain me if I am not given full, Ace Rothstein–style free rein over my sphere of influence.
  

• NEW MEMORY HOLE: I bought a new shredder this weekend. My previous unit seized up after ingesting a heavy bundle of junk mail. You would not believe the load of shreddable shit that built up in the 3 weeks between losing that one and buying the new one. With the threat of identity theft always in the air, it seems like everything has to go down the chute, even the empty envelopes for bank statements and mailed pay stubs. Can't have sifting thieves determine that someone in this complex uses X Bank of Y or gets car insurance from that company with the lizard! I understand I could arrest the flow of junk mail with access to a certain trade commission's website, but last time I visited, it seemed like I had to provide an SSN. Why should I trust them any more than I do the whoring credit card companies and cable monopolies that seek to pick my pocket? These fuckers should subsidize my shredder, or at least pay my bail when I burn their missives in my parking lot.
  

• REVELING IN THE AGONY OF PIE: This pie looks denser than neutronium, loaded with more sugar than the Hello Kitty works in Japan, and potentially delicious while still warm from the oven. It is the "Schadenfreude Pie," "the pie to enjoy while you are reveling in the horrible misfortunes of others. Cast your eye on its mocha might and the diabetes-inducing list of ingredients on author and blogger John Scalzi's page. I can see a scoop of vanilla ice cream dropped on top of a warm slice of this pie jumping off and running behind the couch with a cartoonish "Yipe yipe yipe yipe!" Were I guaranteed to have some co-consumers cued up to help me consume it — for Scalzi warns of the danger of eating large chunks of this murky dessert — I might be tempted to whip one of these up. Though there's a chance it will end up dropping through my floor like the pinpoint black hole in Larry Niven's "The Hole Man." Well, at least it might hit my downstairs neighbor.

Stirred by Stir-Fry

I GOT ALL CRAFTY with the kitchen equipment last night and brewed up a nice stir-fry. I wanted a dish that would provide me at least 2 days of leftovers, and I wanted the protein to be part of an ensemble cast of ingredients, not a domineering star. Last, I wanted the starch to be noodles included right in the mix, rather than rice, which reconstitutes dubiously in the microwave. I rate my effort an A-. Here's what I did.

Ingredients
While shopping Sunday afternoon following the record fair, I spotted boneless center-cut pork chops on sale at A&P. This was perfect. I had been leaning away from beef as a stir-fry candidate. I know there's a way to stir-fry beef to develop a crust (or as much as you're going to have on the small pieces a stir-fry requires), but in the past, I've always ended up with limp, tough slices of beef and a huge amount of extra gravy that I have had to boil off. I wasn't in the mood to deal with the mess that chicken creates. So this pork sale was perfect. Three thick chops for $3ish.

Aside from a can of Geisha water chestnuts, the rest of my ingredients would come from the produce aisle. I selected broccoli, sugar snap peas, and a hearty red bell pepper. From the vegetarian/Asian section of that aisle, I grabbed a bundle of Nasoya thin wheat noodles. What I needed for the marinade/sauce, I already had at home.

Marinade
By the end of Sunday shopping, the long day at the record fair fell on me like a ton of 45s. I deferred the stir-fry to Monday night. I started with the marinade. I modified a recipe from the book that came with my George Foreman Grill:

• ½ cup Kikkoman soy sauce
• ¼ cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp. peanut oil
• 1 tbsp. Argo corn starch
• 1 tsp. Chinese five spice blend
• several good twists of fresh black pepper
• 1 tsp. sesame seeds

I trimmed and cubed the three pork chops and got them marinating while I set an order of battle for the veggie prep.

Vegetables
I realized that my flaw in past stir-fries is that I don't time the introduction of ingredients well. I would start the meat early, then drop uncooked vegetables in one by one and let them cook. I didn't have a solid idea of how long it took them to cook well, though, so I would end up with overcooked peas or inedibly raw broccoli amid fart-dry meat. I was inspired by a list of blanching times I saw for crudité prep. This time, I decided to steam them partly to doneness before adding them to the wok.

