mashed potato time

Mrs. Pincus and I had Thanksgiving dinner at our son's house this year. This has all the makings of an annual tradition, as this is the third consecutive year that we have had the holiday dinner there. As plans were beginning to be made, my son's girlfriend requested mashed potatoes as a side dish. My wife usually takes care of preparing and bringing dessert, but this time she happily volunteered to fulfill the mashed potatoes request, as well.

In past years, mashed potatoes were a cinch. Just pop open a box of instant mashed potatoes — readily available at any and all supermarkets in a variety of brands and flavors (well, all are basically "potato" flavor) —  add in some milk and, after just a few minutes of stirring — voila! — you got yourself some mashed potatoes! However, the request for mashed potatoes came with the stipulation that they be actual, real-live mashed potatoes. Like from actual whole potatoes. So, on our weekend shopping trip to stock up on required items for our Night Before Thanksgiving dessert party (now in its 40th year!), we grabbed a big bag of potatoes. Like actual, from the ground potatoes. And we were going to make us some good old fashioned mashed potatoes. Just like the pilgrims and the pioneers and our mothers made! Those cardboard boxes of  dehydrated flakes would be passed over in favor of the "Real McCoy" or the "Real McPotato," as the case may be.

Now, I will happily admit that I don't know the first thing about cooking. I can make toast — that requires a legitimate kitchen appliance, so, in my opinion, that may count as cooking. But anything that takes place on top of the stove and combines multiple ingredients in some type of pot or pan... well, that's out of my wheelhouse. My lack of cooking skills considered, Mrs. Pincus would be preparing the mashed potatoes for our Thanksgiving dinner. First, she peeled a generous amount of potatoes. Then she put the potatoes in a large pot on top of one of the lit burners on our stove top. (The pot was larger than the one I had previously used to make hard-boiled eggs. Hey! Wait a second! Maybe I do know how to cook.... a little!) To be honest, I got bored. I left the kitchen briefly and missed out on what actually took place with the potatoes and the pot and the flame from the stove. I returned to the kitchen to find my wife working the soft, now-boiled, potatoes in the pot. She asked me to "google" a recipe for mashed potatoes to see what other ingredients were to be added. I said, "Why do you need a recipe? Everything you need to know is right in the name! Mashed potatoes! It's right there!"  She gave me a look as she added a few pats of margarine and a splash or two of almond milk. (The potatoes had to remain vegan-friendly.) She continued chopping and mixing... and  mashing. It looked like fun and something I could probably do without risk of ruining them. 

Our kitchen has a lot of gadgets and implements and such, but, curiously, we do not own a proper "potato masher." Instead, Mrs. P was breaking down the boiled tubers with a metal spatula, using its long blade to cut the bulky potatoes into smaller pieces. And it seemed to be working. Very well, as a matter of fact! I wanted in! I gently took the spatula from my wife's hand and began to mimic the chopping motions I had observed. "Are you sure you want to do this?," Mrs. P asked. "Sure!," I replied with all the confidence of a contestant on Chopped who fancies himself the greatest chef in the world. I continued the task of breaking those big potatoes in to small potato pieces. 

After a long period of time — longer than I expected (a time frame based on nothing in particular) — these mashed potatoes looked like the mashed potatoes I had seen over the years. They looked like the ones my mom made often to please my demanding "meat and potatoes" father. They looked like the ones I never ate but was forced to order in restaurants when my dinner order came with my choice of two vegetables and "French fries" was not an option. Goddamn it! They looked like mashed potatoes!

We began to pack up everything we would need to take to my son's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was decided that the mashed potatoes would make their debut in the very same pot they were prepared in. This way they could just be heated up on his stove. 

The table was set at my son's house and he was busy in the kitchen making last minute preparations. He brought every component of the meal to the table, except the pot of Pincus-style mashed potatoes, which he left on the store. Everyone would have to scoop them from the pot themselves, as his dining room table was now fully loaded with other items. There was just no room for a giant pot of potatoes. Everyone's plate accommodated a big slice of "turkey," (Three of the four people at dinner were vegetarians, so Tofurky was served as the main course. None of your fucking comments, please.) some homemade cranberry sauce (a Mrs. Pincus specialty), a chunk of pumpkin cornbread (provided by my son's girlfriend) and not one.... not two.... but three kinds of potatoes! That's right! Our first attempt at mashed potatoes faced competition from canned sweet potatoes (not yams! do not call them "yams!") and little roasted fingerlings that I thought, at first glimpse, were mushroom caps.

