I'm feeling cheated

So yesterday I am having some processed luncheon meat (Spam) fried up for breakfast and I notice there are supposed to be 6 servings per can. Depending on how I slice it I get 3, maybe 4. In this case I think they are getting a bit creative because I always thought a serving of meat is 4 ounces and they were using 2 ounces as serving. And how about a pint of Gelato or ice cream? They all say 4 servings per container. After I finish with the third serving there is none left. I want to know who stole the 4th serving! Or do they intentionally leave that one out of the carton? Another one I get to see quite often is a bag of frozen vegetables. They all say 5 or 6 servings. I only seem to get 2 and when I was married with kid I could squeeze 3 tiny servings out of one. And yes, I manage to squeeze by on a bit more than 3,000 calories a day. :-)

Frozen fish filets

I use my cast iron for a lot of things. And I prefer to not use the oven for just my self. For some things I use a counter top convection oven. A while back I wondered if breaded fish filets could be cooked on the stove top. After a few tries I think I have it figured out. I preheated the skillet to med-lo (3 on my dial), gave it a thin coat of vegetable oil and tossed in the filets. Ten minutes on the first side and then 5 minutes on the second. Nice and crispy golden on the outside and soft in the middle. Used a lot less electricity and didn't heat up the whole kitchen like heating in the oven for 25 minutes at 475°.

Phone books

Today I just got the Phoenix metro edition for the year. It is only one book. I grew up in Santa Barbara and I can only remember it being one book there. In the 17 years I have lived here I saw it grow to 4 books from I think 3. And the regional edition for the Northwest valley had all the retirement communities personal phone number and address listings in large print. It's been 2 years since the phone book(s) even had personal information. Thinking back on it, I don't think I have used a phone book for anything but a business look up in 10 years or so. A large part of it's usefulness for personal information has changed with people not listing their addresses or getting rid of land lines in favor of cell phones. And even businesses have cut down on the amount of advertising they do in the phone books. I guess seeing that I only got one book with all the yellow pages and business listings mad me wax nostalgic today. Time was when phone books got worn out in a year. Now they may get out of date but certainly not worn out from overuse.

Rotten beef

Have you ever accomplished what you set out to do and realized you didn't like the finished product? A few months back I attended a dinner with several Yelpers at Murphys (A German restaurant in downtown Glendale). Chrissy and I both remarked afterward that steak knife tender was a little tough for the saurbratten we had each ordered. While I like a tender piece of roast I am not a big fan of sweet stuff at dinner so I decided to opt out of making the cabbage and the gingersnap gravy. I instead made brown gravy from Better than Bullion and served mashed potatoes rather than potato dumplings. I set out to prove I could make it more tender than the restaurant. I happened to use tri-tip because that is what I had and other than the gristly parts I did indeed make a melt in your mouth roast. The cooking method I used was on an open rack in the oven at 200° until it was 140° in the middle. The disappointment was that even with normal gravy on it to temper it I did not like the taste of the meat from the marinade. So now to search for a marinade recipe I like.

Paper Heart

2009, PG-13, Romantic Comedy, Charlyne Yi, Michael Cera

Quick moving. Very different, I would almost label it Indie. Lots of fun. I enjoyed it. I have no clue however why I put it in queue to begin with.