I rigged up my steaming basket and got to cutting. The pepper, I decided, didn't need to be pre-steamed if I diced it rather than just chopped it roughly. The water chestnuts likewise required no advance cooking, so I just drained and washed them and set them aside. The broccoli, however, i wanted to remain crisp without leaving it in the wok long enough to scorch the florets. So I steamed that for 3 minutes and set it aside. The snap peas I steamed for 2½ minutes. I now had two bowls of lovely emerald veggies waiting for the wok.

Into the Fire
Onto my stove went my well-seasoned wok. I put a medium-high flame under it as I steamed my last remaining item, half of the package of noodles. I have a love-hate relationship with the Nasoya semi-done noodles. I like them when I cook them properly, but there seems to be a very narrow range for success. Too little cooking, and they clump together in a starchy mass. Too much, and they become slimy. I didn't boil them because I wanted to avoid having them shed water into the stir-fry, so I thought steaming them might be a better option. Sadly, steaming them as I did seemed to guide them toward the former. I pried out the gloppy, brainlike mass with tongs and set it on the cutting board while I thought about how to cook the other half without repeating this feat. I decided to drop them on top of the fully integrated mass of ingredients and give them a quick couple of minutes in the heat that way.

By this point, the wok was hot enough, so I dropped in the pork after pouring off and retaining the marinade (for a sauce). An invigorating wave of five-spice scent plumed from the vessel as I stirred the pink cubes over its heat. Within 3 minutes, they were looking white all over, so I scooped them out and set them aside.

I poured the marinade in and let it cook down and boil a bit to kill the pork ick. Then I dropped in the water chestnuts and red pepper. Water chestnuts are absorbent of flavor and moisture, so I wanted to lock up some of the liquid before stirring in the other stuff. Note that all through this process, I didn't oil the wok. I relied only on the tablespoon of peanut oil I added to the marinade. Heavily oiling a wok to the point of having a centimeter of the shit at the bottom not only creates an unholy mess when you drop in steamed veggies or marinade-coated meat, it is the nutritional equivalent of serving beautiful organic veggies in a pork rind burrito. You're just screwing yourself.

The peapods and broccoli got about 2 minutes alone before I returned the pork, which I followed with the uncooked noodles. There was still enough sauce in the wok to coat them, so as long as I kept them moving, I figured they wouldn't stick to the sides. This proved to be a two-handed task, as I stirred the mix with the spatula in my right hand, while teasing the noodles apart with tongs in my left, occasionally using one or both to ease the wok back square over the flame. The noodles never did fully separate or get distributed through the whole stir-fry, but they seemed to be cooking without getting incinerated. This is probably the only place where a little oil might have been helpful, but I refrained.

Once it became clear the noodles weren't going to mingle as enthusiastically as I had envisioned, I declared the dish done and killed the heat. I scooped out about a third of it and headed to the table, accompanied by a late-vintage Poland Spring.

Tale of the Taste
I haven't used Chinese five-spice before in my stir-fries, and this was a regrettable omission. My bottle was very fresh, so I could pick out individual spices in the blend. The vinegar also added a lovely sour tang to the mix. The pork was perfect: tender, juicy, and flavored rather than overwhelmed by the marinade. (It only got about 20 min. tops in the drink.) My veggies were crisp and heated all the way through. The noodles were the reason I decremented myself to an A-; individual strands were cooked well, but many stayed clumped. I could separate them, but the center strands had stayed somewhat gummy and unflavored. I may have to find a different brand of noodle, possibly high-end ramen, cook it halfway in water, and then finish it in the wok, perhaps as the first ingredient. I did have to restrain myself from taking a full second helping, however, as I wanted to heat it up at work for lunch. This I did about an hour ago.