Everything was great! I even had seconds — an entire duplicate of my first plate. And the mashed potatoes? Well, they were eaten. With little to no fanfare. No one said: "Hey! These are the best mashed potatoes I ever had! And they are mashed so well, too!" They mostly just said: "Please pass the potatoes" because there were so many to pass.

A few years ago, I had a job interview for a position of writing a blog for a pharmaceutical company. I am not now, nor have I even been, a professional writer. But I told them, if given enough information, I think I could write a blog about anything. I told them that I had maintained two personal blogs for over ten years and had written about many topics. At the time of the interview, I had just written a lengthy post about hard-boiled eggs. And now I just wrote nine paragraphs about mashed potatoes. Needless to say, I didn't get that job. 

But I can boil eggs and, now, I can make mashed potatoes.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

beyond belief

This morning, I was watching a show on the Food Network about (surprise!) food. Specifically, it was a showcase of Southern restaurants, each offering a signature meat dish. During one restaurant's profile, a chef explained that their meat comes from a local farm where the animals are raised humanely and treated with respect. In reality, of course they are. While those cows and little lammies are alive, they may very well be allowed to scamper through a sun-dabbled meadow. They may be fed the highest quality corn and other vitamin-rich nutrients, but — when it comes down to it — they are still bashed between the eyes with a sledgehammer or have their jugular slit and eventually their flanks will wind up breaded, fired or seared on a plate alongside some house made mac and cheese and some chichi sauce. "Humanely-raised" is a euphemistic term that carnivores uses to make themselves feel better about eating domesticated animals.

That said, I have been a vegetarian for almost twenty years. Before I decided to eliminate meat from my diet, I ate a lot of meat. Especially hamburgers. I loved hamburgers. I ate hamburgers my mom made. I ate hamburgers in diners (gingerly picking off the tomatoes and slipping them on to my mom's plate). I ate hamburgers in fast-food restaurants (always careful to ensure that my burger was tomato-free. Why didn't I exercise the same precautions in diners? I don't know. Perhaps I was intimidated by the stone-faced waitresses that called me "hon."). To be honest, there were some kinds of meat I did not like. I didn't care for steak or roast beef, but boy! did I like hamburgers. In 2006, in a decision formed as a testament to my own integrity, I decided to — once and for all — cut meat out of my diet. (The stupid story about how and, more importantly, why I became a vegetarian can be found HERE.) 

In full disclosure, I am not a vegan. Actually, in the eyes of some vegetarians, I'm not even a true vegetarian. I am a pescatarian, because I will eat fish. But, in keeping with the ultra-contradictory Josh Pincus brand, I don't eat all kinds of fish. I eat tuna and salmon and....that's about it. I like sushi, but only certain kinds of sushi. And I will not eat shellfish. I eat dairy products and eggs, so vegans still look at me with judgmental scorn (but so do a lot of people). As far as I'm concerned, I'm a vegetarian. So there.

Over the years, the folks who process food have been working diligently to create meatless versions of meat. These products are — inexplicably — directed at vegetarians. The food "powers that be" think that vegetarians secretly want to eat meat but, for ethical beliefs, they do not. Do all vegetarians harbor a dirty little secret about their desire to consume meat? Probably not. Do I? Maybe a little. My wife still eats meat and sometimes our dinners consist of two completely different meals. When we decide on "cold cuts" for dinner, Mrs P will purchase a package of turkey or corned beef from the kosher section of our local supermarket, while I opt for a vacuumed-sealed slab of slightly tan soy-based pseudo-turkey slices that don't taste anything remotely like turkey. They are good and I will eat them, but turkey aficionados (if that's a thing) would not be fooled... or amused. 

