Food In The Fort

Recently, Leo and I have had two very good dinners which were easy to assemble (one was especially easy for me since Leo made it by himself!) yet not the usual heat-and-eat fare that we often resort to on week nights. These meals left us asking, “Why don’t we do this more often?” To which I respond, “Cuz we’re stupid.”

Anyway, dear reader, I’m sure that you’re not stupid and you’ll want to make this recipe and Leo’s hearty crockpot fish stew over and over again. We love this shrimp dish (from the Thai: Simple and Delicious Easy-to-Make Recipes book by Lesley Mackley) for its sweet and spicy sauce and because one out of two children at my house will eat it. You can put it over 1-2-3-4 Rice or just serve it with instant rice or bread. Read the rest of this entry »

The upgrade of Food In The Fort from WordPress 2.3.3 to WordPress 2.6.2, including the Freshy 2 theme and all plugins (at least those I planned on upgrading) is now complete. Overall, this was a pretty smooth upgrade. Not at all as nightmarish as some of the Drupal upgrades I’ve done. There were a couple of problems which I’ll note below, and there’s some further backend stuff I want to do, but for now I’m calling it quits.

The first problem of note is that the WP-Print plugin is not displaying the little “print me” printer icon anymore although it upgraded successfully. If I recall correctly, when I first installed this plugin I had to make a small modification to the Freshy 2 theme in order to get it to work correctly so tomorrow or sometime soon I’ll go ahead and take a look at that. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to do a long overdue upgrade of Food In The Fort from WordPress 2.3.3 to WordPress 2.6.2 starting now. While FitF should generally remain available, you might expect a good deal of wonky behavior if you visit the site as I’ll be disabling plugins and moving back and forth between the default WordPress theme and the Freshy 2 theme that FitF uses. Hopefully this won’t take too long, and I’ve done a full backup in case of disaster. I’ll post when the upgrade is complete. See you on the flip side.

California Polytechnic State University scientist Raul Cano will go to almost any length to brew the perfect beer, and in this case he’s gone back in time. Well, not quite. Actually, he’s using a strain of yeast out of time.

Cano managed to extract a strain of yeast that has laid dormant for forty-five million years inside a Lebanese weevil trapped inside a piece of Burmese amber. And if that doesn’t peg the needle on your Cool’O'Meter, Cano has also managed to reactivate the yeast and is now brewing barrels of pale ale and German wheat beer. Don’t think that only scientists at California Polytechnic will be able to sample Cano’s pre-historic brew, because you can buy it through Cano’s Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.

“You can always buy brewing yeast, and your product will be based on the brewmaster’s recipes,” said Cano. “Our yeast has a double angle: We have yeast no one else has and our own beer recipes.”

The beer has been receiving good reviews and according to Cano the beer’s unique taste, described as smooth and spicy, is due to the ancient yeast’s ability to only consume a narrow range of sugars. Sadly, right now Fossil Fuels Brewing Company is only distributing the beer to select bars and pubs in the Northern California area. If Catherine and I can manage to get our hands on some, you, our dear readers, will surely be the first to know.

Source: Discovery News.

Oh my! These candies should come with an R rating. What are those fruits doing with that green jelly bean looking creature? Do I even want to know? All I can say is that they certainly look like they’re having fun. Hat tip to Blame It On The Voices.

I don’t like to be a hater, but I’ve got to say that after two attempts at this mix I’m giving up. My theory is that having to bake the crust part first somehow prevents it from joining together harmoniously with the lemony goo, but whatever the science behind it may be, I can’t make it work! I came out with a rock-hard crust and an almost sickeningly sweet lemon custard resting on top of it. And to make matters worse, the lemon stuff hadn’t sufficiently jelled (although I followed the instructions and took it out of the oven when it began to brown on top) – what a mess. My daughter also tried this mix with similarly unsatisfying results. I remember going to her dad’s house, seeing it on the stove and having to ask what it was. Not cool.

As I so often do in times of food crisis, I turned to Diana Rattray of About.com’s southern cooking section for her wisdom. It seems that baking the crust first is standard, although with her addition of two sticks of butter, I’m betting things come out a mite tastier. Here’s how Diana does it.

If you think I’m being too harsh on poor Krusteaz, here’s someone who has a more positive impression.

Have you had any luck with this mix? Am I (and people who share my genetic material) just not cut out for this? Do you have a better lemon bar recipe than either Diana Rattray or Krusteaz? Let us know! Until we’ve been shown the error of our ways, Krusteaz Lemon Bars mix gets a paltry two garlic bulbs (it’d be only one, but hey, at least they taste like lemon).

This is a recipe that Catherine and I are wild about. We positively love the rustic, hearty taste of the fish, mushrooms and potatoes coupled with the creaminess of the evaporated milk, and the spicy kick of the chili powder and ground red pepper. Weekday nights are notoriously hurried and since Catherine often has after-school activities she’s usually starving by the time she gets home. So I like to have something quick, simple and filling ready when she walks in the door so we have more time for talking and cuddling. And this recipe certainly fits the bill. That it should be so delicious just makes this recipe all the more perfect.

In fact, now that I think about it, this may have been the very first meal I ever made for Catherine. I don’t think I’ll forget the look of surprise and delight as she walked in the door and the warm, fishy aroma first hit her, or the look of joy that overtook her face on first tasting it. As I said above, Catherine and I both go nuts for this time-saving stew which leads me to wonder why I waited almost a whole year to make it again.

I mean, really, why don’t we make this more often? It’s so simple to make that you can chop up everything the night before, fry up the bacon and onion the next morning and toss it all in the crockpot before you leave for work. By the time you come home, you’ve got a wonderful, tasty and satisfying home-cooked meal that beats the pants off any pizza. And if you knew how much I love pizza, you’d know how strong of a statement that is.

You’ll want to serve your stew with your favorite cheap beer and a nice crusty bread to sop up the soup left at the bottom of your bowl. Read the rest of this entry »