The Leftover Test
Hums there a work fridge in this nation without at least one carton of Chinese leftovers squatting near the back? In my case, it was a Ziploc tub rather than the traditional white box. Moreover, mine lacked the nasty MSG and heart-punching fat of the usual takeout meal. Restricting the oil paid a second dividend when I nuked my lunch today, in that I didn't end up with a bowl of glistening, grease-sodden food. I anticipated that the peppers would be on the soft side, which proved correct, though not to their detriment (I diced them fairly small). The meat was still tender, the veggies only slightly less crisp. Noodles were more or less the same. As I wrote this, the dish and plastic tub have been wafting a gentle scent of cinnamon and cloves my way, making me wish I had brought more with me. All things in moderation.

Options for the Future

• I should research a better noodle choice. Even with the clumping I had to deal with, though, they reheated more appetizingly than rice would have. I find nuked rice to be rough and dry, regardless of how much water I use to cook it.
• If I can get a decent-looking baby bok choy, I could add that for more flavor and roughage.
• I am not entirely trusting of the bean sprouts I see in the stores, due to bacteria, but were I to find a reliable source, they go great with pork.
• I could cook the noodles halfway, then finish them al dente in the boiling wok sauce, set them aside, and serve everything else over them.
• I could dry-roast the sesame seeds to get a nutty flavor, or use the black seeds when I run out of the usual ones.
• For the marinade, I could add a few slivers of ginger, a sprinkle of crushed red pepper, a dab of hot mustard, chopped green onions, and/or some fresh-squeezed citrus juice (or, at the very end of the marinating process, pineapple juice).

All in all, this turned out to be a healthful, quick-to-prepare, multi-serving meal with simple prep and minimal cleanup. After a weekend in which I had pizza on 3 straight days, I needed a heaping helping of vitamins and phytonutrients, and this meal fit the bill. It will be damn tough not to attack the third and final tub of this stuff when I get home.

Wind Whispering Autumn in My Ear

OUTSIDE, IT'S WHAT MOST Labor Day planners would call a miserable day. Intermittent rain, driven by stiff wind from Tropical Fugue State Ernesto, with cool air and whited-out cloudy skies over all.

I couldn't be happier.

With each passing September day, the dead heat of summer heads further toward the horizon. I will be able to take long morning walks without dehydration and long evening walks without being a mosquito snack bar. I will be able to sleep deeply, with the windows open, and not piss away nearly $100/month blasting my Korean War–era air conditioner.

I feel some sympathy for those who had been planning cookouts, reunions, beach outings, or sun-drench drinkfests today. As a New Jersey resident, I am especially conscious of how a summer with ill weather can dent our state economy due to reduced beach patronage. And I do have to grant that August, of all months, actually offered up some comfortable and gorgeous days in its latter half.

We will be treated to more such days, however, as September unfolds. Between today's gloomy Hamlet of a day and the punishing humidity and heat we suffered earlier in August, the sweet spot lies. Were it not for this little quirk I have of needing to work for a steady income, I would curl up in that sweet spot every day from nippy morning through slanting sunset.

For now, however, I am taking advantage of the crummy day by shedding some paper clutter, transferring my poker records from Word to Excel, and otherwise maximizing the chance to be inside. I have the benefit of Monday's holiday to accomplish more outside-based chores when the weather is rumored to improve. I also avoided the temptations of crappy mall food and cooked myself a bowl of whole wheat penne with fresh broccoli, topped with ground pepper and a spoon of extra-virgin olive oil. With the potential for some boardgaming mayhem tonight — which is traditionally accompanied by some meat-topped pizza to get the killer instinct flowing — and a siege of Chinese food coming tomorrow, I want to notch a couple of decent, healthful meals while I have the chance. Eventually I will venture forth to the gym, which I will follow with a fruit/protein smoothie, another checkmark on the side of nutrition.

In all, I am taking this day at a lazy pace and enjoying not being on demand for job or heavy chores. The cool air and grey skies are, for me, a catalyst to all of this rather than a limit.