Fake meat food technology experienced major advancements within the past several years. It seems a special gene or molecule or some other science-y thing has been isolated. This gene — if you will — is the element that makes meat taste like meat. It's been processed and synthesized and if I actually understood the procedure, I'd be a food researcher instead of a mediocre blogger. The result, after countless trial-and-error experimentation, is a plant-based, meatless burger that actually looks, cooks and tastes like meat. When Mrs. P and I were first married, she made dinner for my parents — her new in-laws. She made spaghetti and "meatballs." The "meatballs" were actually a tofu-based concoction so as to allow cheese and butter to be served in our kosher-observant home. (Google the laws of kashrut, for a wild read.) At the conclusion of the meal, my father — a butcher by trade — complemented my wife and pushed his plate away. The five or six "meatballs were neatly lined up around the edge of his sauce-stained, otherwise empty, plate. Today, however, I would defy any meat eater (even my father) to tell the difference between the new crop of "burgers" from Beyond Meat® and Impossible® and the Real McCow... er... McCoy.

The first time I tried Beyond Burgers® was at my brother-in-law's house (not that brother-in-law, the other one). My brother-in-law, a vegetarian for as long as I can remember, invited us for dinner and, when we arrived, he was frying up some very suspicious looking burgers in his kitchen. I asked him if he finally abandoned the vegetarian lifestyle for "the dark side." He laughed and handed me the opened package of Beyond Burgers®. Seeing those thick, juicy patties sizzling in the pan made me very leery. Biting into one on a Kaiser roll and accented with ketchup, mustard, pickles and such... well, I wasn't convinced that this wasn't meat. As a matter of fact, every time my wife makes Beyond Burgers®, I stare at those patties sizzling away and I say: "Those are soooooo meat."

We have purchased and eaten Beyond Burgers®. They are good. They are very good. They have introduced other plant-based, meat-free, meat-mimicking products, including breakfast sausages, meatballs and little cut-up nuggets that my wife has prepared in a version of the renowned Philly cheesesteak. Recently, after seeing this option on a few different cooking shows, I have requested a fried egg to be added as the crowning glory of my Beyond Burger®. I know people have been doing this for years on their hamburgers. It seemed interesting and I have always been an adventurous eater. In my meat-eating days, I have sampled alligator, conch and buffalo. I have eaten eggs in many forms, so why not add one to a burger. Oh my gosh! It was sloppily delicious, adding a new flavor combination to a tried and true favorite. (I have to stop watching the Food Network. I'm beginning to sound like them!) Now, I can't imagine having a burger without a fried egg.

As long as Beyond Burgers® exist and fried eggs are plentiful, I don't see myself lapsing back into the ranks of carnivores any time soon.

Please... don't make me turn off commenting.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

overnight sensation

I have always liked oatmeal. Yeah, I know… most kids didn’t. Most kids were forced to eat oatmeal. “Eat it!,” Mother would jeer through clenched teeth, “It’s good for you!” Well, that’s all a kid needed to hear… that something was good for them! They would instantly balk and frown and turn their noses up at it. But not me. I liked oatmeal and I remember that my mom cooked it – yes! actually, cooked it in a pot on the stove – on random weekend mornings. 

Comedian Shelley Berman did a routine about finding a black speck of something in a glass of milk. In this particular routine, he alluded to oatmeal just being comprised entirely of black specks, therefore he avoided it. Character actor Jack Gilford would put his trademarked “rubber face” to use in his impression of a pot of oatmeal boiling on the stove – blinking his eyes, puffing out his cheeks and opening and closing his mouth to simulate the surface activity of cooking the breakfast staple. Both of these comedy bits made me laugh, probably because I liked oatmeal… and probably because they were funny. 

 

When instant oatmeal was introduced, I was able to make it myself. I’d fill our tea kettle with water, flick on the burner. In a few minutes, the built-in whistle would alert me that the water within was boiled and ready to add to an envelope of instant oatmeal. I had breakfast and my mom was able to sleep a bit longer on a weekend morning. 

