But it’s going to look good. We’re each putting a couple of wooden shelf supports by the side of the sill, and adding an oak plank, which does not bend, and which will serve as a cat perch, as well as a workspace shelf for cups and such.
Found a way to improve action on my window: Barkeepers Friend and steel wool on the aluminum track.
We’re supposed to have revised the marine sump today (yum~!) but we’re going to do that one tomorrow.
We’re having American style stir-fry for supper, over Thai jasmine brown rice. That’s in order, one diced chicken breast, a little olive oil, salt, pepper, ear of corn cut in two; half a yam sliced in chips, with skin; baby carrots; quarter head of cabbage, sliced; frozen brussel sprouts (cheaper than fresh); tablespoon Thai soy sauce [any will do]; half a cup of Swanson low-sodium chicken broth; cook lidded, turning corn and chips as needed, about 5 minutes; unlid, add chopped head of broccoli, cup of sugar snap peas; re-lid, cook 10 minutes. Serve with the rice. Yoghurt for dessert, an hour later. Gets you through the evening without the hungries, and isn’t high cal.
Oooh. I’m coming to your house for dinner. . . .
We have hard water here (Ogallala aquifer), and I swear by Barkeepers Friend. Also the place I live in has a stainless steel sink (what were they thinking?). I’ve found that those Clorox Disinfectant wipes are great for shining it up — and any other stainless steel surface, come to that.
Barkeeper’s Friend is magic. Also those little “Magic Eraser” scrubbies, which I have been consistently impressed with every time I’ve used them.
Plus, frozen brussels sprouts are delicious. I’ve never had yam in a stir fry, I may have to try it. But if I might ask, how can you thin slice them? Or is a yam *not* the same vegetable as a sweet potato?
(My mother makes mashed sweet potatoes, and the hardest part of the dish is peeling the darn things.)
Sweet potato and a 10″ sharp chef’s knife. I tell you, back in my younger and less responsible days, I paid megabucks for that one knife, which is ugly, no-shine steel, which you have to hand-wash, sometimes use steel wool on, and oil, far from stainless—but take an edge? It’s the equal of those ceramic knives but tough enough to cut through a corncob without squashing the ear, and delicate enough to slice cooked chicken as if it were tofu. I can turn a yam into potato chips with that thing. I keep a Furii knife sharpener in the drawer and use it often. Over the years, it gets patina and darkens a little, and the blade wears away bit by bit, so it’s not the sort of thing you’re going to find second-hand too often. They’re often discarded by next-of’s in an estate sale as “that old knife.”
The reason I specify 10″ is utility: you park the end against your cutting board and set up a rocking action, lowering the heel of the blade like a paper cutter. The santoku (shape) knife is similar. The 10″ lets you put, say, a whole crown of broccoli under the chopping part. And if you just watch where your fingers are when the blade comes down, you’re good. More accidents in the kitchen actually happen because of dull blades or thin blades, not good ones. This is not the blade that will skid off sideways from a tough job like corncob or cabbage stem, and the edge, while fragile, is back with two passes of a proper knife sharpener or a sharpening steel. [Manufacturers always include a sharpening steel with every knife blocks—and then provide nice shiny thin-bladed knives you can put in the dishwasher—that really don’t do that well with a sharpening steel.] As you can gather, I’m pretty missionary about good knives in the kitchen. I have a knife block, but of middling-grade ones, because a 10″ chef’s knife can’t do every job.
This is the type, and maybe the brand (all marking is long since gone) http://www.amazon.com/Messermeister-Meridian-Elite-Chefs-Paring/dp/B000MF2Y48/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1318087006&sr=1-1
That sounds like an old-fashioned carbon steel. Got one inherited from my Dad. Takes a great edge and holds it, if not abused. Give it an edge, then respect and protect it!
I think it is. Blade stains if you look at it crosswise, but oh, the edge. You can already see a slight wear in the nearly 20 years I’ve had it.
There’s an old Chinese story of a butcher who used his father’s cleaver all his life. As an old man someone asked him how often he sharpened it. “Never,” was the reply, “I cut between the bones.” That’s respecting the edge! 😉
Barkeeper’s Friend is my BFF….and helps keep my carbon steel knives clean…..as long as they are clean I don’t seem to have a problem with them turning vegs black.
Unless I am slicing them for chips I bake whole yams or sweet potatoes in the oven or microwave and peel them when they have cooled a bit.
Aaannnnd…I do hope that Jane is using a good dust mask for sanding.
Baked yam with butter.
And…while white potatoes give us joint aches, yams don’t. And you can make french fries out of them, too.