Selfish Sunday

ORDINARILY, I EAT DINNER at my parents' house each Sunday night. They live only one town over, so it's a simple commute, even if it's snowing. During the past 2 weeks, though, I've been over there repeatedly, both for Christmas and New Year's Day, and the subsequent rounds of leftovers, plus a random taco night thrown in for good measure. I needed some time for myself, and this weekend, I took it.

Yesterday was spent doing chores: setting up folders for 2006 paperwork, getting the dry cleaning I thought I would be able to pick up last Monday (it was closed for New Year's Day), doing some shopping, and cleaning here and there. Not a lot of heavy lifting, except at the gym, where I got a good session in. My gym "week" starts on a Saturday with back and bicep exercises, followed by shoulder and thigh work Sunday. Monday is aerobic-machine day, followed by legs on Tuesday and chest/triceps on Wednesday. I am thinking about making Friday night an aerobic night, and leaving Thursday — poker night – wide open so I can get enough sleep on Wednesday night.

I continued my progress today with my shoulders (which comprise about 4 grams of muscle tissue connecting my arms to my torso) and the pair of machines that target the outer and inner thigh muscles. Neither of these displays the user in the most favorable light. Sweatpants are a wise idea. Both groups of exercises went well. The gym continues to be more full than normal for that time and day. I wasn't held up by large clots of resolution-minded folks, though. Many of them are beginners, and therefore use the XpressLine circuit of exercise machines, which I don't rely upon for most of my workouts.

At 1 p.m. today, the Giants were due to face off against the Carolina Panthers. This went ill. They were stomped like radioactive roaches. Enough said about that.

As weekends go — especially the recent holiday weekends – my nutrition was stellar these past two days. I was also able to cook some food for next week's lunches and dinners. For lunch tomorrow, I have whole-wheat penne rigate and steamed broccoli, to which I'll add a small can of tuna. Dinner tomorrow, and lunch or dinner for the next two days, will be baked chicken teriyaki (with roasted sesame seeds and a few dashes of crushed red pepper) over short-grain brown rice. I had one of the four servings I made of that tonight. Excellent. I am looking forward to coupling solid exercise with these sorts of meals again. I fell off the wagon during the holidays, under the constant onslaught of free junk food from the vendors and dinner at my parents'. I also want to get as much progress done before Las Vegas, where — I am realistic enough to know — forward motion toward fitness will be stalled.

I had planned to hit a food store today, but after preparing so much ready-made food, I didn't feel like I needed any more actual rations. I've got plenty of breakfast stuff, too, and I can buy fruit or salad greens in the city. Besides, I didn't want to be tempted by some of the snacky-type crap I knew I might find at the store. I wanted to get a firm start this weekend. I have also designated a specific time to cheat: The 27th of every month (the date of my birthday) will be a food free-fire zone. I picked this idea up from the documentation for my George Foreman Grill, and why would a jovial shmoo like George Foreman lie?

All right. I'll hit the hay soon, because the holiday season also played havoc with my sleep schedule. I am becoming more catlike in that I find I need a solid 8 hours each night. If I manage to polish off 9 tonight, so much the better. Next week is gonna be a deathmarch of five full workdays leading up to a 3-day weekend, followed by two days of absolute insanity prior to the Vegas trip. I have a few fires to put out before I leave my desk for 4 straight workdays. I do know if I go into it with a good workout schedule and decent eating, I'll feel far more positive and in control of things. Being able to mount the steps out of the PATH station without panting will be a bonus as well. Wish me luck.

Chocolate for Breakfast and Other Weight Loss Tips

OKAY, NOT STRICTLY CHOCOLATE. I didn't fill a bowl with M&Ms and Yoo-Hoo and chase it down with a Swiss Miss stirred with a Toblerone bar. (That happened before I woke up.) Rather, I am describing the mini-meal I had before going to the gym for my weightlifting routine. This time, I left sufficient minutes between eating and lifting to avoid the same nausea I felt on Monday. However, I also made sure I ate something I would want to retain: a homemade chocolate protein bar.