I have always enjoyed all-you-can eat buffets, especially breakfast buffets, usually experienced in a hotel lobby after a one-night stay while driving from Philadelphia to Florida. Larger, more expansive breakfast buffets were availed on the many cruises I have taken with my wife. The buffet is my favorite part of cruising, the breakfast buffet especially. The choices are nearly endless, with large platters of scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles, hash brown potatoes, along with various meat options for the carnivores. Somewhere among the breakfast offerings is a selection of hot cereals, each in a shiny metal cylinder with a long-handled ladle at the ready. There’s always oatmeal, as well as cream of wheat (another of my favorites) and grits (a Southern corn-based specialty that I have enjoyed from time to time). I usually supplement my overly-laden breakfast plate with a bowl of oatmeal topped with a helping of brown sugar… eating it as sort of an appetizer to my cruise buffet breakfast mish-mash. 

Every so often, my dear Mrs. P will break out a pot and a cook oatmeal for the two of us, stirring up memories of when we were still kids in our respective kitchens or sailing on a giant ship in the middle of who-knows-where. 

Game changer.

If you are a regular reader of this blog (if it even has regular readers) or if you know me IRL (as the kids say), you probably are familiar with my disdain – that’s right! seething disdain! – for the overuse of the mawkish superlatives that have overrun our everyday conversation, specifically in our collective online personas. Words like “amazing” and “game-changer,” and their regular misuse, make me cringe. I have often railed against the use of the word “amazing” applied to situations that are clearly not amazing. Your kid passing a spelling test is not amazing. No one has ever prepared and consumed a grilled cheese sandwich or a piece of cake that was amazing. There has never been a movie or television show or concert or any other form of entertainment that was amazing. However, on the off-chance that there was one of these that could possibly qualify as “amazing,” chances are you didn’t see it and you didn’t witness eight of them… in the same week. Sure, there have been good food and good movies and good performances in academics, but “amazing?” Come on… Organ transplants are amazing. Discovering a cure for polio is amazing. Sending astronauts to work and live on a space station floating somewhere way up in the sky is amazing. The fiftieth steak that some French guy cooked in a restaurant…. Amazing? Really?

Do you want to know what a “game-changer” is? The shot clock in basketball. In 2018, the NBA implemented the 24-second shot clock and that changed the game. In 2022, Major League baseball decided, in an effort to speed up boring baseball games, to start each half-extra inning, after the regulation nine have been played to a tie score, with an automatic runner in scoring position on second base. Just this season, a regimented pitch clock has been installed to force pitchers to stop fucking around on the mound and throw the goddamn ball already. Those are game changers. You know what’s not a “game-changer?” Putting salt on caramel or adding a rinse aid to your dishwasher. 

I’m not sure when I first heard about it, but I have become aware of a thing called “overnight oats.” Now, I don’t profess to be a chef of any sorts, but the concept of “overnight oats” sounded pretty simple. Just follow the recommended quantities for cooking oatmeal, but instead of combining everything in a pot on the stove, you just mix it all up in a bowl, cover it and stick it in the refrigerator for – guess how long? That’s correct! Overnight! When you wake up, you can be treated to a healthy, filling nutritious breakfast… that is, if you don’t mind cold oatmeal. (Some recipes do suggest heating the concoction up in the microwave, but the general consensus of folks who have jumped on the “overnight oats” train eat it cold.) 

I have seen a number of online posts singing the praises of overnight oats. People have labeled overnight oats “game changers” and “amazing.” Closer to real life, one of the more vocal advocates of overnight oats is my brother-in-law (no, not that one, the other one). A self-proclaimed authority on pretty much everything, he has been making overnight oats for quite some time. He has told Mrs. Pincus (his sister) how “amazing” overnight oats are and how she and I should try its magical properties ourselves. He has not recommended this to me directly since I have not personally spoken a word to him in over a decade. (And that, my friend, is a story for another blog post!) Nevertheless, always looking for another option for breakfast, I decided to give overnight oats a shot. 

...and liddle lamzy divey

On a recent Sunday evening, I prepared a lidded Tupperware bowl with a cup of dry oats, a cup of almond milk and the amount of brown sugar I would normally add to a bowl of hot oatmeal. I thoroughly mixed the ingredients together and snapped the lid shut. I found a little spot in the refrigerator in which the mixture could congeal or ferment or do whatever it is that takes place over eight hours in cold confines. A few recipes proposed adding peanut butter, jelly, nuts, chia seeds (ch-ch-ch-CHIA!) or other enhancements, but I stuck with what I was used to for my initial run. I closed the refrigerator door. Technically, I was cooking. 

