I glanced in my review mirror to see a very dusky Gabi with her eyes halfway closed. She had had a cough for a couple of days and her oxygen levels were at 71% this morning when we put the pulsox on her. Her heart rate was at 140 pbm and that raised my heart rate as I quickly packed for a trip to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee.

“WHAT THE HELL!?!”

This is how I am starting my new year!? An overly exciting trip to Children’s Memorial Hospital? Gabi had grown so big and become such a great part of our family the thought of something happening to her had me crying as I sprinted down the familiar route of Palatine Rd. towards I-294. Part of me was sad from fear and part from selfishness. I was sick of this crap.

I got on I-294 and pegged it at 90mph, I figured if I got pulled over I had a pretty decent reason for the hustle.

We got to the ER and there was a child with a feeding bag & looking worse than Gabi. They checked in first and a couple of minutes later we were admitted. Gabi wasn’t happy about all the poking and prodding and put up a measly 61% O2 with a very elevated heart rate. That was enough to get a passel of nurses and doctors in the room. Getting great service in the hospital is really a double edged sword. A quick albuterol treatment and some O2 and she was back to usable numbers and they started to talk about putting an IV in.

“Can you please call somebody from anesthesiology to do the stick?”

Gabi in the ER waiting for her IV

The nurse assured me that they were very good at putting IVs in and that she didn’t know if anybody from anesthesiology would be available. I insisted that they try. Getting a line in a kid with half a heart is notoriously difficult, and my heart only wanted her to go through that once. They did find somebody to do it, and 15 minutes later we were on our way back to the familiar ICU on the 4th floor.

We settled in and they took a chest x-ray and the parade of doctors started. Everything looked clear in her lungs and they suspected some sort of virus so she was swabbed (q-tip thing jammed up her nose nearly to her brain) for RSV and Influenza. The act of swabbing meant that she now had to be in isolation and anybody coming into her room needed a gown, gloves and mask. Blargh.

Gabi sleeping off some her RSV adventure

Gabi settled in for a night of fever, elevated heart rate and wildly fluctuating O2 levels. She was a real trooper though, and pulled her oxygen mask aside to cough and then put it back on. She slept most of the next day too, waking briefly to watch some Dora and point at things. She was super cute with the nurses and doctors, and even held her arm out and pulled up her sleeve for blood pressure tests. This was tragically adorable to watch.

She slowly improved and started some more breathing treatments nutrition through her G-Tube. Her personality came back and she started acting like the goofball that she normally is. I was ready to head out the door Wednesday morning, but her O2 kept dumping and I didn’t feel comfortable leaving yet. I settled in and we spent some time playing in the hospital room. Respiratory had brought some bubbles to use with her. Blowing bubbles was good exercise for her lungs, and she loves to do that.

Gabi & Co. passing time in the hospital room

The afternoon sun coming though the windows lit up the swirling rainbows on the surface of the bubbles. Gabi and I took turns blowing bubbles all over the room, and she laughed as she yelled “POP!” as each bubble expired. I realized that this trip was the most one-on-one time I had ever spent with her, and we had become good buddies through this adventure. There was a young boy in the room  next to us that had a neck brace on and went for dialysis every other day. He didn’t have anybody there to visit him since his single mom had to work 3rd shift. Suddenly my quiet time with my young daughter was an incredible luxury, and it seemed great way to start the new year.

Happy New Year

Things started with a one day sale on whole chickens at the local Whole Foods. The labor to flavor ratio on a whole roasted chicken is off the charts, and I wanted to see if I could get some others to cook a whole chicken for the first time as I had two days prior. I got Chef Tom of White Oak Gourmet on the blower and asked him how busy his week was.

Hight-Tech lighting system. Sheet of cardboard + packing tissue = Shop Light ++

Turns out he had the time, WAHOO! I had picked up a new iPhone 4s for my UnPrepared Meals project, so I had a way to record, but without a paying client my budget was a bit thin. The two things I was most concerned about were lighting and sound. I didn’t have the cash to rent a light kit from Helix like I wanted, so I had to manufacture one. The videos over at Vimeo’s Video School were a good starting point, and my goal was to diffuse the light and try to bounce some off the ceiling to fill things in. I didn’t have a diffuser, so I held different materials in front of my garage shop light until I got a decently warm color. The winner was the natural colored tissue paper I use to ship out most of my spice rub orders. The second light was tilt-able and seemed like it just might work.