Fish and chips with yams instead of white potatoes. Yum! We had a local bar that used to serve batter-dipped salmon, almost tempura—with yam chips. Mismanagement sank them, but the fish-and-chips were to die for.
Yep, Jane is wearing a mask. She’s better about that than I am.
If you have one of those “tank/cannister” vacuums (versus an upright)and Jane is dexterous enough, she could hold the hose with one hand while sanding with the other. I did this when I made a folding screen frame out of lengths of 1″ copper pipe using the copper “T” connectors and copper end caps. I had to cut the tubing to length with a pipe cutter. I had the vacuum on with the hose right by the cutter to suck up any filaments or crumbs of copper that might get on the kittehs’ paw pads and get ingested. I glued the pieces together to make the frame except I didn’t glue one end of the upper cross piece and the opposite end of the lower lower cross piece so I could pull the frame apart to change the fabric. You can use PVC pipe to make the frame and spray paint it with that Rustoleum paint for plastic, but the copper is so beautiful, especially now that it’s getting a patina.
You can make wonderful sweet potato “french fries” baked in the oven. Slice up the potato like fries, leaving the skin on (hooray). Coat lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary. Bake in a 425 oven for 20-25 min depending on your oven heat, stirring once or so. Voila – baked french fries. You can do the same with regular potatoes even at the same time, which I do because I am not a yam fan but my husband is. Then we are both happy.
Ah, yes, a good knife…my husband lays claim to the chef’s knife we have (and strictly forbids it to ever be in the dishwasher!). Generally if I’m using a knife at all – I’m so accident prone that sometimes we say I’m not allowed to have a knife in my hands! – but usually I use the paring knife (Chicago Cutlery, and a heavy thing for its size, good blade). We have a set of “Forever Sharp” knives which are…hmmn…well they’re good for certain tasks. The slicers are VERY good for bread, and tomatoes, and carving roasts. They’re a little too long for carving, say, a roast chicken, but they do fine for carving turkeys. Since we have turkey at least six times a year (we buy several when they get cheap in the post holiday season, and keep ’em in the deep freezer)…yeah, those slicers get a lot of use.
I do know what you mean about “that old knife”! My mother has one that HER mother gave to her…and my sister and I might have to duel over who gets it, someday. I’ve seen Mom cut through a backbone with that knife; kinda scary actually. (It was the backbone on a pork loin. No knife I own can do that.)
The Chicago Cutlery knives may be middle-of-the-road quality, but I have to admit they are far and away better than the godawful things my employer keeps in a knife block on her own counter…cheap, pressed-steel blades, and every one of them “serrated” like a Ginsu knife…they’re terrible and dangerous too. They don’t cut things, they maul them into submission!
The sweet potato fries and chips sound interesting. I will have to try that sometime. I’m used to sweet potatoes being a fall dish, and usually baked to within an inch of its life. My mother-in-law told me “bake it until the tar comes out” which at first quite alarmed me; then I realized that “tar” in this case meant carmelized sugars! Gotta love country dialects of American.
I’ve always heard one should wash a cutting knife in cold water, as hot water dulls the blade. Of course, one wouldn’t want to put things with wooden handles in the dishwasher.
I tend to sharpen as I put it away; and like to wash it off, but not leave it wet.
I like the idea of a built in cat perch – over the years I’ve tried so many commercial ones but the cats never seem to like them as much as I’d hoped! Earlier this summer I sprang for a Tower of Power – 7′ tall, three platforms, a kitty puzzle box, and a sisal scratching post topped with feather “birds”. It was ignored for abour 3.5 months – then one night, I was woken up by a loud noise. Sasha had decided to use the scratching post and attack the birds–and has been using it since. Yay! but she still scratches the wood furniture too, so the protective bubble wrap remains.
The reference to brussel sprouts got me craving some….found a fresh stalk at the farmer’s market. And then found this recipe in the LA Times adapted from the Boonville Hotel up in Anderson Valley (they deep fry, but this roasting technique is awesome – I started nibbling on them before I even got to the dressing.) I was imagining them with walnuts and bacon bits as a Thanksgiving side. I don’t know how well it would work with frozen sprouts.
Preheat oven to 475 deg. F:
1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts, halved, tossed with
1 – 2 T olive oil
Place on rimmed baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes, tossing every few minutes to color evenly.
Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil, Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons), 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 2 cloves finely minced garlicor to taste(I skipped this), 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes – I used these tiny red peppers from the garden, since that’s what easily came to hand.
Toss hot brussel sprouts with dressing and serve hot.
sounds really good. I believe in walnuts, too.