My alarm went off on Monday morning and I hopped out of bed at 5:30 with the start of another work week ahead of me. I went downstairs to the kitchen and flicked on the Keurig coffee maker. But, instead of removing a bowl from the cabinet above the sink and filling it with Honey Nut Cheerios like I have done a zillion times before, I went to the refrigerator to get, what I anticipated would be, a brand-new revelation in breakfast at the Pincus house. 

The bowl was right where I left it, on the shelf in the refrigerator. I popped open the lid. No elves had come to dance and sprinkle their magic. No visible chemical reaction had taken place. The oatmeal appeared to be oatmeal. Cold, but still oatmeal. I made a cup of coffee and took my breakfast upstairs to watch the remaining minutes of a fifty-plus year old episode of Dragnet and an older one of My Three Sons before leaving for work. 

Before scooping up the inaugural first taste, I stirred the thick mélange to reincorporate the components. I dunked my spoon below the lumpy surface and brought up a generous helping of overnight oats… and into my mouth it went. 

It was cold. 

 

And bland. 

And it had a weird texture and, to steal a phrase from many a program on The Food Network, it had an unappealing mouth feel. 

It tasted like cold oatmeal. Like oatmeal I had made and forgotten about. 

A dramatization.

Mrs. Pincus always says that I’m a “good sport.” I will do things I don’t really care to do. I will go to places I don’t really care to go to and I will eat things I don’t really care to eat. And I will not complain about it. Well…. Maybe I’ll complain about it a little. (Does writing a lengthy blog count as a “complaint?”) I ate the entire bowl of overnight oats. It was not good. I did not enjoy it. I ate it knowing that it would not be the last meal I would ever eat. With each bite, I swigged some coffee to mask the unpleasant taste until the bowl was empty. 

On Tuesday, I had a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. Overnight oats will not darken my refrigerator ever again. 

My game was not changed, nor was I amazed. 

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

the heat is on

For the past 40+ years that I have worked in some sort of office, my co-workers — for some unknown reason — have been positively fascinated by what I eat.... or, in actuality, what I don't eat.

I was never much of a regularly-scheduled eater. For years, I skipped breakfast at home, in favor of stopping somewhere for a cup of coffee and a doughnut on my way in to work. I am admittedly, a very hard and dedicated worker, so putting the brakes on my typical workday momentum was something I just did not do. While the majority of my co-workers began to prepare for their lunch around 11:00 AM, I continued to work, with the intention of stopping at 5. Sometimes I would have a soda or a cup of coffee from the office community coffee pot. In my younger days, I would have a bag of M & Ms, a Snickers bar or something equally as "no-good for you" to tide me over in the afternoon. But a full meal? No, thank you. Not for me.

So, job after job (and there have been many), a "lunch break" was something very different for me. It was a time that I had a communal office to myself. And it was great! My work output increased in that hour because I was uninterrupted by meaningless, un-work-related office chit-chat. However, sometime in the 90s, I entered the real live corporate world when I began working for a legal publisher. This was a larger company with offices across several states. There were rules and decorum and multi-level management and an actual room that was dedicated to eating lunch.... the likes of which I had not seen since high school. There was a large commercial refrigerator where employees could store their lunches until the time came to eat. There was a microwave and a couple of vending machines and it looked just like the office lunch rooms I saw on TV. After I made friends with a few co-workers, I began the heretofore foreign practice of joining them for lunch. I, of course, would not eat lunch, but I would sit at a table while other people ate their lunches. Some would bring elaborate concoctions wrapped in foil or Tupperware. Some would bring a typical bagged affair with a sandwich and other accompaniments, just like they were in elementary school. I was always questioned about my lack of lunch, with someone usually offering to share. I would always decline. I don't like eating a full meal during the day. It makes me sleepy and unproductive. However, it makes other people very uncomfortable. One day, at this particular job, I saw a Post-it note stuck to the refrigerator door. It read: "To whoever ate my turkey sandwich: It wasn't yours and you know it! How could you just eat someone else's sandwich? That was a pretty rotten thing to do!" I read the note. I smiled to myself, Then I extracted a pen from my pocket and wrote at the bottom: "Needed more mayo." Just because I don't eat lunch, doesn't stop me from being a smart-ass.