If you have visited the health-bar section of your local supermarket or drugstore, you have seen enough slabs of compressed nutrients to build a road to Iceland — which would then be devoured by invading Vikings. Many of these are crap. High fructose corn syrup, poor balances of nutrients, insufficient fiber, and the like.

The website I visited, bodybuilding.com, has a message board forum on which one popular thread listed home recipes for protein bars. The advantage with this is that you know exactly what goes into each bar, so at the end of the day, you can rely on them to be of a certain nutritional level.

So I made the following recipe:

3 cups Quaker oatmeal
8 scoops chocolate protein powder
2 cups skim milk
1 package Jello fat free/sugar free chocolate pudding mix
1 tbsp peanut butter

Mix, pour into a glass dish, refrigerate or freeze, then cut up. I will say that fridge-only bars stay fairly mushy, and that a couple of hours in the freezer before cutting them up and returning them to the icebox is a good idea. But I had one of the slabs this morning before motoring off to the gym, and it was a chewy chocolate dream.

I did more or less the same routine as on Monday, except that I was able to do the work on the proper machines. I got there at opening (5:00 a.m.!) to have full access to all machines, because last time I had to substitute one shoulder machine for another due to a guy doing innumerable bench presses on the one I needed. Now, had I hit that Mega Millions score, I would be calling contractors to design a house with a gym. Not to be. Not yet anyway.

Recovering from the infamous squats was somewhat easier this time. I have no idea when I will begin putting actual weight on the bar during the squats. This early part of the routine is supposed to last 6 weeks. Maybe by week 24. At any rate, I got through all of the exercises as well or a little better than on Monday. The degree of difficulty I am having with some of them lets me know that my previous workout routines simply were not sufficient to grow and maintain muscle and burn fat.

Tomorrow, I plan to get 20 or 30 minutes of cardiovascular work in. According to some of the real muscleheads on the aforementioned message board, cardio somehow interferes with muscle growth. I suspect this is in the case of athletes who follow days of lifting with a 10K run. This is not me. The only way I am traveling 10K on my feet is if I put on in-line skates and someone tows me behind their car. I need the endurance training and heart-healthy benefits, and what I do isn't so intense from a tear-down-the-trapezius sense that I will reverse what minuscule gains I have made merely from watching a half hour of Wakeup Call on CNBC while flapping my thighs on the elliptical trainer. That's a good 400 calories I can drop there.

So if you see a maroon Toyota with a maroon of a driver slowly wending its way toward the town gym early tomorrow morning, you know it's me, reversing the sins of the past. If you then see me steer toward the bagel store on the corner, kindly shoot out one of my tires.

Less a Feast Than a Bucket Brigade of Nutrients

I SPENT LAST NIGHT after dinner cooking lunch and dinner. Chunks of spiced pork roasted fragrantly in my George Foreman Grill. Brown rice steamed on the stove. I portioned cottage cheese and plain yogurt among eight single-serve plastic cups and tossed the original containers. Into two of my many plastic pint cups, scavenged from untold heart-clogging side orders of egg drop soup, I sifted protein powder and ground steel-cut oats . . . these last from a four-pound tub of oats had bought earlier that day from the loose-grains aisle at Whole Foods and pulverized in a coffee grinder for quick absorption when I blend them — raw — into a protein shake. . . .

Why the sudden burst of food-oriented organization? I am making a sincere effort to combine gym attendance and meal distribution to grow muscle and drop fat. For the past 2 weeks, I have brought oatmeal, salads, whole wheat/rye crackers, natural peanut butter, and tuna to work. I have distributed the three large meals I ordinarily eat into five or so smaller meals. This weekend, I researched the proper amount of fat, carbohydrates, and protein I should eat to reduce stored fat and encourage muscle growth in conjunction with regular weightlifting. My previous workouts were not followed up with food in the right combinations of macronutrients (i.e., the three divisions just mentioned, along with vitamins and minerals and water), and I did too much cardiovascular exercise for someone trying to retain muscle.