I shouldn't have spent all my lotto winnings on this bangin' sound studio.

I had no money for a remote mic, and even if I did, I didn’t have Final Cut to automatically synch the audio and video. I had built a recording studio under my desk for my Korean taco voiceover work, but I now needed to be mobile. Empty box + leftover fleece material + staple gun = Abbey on the Road studios. I would use this for the voice work later, but for now my goal was to capture footage.

I didn’t have time for a script so my plan was to cook two chickens, one shot from far away and another shot close up to capture some of the culinary techniques. My guess is that within 23 seconds of trying to just ad-lib things I realized that I needed a script. Ad libbing for the camera is more difficult than ad libbing in front of a live audience. I immediately changed the plan to shooting the footage as best I could and I would edit and write the script later.

The audio side of things was a total bust during the shoot, but I was really happy with what I was capturing in the video department. The lighting worked really well, and the window behind Chef Tom wasn’t messing things up too badly. The mounting adapter I used to mount my phone to the tri-pod worked perfectly, and I was really excited to see what the footage looked like when pulled to the computer. Total shooting time was a couple of hours and then Tom was off to cook some more and I began work on editing.

I pulled in all the footage and things looked pretty good. I arranged the clips into a loose timeline and started to write the script to match the action. I then read through the script out loud to make sure the words and footage were in the same ballpark and then called it a day.

The next morning I went to Tom’s house (which contains far fewer children than mine) and started on voiceover work. We spent a couple of hours revising my script and doing read throughs to make sure the words could be said not just read. I captured all 5 takes on a portable USB hard drive for editing back at West 3 World HQ.

I mashed those 5 takes into 1 decent read through in Garage Band, and then brought it into iMovie with the video clips. Then I began the painful process of matching the two up. Getting the trussing bit to match the audio was an oil and water adventure, ugh. I drank a beer while the project finalized, and then pushed the file up to vimeo.com and went to bed.

How about a recipe and cooking video with your whole chicken purchase?

When I got up in the morning I write the recipe and instructions and set the thumbnail for vimeo. Then I had people spell check and give things a run through on other machines to make sure the video hosted at vimeo worked for them. I designed some recipe cards that had the recipe ingredients (and in-store location!) that the butchers could hand out with each whole chicken they sold. Tom brought the file over to Kinko’s and then hustled to Whole Foods to see if we could actually pull this off.

No Dice!

There was no chance they were going to hand out anything that wasn’t corporate approved, plus there was a disturbing lack of food safety education/warning in the video. I knew that it was a 1:100 shot that they would use this, but it was a great project to have done. Tom and I had a silly blast doing the campy voiceover work, and I was able to shoot my first cooking video, AND PUT IT ON THE INTERNET!

Things I learned

Good

• The iphone 4s has a great camera. The footage was really good to my amateur eyes, and most people were really surprised when I told them I shot it on my phone. The mounting adapter work really well with the tripod.
• The modified shop light more than pulled its weight. I know some of the detail was blown out in the whites, but overall the food and ingredients looked good. That was my major focus.
• Doing campy voice-over work for 3 hours straight in a tiny back office makes your brain a little silly by the end.

Surprisingly tasty new flavor of Ritz cracker

NOW I WANT  A ‘SMORE!

I wasn’t going to fire up an actual fire, but i know microwaves are great at melting/puffing marshmallows. I laid out a bunch of Honey Wheat Ritz salt side down. I like the salt on the outside so it hits your tongue right as you start eating it.

Salt side down is the new "LACES OUT!"

Next we CAREFULLY arranged chocolate chips on the crackers. If you really work at it you can fit five or six on each cracker.

This task doesn't take a surgeon's skill, but do move quickly because ships held too long in the hand tend to melt.

Then stack as many marshmallows on each cracker as you can.

Party platter ready for action!

After 30 seconds in the microwave things are puffy melty and ready to eat!

Now things are getting real.

Top them off with another cracker and time to eat.

My favorite thing is that for Dads these are single bite snacks.

'Smores in 5 minutes. Doesn't have that campfire smoke flavor,
but better then a poke in the eye with a pointy marshmallow coated stick.

Thumbs Up!