At another job — at an even bigger company — there was a huge cafeteria for the employees. This was a full-service restaurant with a quick-serve area and another section that served a selection full-course platters. In the middle of the workday, there were people eating giant grilled steaks with baked potatoes and green beans. I still joined my co-workers, marveling at their midday fare and still being questioned by my lack of eating.

As I got older, I developed hypertension, better known as high blood pressure. I also began a propensity to pass out, in an occurrence known as "vasovagal syncope." Under a doctor's recommendation, I was told to begin a regular eating regimen. So, now I eat breakfast every morning and I began eating lunch on a daily basis. Prior to this diagnosis, I had adopted a vegetarian diet. So, while my co-workers were chowing down on hamburgers and meat-filled hoagies, I was purchasing a grilled tofu sandwich on seven-grain bread. Trying to remain inconspicuous among my carnivorous co-workers proved difficult. "What's that?," they'd inquire, pointing an accusatory finger just inches from my sandwich — sometimes as it was going into my mouth. When I explained what I was eating, I was usually met with "Oh, what's it taste like?" or, more frequently, "EWWWWWWW!" I'm not sure who taught these people manners. It was instilled in me, by my mother, to be polite and never ever make derogatory comments about food that someone was about to eat. We all have different preferences. These particular co-workers had never met my mom.

After a while, once I got my blood pressure under control, I reverted back to my old habits. While I still eat a bowl of cereal every morning, I, once again, have given up on lunch. My co-workers, of course, have not. And — boy! — do they bring weird shit with them to work to eat later in the day... with no regard to how it may smell, either in the refrigerator, while it is being reheated or in their office while it's being consumed. One co-worker would regularly bring in leftover fresh fish and stick it in the community microwave, befouling the air on the entire 36th floor and rendering the microwave useless for anyone innocently heating a Lean Cuisine following her. Once, the same co-worker cut open a durian on her desk. The durian, a Southeast Asian fruit, emits the overpowering scent of death when cut. Decidedly not the ideal food to eat when proper ventilation is not readily available.

At my current job, one I am happy to have in the wake of the recent worldwide pandemic, my work desk is in a large room that also serves as the department "food prep" area. About six or so feet away from my desk is a table with a toaster oven, a small microwave and a wire rack with napkins, paper towel, plastic utensils and a collection of condiment packets absconded from various area fast food outlets. Every morning, my current co-workers file in — one at a time — and pop something in the microwave. Every afternoon, the same folks come in and pop something (something different, I assume) into the microwave. However, no matter what time of day it is, everything that cooks in that microwave smells like old, over-seasoned soup. I can distinctly smell rendered fat and spices heating rapidly. The aroma hangs in the poor ventilation for sometime after the offending food is removed from the oven. Once, some asked me: "Don't you get hungry from everybody heating up their food in here?" "No," I answered, "No I don't." 

Every so often, some supplier or client will buy a bunch of pizzas for the employees at work. My boss, a nice guy around my son's age, informs me of the availability of "free pizza." I politely thank him, yet I do not move from my desk. After a few times that pizzas were supplied for lunch, he stopped informing me. Aside from the fact that I don't eat during the day, the thought of my co-workers fingering and poking and prodding every pizza sounds so unappetizing, it turns my stomach. I wouldn't eat it anyway.

I know I am in the overwhelming minority. I don't like to eat at work during the day. I just don't understand why anybody cares?

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

cabbage head

For the past 14 months, we have been ordering and picking up groceries curb-side at our local Walmart on an almost weekly basis.. My "love-hate" relationship with the retail giant is put to the test every single week. Walmart's service and selection are inconsistent — sometimes attentive and vast, other times, lackadaisical and limited. But, their ridiculously low prices are reason enough to continue to put up with the incessant "Walmartness" of the situation.