I have a program downloaded from the forums at bodybuilding.com to ease into the correct way to build muscle. I had viewed this site a year ago, and was using another beginner workout to distribute lifting weights across different days and body regions (doing splits) to avoid working the same muscles twice in a row. My efforts were subverted by getting discouraged, poor nutrition, and lousy sleep schedules.

So today I've kicked things off on the right foot by eating an Egg Beaters omelet and some whole wheat cereal, along with a ton of water. I was a little nervous about the Egg Beaters. Serious weightlifters consume enormous quantities of egg whites, sometimes raw. I had never eaten Egg Beaters, and I was hoping they wouldn't resemble the jars of egg whites I had seen on the shelf at Whole Foods . . . unappetizing to say the least. I am also not a big fan of the texture of egg whites, which has steered me away from hardboiled eggs and the whites of fried eggs in the past. Fortunately, the Egg Beaters were an inviting, creamy yellow, and they tasted like a blend of maybe one yolk with two or three whites. So far it's stayed down, so I think we've got a winner.

I bought a cooler so I could tote prepared cooked meat into the city, along with dairy like cottage cheese and all manner of leafy green vegetables. The idea here is to avoid running across the street to Chelsea Market to raid the bakeries there, or to follow folks carrying leftover sandwiches or pastries after catered meetings and feed like a lion on grease and starch. And of course, the holidays are coming, with junk food offerings on the home front and at work in the form of thank-you baskets from our vendors. Winter or no, I don't need to gorge like a pre-hibernation bear.

So I am off now to the gym to get this started. If I type with a limp in the next day or so, you know why.

"Henry Says, 'Don't Let the Sauce Stick!'"

I have accomplished the unthinkable. I used to believe I could only make tomato sauce on a weekend, when I had the broad scope of an empty, work-free day in which to tinker and toil and fry and boil.

I have proven this this theory to be false. At 6:53 p.m. earlier tonight, I began opening cans of crushed tomatoes while, on my TV, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci drove along an upstate New York highway with a somewhat-less-than-dead Frank Vincent in the trunk. By 9:20, the film was over, the sauce was simmering — strained and filled with beef, pork, and meatballs — and Al Michaels and John Madden were introducing the lineup for the Denver Broncos.

I had purchased meat from Whole Foods this Saturday, with the thought of making my mighty sauce (as fantasized about here) on Sunday. A few factors conspired against me. First, the Jets game was a 1:00 affair, which was a prime opportunity for me to crank out some time on the aerobics machines at the gym while watching whatever befell to our hapless boys in green. Second, I stayed up way too late on Saturday night — mostly reading on the damn Internet — which led me to wake up later than I would have liked. And I had my usual dinner plans at my parents' house that night, which was going to be combined with doing laundry there . . . so it was in my interest to get there a little early. Checking the Jets' schedule might have served me well. But this is my sauce we're talking about here!! I haven't settled down with a meaty dish of pasta or chicken parmigiana or a meatball hero for a couple of months! No way in hell am I using that jarred shit when I can conjure gallons of scarlet goodness with just a few hours' effort!

By the time I stepped off the train tonight, the only question in my mind was which movie to pop in while I cast my spell.

This turned out to be Goodfellas. I had initially slotted The Godfather Part II, but for some reason my VCR is not cooperating with my TV. This may be a sign to me from the electronics gods to upgrade my Godfather trilogy to disc. Maybe at the next paycheck. I am in no rush; this batch of sauce will last a while. So in the interest of speed, I started the film that SHOULD HAVE SWEPT the Academy Awards for 1990 instead of that Dances With Wolves fuckery, grabbed six cans of tomatoes, and began crackin' em open.

I tend to get the Tuttorosso blue-label 2-pound cans of whole peeled plum tomatoes for my sauce. But the company recently scrambled the colors of their labels, so now the blue label is for crushed tomatoes in thick puree. As long as they didn't crush the seeds into the mix, I figured, I would be fine. My mother once tried to puree the tomatoes after she had let them simmer down instead of straining them, and the seeds got chopped up in the mix and turned it pink. Ugh. Needless to say, this experiment was not repeated.