Has anyone tried them with veggies/tofu? I’d love to order some,
but I don’t eat meat. Not that I would mind being a guinea pig. -Cecilia from facbook

Generally I am not a fan of stuff pretending to be other stuff. Those boca burgers that have fake grill marks and some odd imitation of grill flavor are just off-putting. I much prefer the Morningstar Black Bean Burgers from Costco (the Costco ones are bigger then the regular store ones), and they make a mean mid-day taco in a matter of minutes. My overall exposure to tofu has been limited to the “ribs” at Karen’s Cooked, and this just confirmed my anti-pretending stance, Mister Rogers not withstanding.

Extra Firm Tofu dried off and ready to cube.

Honestly though, I had never used tofu as it was intend, so Cecilia’s question got me off my butt to remedy that. I removed the tofu from the package and dried it as best I could. I sliced the tofu into cubes about a quarter inch thick and tossed them into a bowl with some sliced peppers and mushrooms. I mixed about a tablespoon of spice rub with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and gently tossed the tofu and veggies to coat everybody equally.

Olive Oil and West3 Spice rub on the veggies & Tofu

I had the pan pretty hot and coated the bottom with a teaspoon more of olive oil before everybody was dumped in the pool. I had dried the tofu as best I could and refrained from moving the gang much as it cooked because I was REALLY trying to get some color and crust on the outside of the tocubes™. Much to my dismay the tofu gave off about twice as much liquid as a mushroom, and I was veering towards boiling this breakfast. EWWWW!

EVERYBODY IN THE POOL!

I was able to crank the heat a little, and be patient to save things. I finished up with a decent crust on the tofu, but the veggies were a little overcooked. I took the dish from the pan and then quickly scrambled some eggs and grilled some pita bread with a light coating of parmesan cheese.

Extra Firm Tofu sauteed with Peppers, Mushrooms and Green Onions. Served over scrambled eggs and with grille pitas on the side.

In the end I did get the crust I was looking for and because there isn’t a TON OF SALT in the spice rub, it was a really nice compliment to the relative wallflower nature of the tofu. The second time I cook tofu I will cut it into larger patties and saute/cook them like french toast. This way I can get some crunch without overcooking the rest of things in the excess moisture.

To answer Cecilia’s question, yes West3 Spice rub works well with veggies. Thanks to your questions, I now can truthfully say that it brings some life into tofu as well.

Cheers!

Elephant Repellent™

Ghost Chilis (Bhut Jolokia) have gotten a lot of press recently and are kinda the hip thing going in the hot chili circles. Standard issue is to use them in a hot sauce or eat them raw and film it. They have been called the hottest pepper in the world, but people will argue back and forth about it. I figure once you are above 1 million Scoville Units the only people that care are nerds on the internet. If you want to learn more about this chili pepper I suggest the wiki entry as a good starting point.

We have managed to get ahold of some ghost chili FLAKES. They don’t get used in dry form very often, so this is a pretty unique jar of spice rub. We use 1 tablespoon of flakes in 2 lbs of standard West3 Rub. This is enough to give a substantial boost in the heat department, but not blister your tongue and drown out the other flavors.

How does the taste compare to the original West3 Spice rub?

Jar of Ghost Chili Flakes, even frozen in the freezer will light up a nose that gets too close

Comparing them is like comparing thin crust pizza and Chicago Deep Dish. Some argue back and forth, but really they are two completely different foods that share parts of an ingredient list. Whereas the original was a smokey sweet BBQ based flavor, the chili flakes bring the dried herbs to the front of the flavor bus. Ghost Chili flakes change it into something close to a Jamaican Jerk rub. Strong herb flavor with a sweetness and heat at the end. It is really tasty.

You know what to rub it on! GET SOME

• Jared Van Camp | Old Town Social
• Chris Pandel | The Bristol, Balena
• Stephanie Izard | Girl and the Goat
• Marianne Sundquist | In Fine Spirits
• Carlos Ysaguirre | Anteprima, Acre
• Heidi Hedecker | Kendall
• Thomas Leavitt | White Oak Gourmet

Chef Camp T-Shirt from Stephanie Izard

Taking a sip of my iced-tea/lemonade I start to wonder, what the hell am I doing? All of the equipment jammed into the back of my car makes it smell like kitchen on wheels. I have left my insanely pregnant wife at home and she had contractions a couple days ago. My second son is having his 6th birthday today, yet I am in a car driving to the middle of nowhere to learn about running a sustainable farm. I blame Chef Tom and his damned enthusiasm.