A few days prior to our scheduled pick-up time, my wife compiles an online shopping list using the handy Walmart phone app. Because we have been eating salads for dinner for the last two years, our weekly order doesn't change much. It includes a number of fresh vegetables and some jarred accouterments (like roasted red peppers and bread & butter pickles), as well as the occasional household item as needed (like lightbulbs or batteries). When our order is ready, my wife guides her car into a designated space in the Walmart parking lot. After identifying herself via the app, an attendant — sometimes masked, sometimes not — opens up the rear hatch of our SUV and loads in the pre-picked and already-bagged items from our order. Wanting to avoid any unnecessary social contact, we wait until we get home to check the accuracy of the order... and, invariably, something is wrong. At least Walmart is consistent in that respect. In various weeks gone by, they have given us four 15 ounce cans of Mandarin oranges to make up for a single 29 ounce can they did not have. (Math is not my forte, but... come on!) Another time, they substituted jalapeno peppers for out-of-stock radishes. Despite their mistakes, our receipts reflect the price of the original items, so we actually come out ahead. And, to a company the size of Walmart, I hardly think they care

Just this week, Walmart continued their streak of getting at least one item wrong, but this time.... well... things had a surprisingly pleasant outcome. 

I'm not sure if the person who brings the bags out to our car is the same person who actually roams the aisles and picks the stuff off the shelves. Whatever the case, this week's picker didn't know the difference between a head of lettuce and a head of cabbage. Apparently, anything large, round, green and leafy qualified as "lettuce." Lucky for us, watermelons or rubber playground balls don't have leaves. When we arrived home, I was confused when I extracted three huge, solid heads of cabbage from a bag... panicking when I discovered that our order did not include lettuce. Making a salad for our dinner would be difficult without lettuce. My wife made a quick phone call to her parents (who live around the corner from us). They were able to spare a slightly brown, slightly hacked-apart partial head of lettuce for our nightly salad until an emergency supermarket trip the next day could replenish our supply.

But, what were we supposed to do with all that cabbage?

Mrs. Pincus is a phenomenal (phenomenal, I tell you!) baker, as testimony from the numerous beneficiaries of our annual "Night Before Thanksgiving" dessert party will affirm. But, cooking... well, she will be the first to admit that she does not enjoy actual cooking. Y'know... like meals. As the recipient of over 36 years of my wife's cooking, I will heartily disagree with her assessment of her cooking ability. She may not like cooking, but she is a pretty good cook. Recently, in an effort to inject a little variety into our daily "salad, baked potato and vegetable" dinners, Mrs. Pincus had introduced steamed broccoli, steamed cauliflower (awakening my heretofore unknown affinity for cauliflower) and grilled asparagus. With the recent purchase of an air fryer, experimentation had yielded crispy potatoes — both sweet and white — panko-encrusted mushrooms and eggplant (another previously sworn-off vegetable that I am just now enjoying) and even battered fish filets. But cabbage? What to do with all that cabbage?

After staring at those three giant heads of Brassica oleracea for a good long time, Mrs. P fetched a large pan from our kitchen cabinet. She requested the cooking oil from the pantry and I obliged. Suddenly, she sprang to animated life. With knife in hand and cutting board at the ready, Mrs. P sliced strip after strip of cabbage from one of the heads, her head down, carefully monitoring her precision  and uniformity. Without looking up, she asked for an onion. Assuming my role as the new sous chef, I grabbed a medium-sized onion from a previous order that Walmart had gotten right. Mrs. P moved the pile of shredded cabbage aside and cut up the onion, adding the pieces to the oil simmering in the pan on the stove. To the onion, she added chopped garlic — our newly-discovered flavor enhancer — followed by the cabbage. She topped it all off with some shredded carrots and a sprinkle or two of sesame seeds (previously reserved to line the crust of our homemade pizza). 

"What exactly are you making?," I cautiously asked.

"I'm not sure yet.," Mrs. P replied with a smile. She pulled out a package of DynaSea mock shrimp* that had been defrosting in our refrigerator and released its vacuum seal with a flick of her knife. She dumped the contents of the package — eight pink and plump little "shrimps" — into another pan, where they were now glistening in some sizzling oil and chopped garlic. Then, she switched on a third burner (I didn't even know you could light three at one time!) and got a small pot of quinoa going. Along with the simmering cabbage and the simmering "shrimp," Mrs. Pincus was on fire! "Doesn't enjoy cooking?" Yeah... right!