Fortunately, the puree in the cans featured intact seeds, so I wouldn't be making a suspiciously strawberry-like sauce. In fact, this turned out to be a bonus. Normally, I let the plum tomatoes break down over the course of 90 minutes, then strain them. In this case, 30 minutes to warm them up was all I needed. Once they'd boiled down a bit, I strained them in record time with a fraction of the mess in the form of seeds and pulp. So I was ahead of the game.

One surprising setback came when I broke out the meat. I had purchased two center-cut pork chops, a hunk of London broil beef, and two 1-pound flats of ground beef for meatballs. When I pulled one of these flats out, it was brown! What the hell? They were both in date, and from Whole Foods no less, which I associate with a finer class of meat. Even when I cut into it, it was brown inside as well. In retrospect, I feel fortunate that the meat tilted its hand so early, so to speak. Whatever turned it so swiftly might have been strong enough to survive the relentless frying and boiling to which I subjected the rest of the meat . . . and I have a less-than-illustrious history of food poisoning whose details I shall spare you for now. The other flat was fine, so I diced up the pork and beef, got it browning in some spices and olive oil, and made meatballs with the single pound of ground beef. I did managed to get a good 20 or so out of the package, which with the other meat looked like it would be plenty.

I have to say, I am impressed with the result. I just took some time to ladle out the sauce. Deep red, smooth but thick, with lovely chunks of meat that have spent 90 minutes releasing their essence into the sauce. I got 11 pints out of this batch, which should hold me for a good while. I am waaaay past my bedtime, though, so work tomorrow is going to be something of a death march, Still, considering what I will come home to by way of dinner, it will be worth it. Definitely beats the hell out of the ketchup and egg noodles Henry Hill describes being given at the end of Goodfellas when he asked for spaghetti and marinara sauce in his hick-town witness-relocation exile.

Mamma Mia, Ats'a Spicy Hallway!

As I mentioned, I was at the gym last night. I had eaten a serving of All-Bran before heading over, because I knew I would leave the gym in a ravenous state after an hour of selectively abusing various muscles and joints. Some sources advise exercising on an empty stomach. I agree with this rule for first-thing-in-the-morning gym trips, but I know myself: If I returned to the apartment starving, there was a greater chance I would eat crap like a PB&J instead of just the protein/fruit shake I usually chug after lifting.

This proved to be a wise idea. Although I was getting growly in the abdominal region by the time I left, it wasn't as severe as if I had eaten nothing. So I drove straight home, avoiding both the pizzerias in town and the Trader Joe's right next door (oh, those spicy tortilla chips), and ascending to the second floor of my building.

All my discipline was undone when I caught a whiff of my hallway. Someone was cooking Italian food. More specifically, someone had clearly spent a fair portion of the day making fresh Italian meat sauce. It filled my nostrils like some sort of scent-based Sicilian embrace. It had just the right tang, too . . . that sassy, broad flavor you can only get when you let some sturdy cut of beef simmer and break down over the course of sweet, slow hours, flaking and yielding its savory punch with each forkful of pasta.

I somehow tore myself away from this maddening embrace and found my apartment. Mixed berries and protein powder were now looking, by comparison, like North Vietnamese prison rations. I was not without hope, though. Two weeks ago, I had bought a dozen 2-pound cans of crushed plum tomatoes on sale, in anticipation of making a new batch of my own tomato sauce. Plans to craft this crimson potion over Labor Day Weekend never manifested. I will now enact them this weekend. There is no other way.

Though I have no Italian blood, I benefit from having ancestors who hailed from the Bronx. My maternal great-grandmother was sufficiently catholic in her culinary worldview to befriend and learn from Italian housewives in her neighborhood. The recipe I follow had its origins nearly a century ago, and what changes in it I have made, I have kept quiet from my mother. (She likes a thinner sauce than I do; I also prefer not to add sweet sausage chunks to the mix.)