I am mildly late as I pull into the driveway of Spence Farm in central Illinois around 11am. Since this is a business trip to talk about my prep table and spice rub, I can call the speeding ticket a business expense, right? ‘DOH!

The gear is unloaded quickly and Tom starts pulling things together for a quick lunch. Braised pork belly sandwiches and home made potato chips. The sandwiches are a great vehicle for the spicy coconut vinegar he had me try a couple of weeks ago, and I promise myself stop after two sandwiches. Farmer Marty has everybody tell a “worst meal cooked” story to break the ice and everybody sets down to eat. We all dine on bamboo plates with our names on them so that they can be reused. There are plastic forks which I thought was odd at first. Turns out that they are made from potatoes and fully compostable. I almost popped my monocle out into my carbonated pear ginseng soda I was drinking when I heard that one.

Marty and his wife Khris then introduce themselves and bring on the first speaker, Bob. Bob plows through a 45min rolling conversation about soil and nutritionally dense foods. We all learn about BRIX measurements that quantify how nutritionally dense produce is, and that Bob seems to look down on the automatons that do soil measurements via the grid method.

A surprisingly heavy honey filled rack is passed around as Jared Van Camp contemplates the meaning of it all.

Spence Farm has their own hives and we head over to the school house to learn about bees. Things I learned: the racks full of honey are HEAVY, the male bees get kicked out of the hive when winter comes because they are of no use any more and that Queens are made, not born. Turns out that to create a queen bee you just need to make her larva comb 3 times the normal size, and keep feeding her royal jelly (some sort of bee breast milk thing from what I can understand) and BAM! Queen Bee.

BOINK! Damn, another monocle.

We then head over to a nearby clearing where they have the “yard pigs” These are 7 or 8 Guinea Hogs that feed on the vegetation on the ground. Each 10×10 pen holds 3 or four and is moved periodically throughout the day. The pigs eat all the vegetation down to the dirt, and then the pen is moved to a new location with fresh weeds and clover and they just start chomping down. The pigs were about as cute as pigs can get and made cartoonishly accurate snorty pig sounds. One of the chores was to divide up the lucky and unlucky pigs, and when they were grabbed by their hind legs they exchanged that cute oink to a Deliverance-esqe squeal. Once set into their correct pens they continued to snort and chomp as if nothing happened. Seems that they missed the dire implications of their change of venue.

The chicken egg talk induced dreamy looks into the distance from Chris Pandel

Next item was chicken eggs. Things learned: A single rooster/hen tussle will produce 10 days of fertilized eggs at 1 egg per day, White shell vs. brown = no nutritional difference at all and some chickens eat eggs. Those chickens are called Spike.

Through all of the presentations the chefs and others asked a lot of questions and there was great back and forth between the presenters and crowd. All of the speakers were really passionate about their subject, and the Chefs were doing their best to soak it up like a sponge. Stephanie kept pre-empting her questions with “This is a stupid question…” but we all could have done that. We were complete rubes compared to the veterans of the land, but that never became a barrier. The farmers wanted to pass as much knowledge to the Chefs so that it could then be spread to a more urban community.  The Chefs in-turn were super jazzed to learn more about the food they love and use for their art.

Cristina Ritter captured all of these great photos and was nice enough to hustle through processing some them so I could use them in this writeup. She is on the twitter  facebook & LinkedIn please check out her work.

It was starting to get late in the afternoon, and if we wanted any meat for dinner it would need to be processed. Marty had asked if anybody had killed and butchered a goat before. The most competent sounding response he received was a “Kinda” from Chef Spectacles. “Alright, I will go get the 22 then and we will put it down first, then bleed it out and butcher it.” It seemed like this was the rookie procedure, but everybody was appreciative of the butchery training wheels. The goat had gotten out of its pen, so the first task was to catch the bleeting SOB. I didn’t go into the barn, between the film crew and the chefs all running around I didn’t want to get in the way. It was kind of humorous to hear the racket inside moving from one end of the barn to the other.

Kris from Spence Farm directs the insanity that were the squealing yard hogs.

I had never witnessed an animal be put down like this before, and was a little apprehensive about the whole scene. I was proud over the years to get past my aversion to touching raw meat, but this was a whole new ball game. In the end the 22 didn’t make too much noise and I now can say I have seen how meat is made. In an odd way I felt guilty for never having seen this before. It took 37 years to see where my food comes from? I have watched tons of videos about handmade knives and watched with rapt attention as layer after layer is worked into these jewels. I have walked though the factory at Polyscience to see the circulators being all tested before packaging, yet the most basic part of cooking is something I have shied away from.

