Tag Dinner

You Give Me 15 Minutes, I’ll Give You … You Know

Michael Leave a comment

This week among the junk mail was a notice of “Big Savings!” from a local car dealer. Right there with their tire specials, tune-ups specials, air conditioning service specials, and brake specials was their “Signature 29 Minute Oil Change” now at a special price. Isn’t that special? I don’t know why but it made me think why 29 minutes, why not a half hour? And then I thought even more. Whatever happened to the 15 minute oil change?

Surely you remember the 15 minute oil change places. There were lots of them and they were everywhere. I remember going to them. I also remember they always took more than 15 minutes. They spent at least 15 minutes on asking you what type of oil you wanted (if I knew that I’d do my own oil change), do you want your old filter or may they discard it (yuck!), will you be needing new windshield wipers today (I hope not, it’s a convertible and the top is down), would you be interested in joining their savings club (here’s a brochure you can read while we huddle around your car), and do you have any coupons (why do they always ask about couponS when they (the couponS) always say “cannot be combined?”). Then a squadron of oil changers descended on your vehicle checking tire pressure, topping off windshield washer fluid, cleaning headlights, checking coolant, transmission, steering and brake fluids, examining air filters, and changing the oil. Then another 15 minutes of post-change summary included the status of your fluids (always due for something), air filter (always dirty), windshield wipers (always worn), and tires (holding up pretty well and aren’t you lucky because we don’t sell them here).

Well, I’ve come up with some things that really do take only a quarter of an hour and make you better for them! For instance, in 15 minutes or less you can start an exercise program. You’ll notice general health improvements in most low to moderate impact exercises including walking. After a few weeks you may want to increase your activity time to 30 minutes but that’s still less time than it took to get a 15 minute oil change!

Staying with health, in less than 15 minutes you can check your blood pressure and pulse, and breathing rate and oxygen level at home. Every day if you want. Even young, seemingly healthy people can have high blood pressure and never know it. For a few dollars and a few minutes you can buy and use a blood pressure monitor that measures your pressure and heart rate. Another inexpensive tool is the pulse oximeter to measure how much oxygen is in your blood and you do it bloodlessly. This little thing does it by clamping onto your fingertip. Learning how to measure your breathing rate is easy. You probably already have everything you need – a watch with a second hand and your lungs.

A whole world of 15 minutes or less is right in your kitchen. A hot breakfast of ham and eggs or a bowl of oatmeal takes about as much time as it does to toast a bagel and find the cream cheese. You can make a whole light dinner in 15 minutes. Boil your favorite pasta in water for about a minute less than the package directions instruct. While that’s going on sauté sliced green peppers, and broccoli in olive oil, then add some spinach to wilt. Toss in your cooked pasta, top with shredded parmesan and you have a delicious pasta prima vera. If you’re willing to use a pre-made pizza shell or store bought dough you can shape, top, and bake a pizza, then let it rest for a few minutes while you make a small salad for the side and you have another dinner in half the time it takes to get one delivered. For something more fun, season one pound of ground beef with salt and pepper, add just a drizzle of olive oil, and splash in a couple of squirts of hot sauce.  Shape into four patties, grill or broil for 4 to 5 minutes on each side for medium and let rest for a couple minutes. While the patties are cooking, slice a few potatoes, toss with oil, and roast in a 400 degree oven for 12 minutes turning once. As soon as they come out, season with salt, pepper, paprika, Cajun seasoning, grated cheese, or whatever you and 3 friends feel like. Dinner for four and you didn’t give your guests enough time to talk about you.

And the ultimate less than 15 minute activity – reading this blog twice a week! Even a lengthy post like today’s takes maybe 5 minutes. Do that twice a week and you still have time to make a comment, smile, laugh, cry, or curse at your screen as appropriate, and/or scratch your head and wonder “who is this guy?”

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Soup’s On

Michael 1 Comment

It started innocently enough with a cup of clam chowder. This was a couple of weeks ago after a doctor appointment stuck right in the middle of the day. By the time that was over I was hungry as a bear and lunch came at one of those big casual restaurants that are handiest when you have no idea what you want but you know that whatever you decide on will be decent. I decided on soup and a sandwich. Clam chowder and corned beef. I know, not one of your classic combinations but it was decent. and it woke up a soup need in me.

I like soup. Not so much that I’ll eat it every day but that’s exactly what I’ve done now for a whole week. You might associate daily soup eating with autumn, a chill in the air, leaves falling outside, fires burning inside. Not with May and unusually high (like in the nineties) daytime temperatures. I blame my daily soup eating partially on being in the hospital during the coldest months of the year where their idea of soup is salted water. And partially on that clam chowder.

Let’s fast forward a week or so. It’s time for another doctor appointment stuck right in the middle of yet another day. Again, lunch was high on my list of things to do. Another casual restaurant, another soup and sandwich. French onion and grilled chicken. (What can I say? I just don’t pick combinations well.)

Since then I’ve had soup and something for lunch or dinner. Every day. For seven days. Soups from spicy hot and sour to hearty black bean to classic chicken noodle. All much better than salted water.