I measure the amount of sauce I make by the number of cans of plum tomatoes I use to produce it. I used to make massive amounts, up to 12 cans' worth. I was one cheesy label away from having a home industry. Now, I just use 6 cans, but more tomato paste than my mom does (thus the thicker sauce). I could probably go as low as 4 cans, but 6 strikes a good balance. Not so much sauce that I have to haul most of it over to my parents' basement freezer to store it, but not so little that I feel like I am gearing up the entire process for a stash that's only going to last a few weeks.

And boy, is it a process. Labor Day is actually a perfect day to produce this red gold. On Sunday, I can get over to Whole Foods and buy the meat. My mother uses odds and ends of beef and pork in her sauce, but then removes it to eat separately once the sauce is done. I prefer to use prime meats — center-cut pork chops and sirloin, both cubed and sauteed briefly in olive oil and herbs — that I leave in the sauce for the entire simmer. I also buy a couple of trays of ground beef for the meatballs.

Here's another difference in my philosophy of tomato sauce that differs from my mother's. Her meatballs tend to be considerably larger than mine. I'll use 2 or 3 pounds of ground beef — I don't bother with the ground pork or lamb that some do; I've already got pork chunks in the mix, and the lamb flavor tends to get lost amid the seasonings. What differs between us is I will make a good 45 or so smaller balls, which I find easier to fry such that the insides get done evenly. She prefers to make a smaller number of biggies, which complete their cooking process in the sauce itself over the simmer.

That's just the meat aspect of things. The tomatoes are another ritual. All of the plum tomatoes boil for a good hour to 90 minutes, depending on how many cans, along with the spices and the tomato paste. Unlike the old Italian women who first imparted this wisdom, though, I prefer a smooth sauce, no seeds or skins. So I grind the entire lot through a strainer, ladle by ladle, until all of the pulp is out. This might be another reason why I make only 6 cans' worth of tomatoes; by the end of the process, my right arm is just about numb! My parents do have a food mill, which my mom uses to separate her sauce. Not my preference; it results in a thinner sauce. I like it to be able to cling to pasta and endure baking in parmigiana dishes without separating out.

So you're looking at a good five hours' worth of prep, some of it just simmering time interrupted by stirring to keep the bottom of the pot from burning. How, then, to occupy my time while the zesty maroon treasure bubbles happily away in the kitchen?

Simple. You throw in a Mob movie.

It is an inflexible rule in this house: Thou shalt not make tomato sauce without Mafia media playing on the television.

The Godfather is the natural choice. If I time it right, I am making the meatballs just around the same time Clemenza is demonstrating his sauce-making skills to Michael Corleone. Considering how much the characters of that movie eat, it's wise to have a little something of my own to nosh on so by the film's credits, I'm not frantically faxing the local Italian deli with "one of each" scrawled across their menu.

Another fine selection for an afternoon of sauce brewing is Goodfellas. Again, the characters in that film eat constantly. If you don't at least have a nice ham, salami, and provolone sangwich handy, you're gonna begin gnawing on the curtains even befofe that hunger-stoking closeup of Paul Sorvino contentedly munching sazzeech and peppah like a Sicilian Buddha. (Note to self: Sneak out of work early and go to San Gennaro.)

This time I might shoot for another star in the Mob constellation (what would that be, "Nicky the Butcher?"), something like Donnie Brasco or Casino. That brings up a whole, separate obsession, though . . . Las Vegas. The rush of having a TV screen full of casinos and a kitchen wafting with fresh sauce is enough to make me pass out and imagine I'm attending a summit of various Vegas operators as they carve up the Strip over eggplant parmigiana and grappa.

So here's hoping for a Biblical downpour to keep me shut in this weekend, surrounded by cans of tomatoes and spices and frying meatballs on their fragrant bed of translucent onions, while I craft a mighty flood of my own, this one to welcome me home on lazy evenings to come, when all I need to do is make pasta and simmer that mighty sauce to a sensuous boil.