I never really thought about it until then, but after this experience I won’t feel as bad for my guests when I overcook a piece of meat, I will feel more embarrassed for not respecting the animal that gave it life for the meal.

Next were some chickens and rabbits along with some other chores. Stephanie had a 1/6th barrel of Honey Porter that was tapped and food started to pile up on the giant wood fire grill. Everybody sat under the large tent that did a decent job of blocking the wind. Conversation was good at my end of the table and there was food chatter popping off all over. After dinner we all learned how to harvest seeds from a tomato (or chili) and then kind of milled around and chatted.

I had to head out to get back home, 12 hours away from uterus ground zero was enough of a risk for me. Leaving, I heard them planning the AM squash blossom harvest and the beef taste test (DAMN!). Driving home in the dark by myself I had a chance to try and reconcile the slaughter I was leaving behind with the new life I was driving towards. In the haze of tiredness and a light misty rain they seemed to merge together. I have now participated in the integral tail end of earthy existence, which seems to give me a more solid foundation as I work to build another new life.

<embed source=CircleOfLife.LionKing.mp3> </embed>

Bread baked by the neighbor, Ham from the meat salesman across the street and tomatoes from 2 houses down.

Maybe Hillary was right about the theory, just the target should have been sandwiches rather than kids. I love this neighborhood, we get together every other weekend for some sort of impromptu party. Be it beers and pizza in the driveway, or the worlds most eceltcic pot luck of crab-legs, penne with pesto and Stoufers mac&cheese. It is always a good time.

The sugar and partners make for a insanely tasty crust when some high heat comes into the mix.

Korean Taco Marinade
(adapted from Americas Test Kitchen recipe)

• 5 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1.5 teaspoons lime juice
  (about a whole lime worth)
• 3 tablespoons sugar (brown if you have it)
• 2 tablespoons gochujang
  (Korean fermented hot pepper paste)
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 4 garlic cloves, minced

The Korean Taco is a delicious food that started on the streets of the West Coast and has made its way onto the plates of diners further east quite quickly. Even America’s Test Kitchen recently published a recipe for these delicious if unconventional tacos in one of their 30-Minutes-Suppers collection. Anybody can follow this recipe on a hot summer night when you you don’t feel like spending a lot of time in a hot kitchen.

The hot pepper paste drives this flavor bus; the rest of the ingredients are friendly passengers. Mirin, rice vinegar and lime juice get mixed in with a lot of sugar, but some soy sauce keeps the sugar from overpowering the combination and making it a pure syrup. The heat from the pepper paste combined with the acidic sweetness of the rice vinegar and the other ingredients creates an explosive flavor combination. This party is completed with the heat of the grill, which caramelizes everything and leaves behind an awesome crust.

Do you ever get frustrated that it is so difficult to recreate some Asian foods at home? Pepper paste is what you’re missing.

This is a simple, fast summer dinner. Tons of flavor and a huge crowd pleaser for all ages. The leftovers are just perfect in an omelette for breakfast or a salad at lunch,

Parenting tip: if you have a picky eater, you can separate one piece of meat from the rest and just dust it with Adobo seasoning. The meat is so tender that it doesn’t require all the seasoning to make it delcious (it’s just a really nice bonus for the more adventurous).

Crisped Capocollo stacked on Aldi Frozen Hash-Browns

I am joyfully working my way through a selection of cured meats from Costco. I was able to reuse some of the ingredients from the Market Sandwich on the omelet stage. I have toasted Proscuitto for other dishes, and thought I should give Capocollo a whirl. The flavor is like some spicy love child of Proscuitto & a really good Salami. I let them sizzle in a pan for a few minutes and then set on paper-towels to cool while I prepared the omelet.

Basil went into the eggs, and then poured over the sauteing spinach. Filled with Gouda cheese and topped with Sauteed tomatoes.

I scrambled 2 eggs with some basil that I had cut into fine strips, and then poured it into the pan where the spinach was sauteing. A few minutes later I laid in the Gouda cheese, and folded it over to finish setting up on the plate. Meanwhile I dropped some chunks of tomato into the still hot pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper. I left them on one side for 3 minutes to add a little warmth without breaking the structure too much. Poured the oil and tomatoes over the eggs, and ate.