So now as I approach week two I have to decide if I should continue the soup-a-thon or shift to a more season appropriate accompaniment to my meals. After all, I’d hate to be the cause of snow in May.

That’s what I think. How ’bout you?

The Last Minute – A Special Piece of Real Reality

Michael Leave a comment

Regular readers know that Real Reality strikes on Mondays and Thursdays.  If you didn’t know that it doesn’t make you irregular.  You just have to read more often.  And/or more regularly.  Anyway, for this to show up on a Wednesday you know it must be something special.  Well, tomorrow is something special so that could make today special too.  It certainly makes today down to the wire.  (No race track analogies in 2015.  Three in a row are plenty for any couple of years!)

Regular readers also know that in Realityville, Christmas Eve is not a shopping day.  Christmas Eve has enough of its own tasks and charges.  You have had plenty of shopping days going back to Black Friday Eve (aka Thanksgiving).  Ask any major retailer.  If you’re not done by now you are on your own.  But don’t bother asking any major retailer.  They lie.

Back to Christmas Eve.  Don’t you have more Christmassy things to do today than shopping anyway?

There are Christmas Eve dinners to attend to.  Is the most recognizable Christmas Eve dinner the Feast of the Seven Fishes?  Perhaps so.  An Italian tradition on a day that Italian Catholics abstain from meat, this vigil meal will be served in many households.  In Eastern Europe, many cultures add a couple more meatless dishes to their Christmas Eve dinner to make nine or eleven choices.  Russians prepare twelve selections of fish and grains.  In Germany and Austria, Christmas Eve may be spent preparing carp, potatoes, and salads for dinner after sundown.

You’re not a big eater you say?  Then you’ll probably spend today wrapping all the presents you carefully selected and bought with plenty of time to get under the tree before Christmas.  Did you know that, television families with piles of beautifully wrapped presents under their trees weeks before the big day excepted, most holiday wrapping happens on Christmas Eve.  Much of the gifts planned for destinations outside the home if not wrapped sometime on Christmas Eve, usually during cooking breaks, are wrapped the day before and sometimes the day of the planned giving.

If you happen to be reading this in Sweden you aren’t wrapping your gifts today.  You’ll be unwrapping them since the day you exchange Christmas presents is today!  That would be in Sweden and many other countries where the wrapping happened yesterday in anticipation of exchanging them on Christmas Eve.

In Australia where it’s nice and warm today, many people will be out caroling this evening.  While singing they will light candles together hoping for a clear night that their light can join the stars.

And if your wrapping and cooking and eating and singing all get done early and you are still looking for something to do besides more shopping, today would be a good day to thank God for getting us all through another year.

Merry Christmas.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.

 

Bon Appetite

Michael Leave a comment

We’re used to being a day late.  We’re usually much more than a dollar short.  But we still like our food and one of the best foodies hit her milestone yesterday, even if she wasn’t around to celebrate it. 

Julia turned 100.

For many, Julia Child never died.  Neither did Lucille Ball, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, or Dean Martin.  As long as television reruns and movies on demand, DVDs and U-Tube, video archives and PBS are around, so will be our favorite chefs, singers, actors, and whats have you.

How often have you held this conversation in your house when you heard of the death and/or the upcoming concert of a celebrity?  “I thought he was dead already.”  We aren’t sure if it’s a good thing or not.  We go on watching cooking shows every Saturday morning never even considering how old the show might be.  It doesn’t matter if it was taped in 1967, 1987, or 2007.  Cooking doesn’t change much.  With cooking shows because the hosts are usually wearing aprons, you don’t even have the cues of fashion to narrow things down to a decade.  (Now in the real, real old ones the hair can still give it away and that rarely leaves you muttering “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”)  (The hair, that is.)

But they still make a few like our girl Julia.  You can probably still catch the shows with Julia and Jacques Pepin (who is a very youthful and quite alive 76) and would wonder who will out-compliment the other.  Now there are two people on television who you wish could come out of that box and make us dinner.  But we think we’d like them to do it one at a time.  We can double our pleasure that way.  

John Folse (a veritable television child at 66) could make us dinner also.   His choice of protein might be a bit unusual.  Not often do you see a television chef make goose cacciatore or squirrel with pan gravy but he does and does it in a manner that leaves you wondering “I bet that’s even good with plain old chicken.” 

John’s twists on the prizes of Louisiana leave us thinking a bit of Justin Wilson but with a more understandable accent.  There wasn’t a crawfish that Justin Wilson didn’t like and even though we aren’t sure if we like them, how could you turn down dinner and a show when the show comes in the form of the stories that made Chef Wilson the “Louisiana Original.”  You’ll still see Justin on U-Tube and hear him on radio and he would be closing in on 99 if he was still around to close in on anything.

There are some younger television chefs – yep, even younger than 60! – who we wouldn’t mind if they pulled into our driveways, knocked on the front doors, and greeted us with “Dinner’s on me tonight.”  But we’ll wait a few years before we reveal them.  There’s not as much fun in it if you can’t ask, “isn’t he dead yet?”

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?