We began making our standard dinner salads, just like we've been doing every night forever. As I doused mine with dressing, Mrs. P began the "plating" process, as though she was winding down her second round of Chopped and was confidently about to dash the dreams some line cook from the most exclusive restaurant in Pierre, South Dakota. She layered two bowls — first with perfectly cooked quinoa, then the translucent cabbage-onion-carrot-garlic creation. She topped each steaming bowl with four braised "shrimp" and some of the little charred pieces of garlic.

You can't believe how good it was! Well, I'll tell you... it was so good, that two nights later we made some more. And the night after that, Mrs. P started making a variation on a theme. We skipped the fake shrimp and added green peppers. I spiced mine up with a couple of shots of sriracha and soy sauce. Oh my goodness! — I began to have visions of opening up a food truck or selling this stuff from our back porch. I was already devising the "bill of fare" in my head. We could sell this stir-fried cabbage dish and some delicious baked goods.... and maybe my mom's iced tea. I can make that. Depending on what Walmart mistakenly adds to our order next week, some new items could be popping up on our menu.

Hey! When did this become a cooking blog?

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

*a seafood product made from pollock, shaped and seasoned to resemble shrimp, specially made for those members of society who observe the laws of kashrut [keeping kosher]. I have not eaten actual shrimp in over 40 years, so I can't determine how close they got, but it is pretty tasty.

i am the eggman

A little over a year ago, Mrs. Pincus and I decided that it was time to stop eating like ten-year-olds at a birthday party and start eating like adults. We eliminated all sweets and desserts and began a self-imposed diet regimen centering around a large salad for dinner. 

This is a stock photo.

Each evening, we stand side-by-side at our kitchen counter and prepare our leafy evening meals together. We each have our specific jobs in the preparation. I extract the various components from the different storage areas of our refrigerator and place them on our kitchen counter. Our fridge is regular stocked with fresh salad ingredients like lettuce, red cabbage and scallions (or green onions — the jury is out on which of those we actually use). I pile the items on the counter and Mrs. P chops them or slices them or slides them into a blade on a mini-mandoline slicer — whichever utensil or portioning method is appropriate for the particular element. While my wife adds things to her salad that I would never eat in a million years — like cucumbers and tomatoes — I begin my own customization process. I add jalapeno peppers, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers and bread & butter pickles (that's right, I like pickles on my salad! You wanna make something of it?). It is also my unofficial job to open a can of salmon for each of us. We have gotten used to including salmon on our salads and the salads seem incomplete without it. Sometimes, Mrs. P  makes fresh salmon and, believe me, it is much better than the canned stuff. Once topped with our personal choice of dressing (low-fat thousand island for Mrs. P and whatever is in the refrigerator for me), we accompany our salads with a baked potato and another fresh vegetable (usually broccoli or my new-found favorite cauliflower) and we're all set. We have been eating the nearly-identical dinner every night since February 2019 and we haven't tired of it yet. As a matter of fact, almost every night, one of us will remark how good the salad is and marvel at how it can be so delicious night after night.

Just for the sake of variety, we switch things up every so often. Instead of a baked potato, we will have a bowl of pasta made from shirataki, a Japanese vegetable. Or sometimes, we have a bowl of soup and Mrs. P will sauté a bunch of peppers, onions and mushrooms in garlic and oil for something she likes to call "Peppers, Mushrooms and Onions in Garlic." (Although it plays an integral part in the recipe, the oil is unjustly left out of the name of the dish.) We also look for other things to add to the salad. We have tried sun-dried tomatoes and French-fried onions. More recently, sliced hard-boiled eggs have become a regular part of our salads and I have become quite the hard-boiled egg aficionado. (Yes, it has been added to my resume just under my skills with PowerPoint.)

This is a stock photo.

Once a week, I dutifully fill an enamel pot (my wife showed me where we keep it) with water from the tap, just enough to cover a single level of eggs that will be placed at the bottom. I place the pot on the stove and turn on the flame, just like Mrs. P showed me. (I am not exactly Mr. Kitchen, so I appreciate the guidance.) Then I carefully add the eggs to the pot of water. I inspect each one for cracks before placing it in the water, sometimes turning them over several times and even holding them up to the light. Then, I wait until the water boils. When it does, I kill the heat, put a lid on the pot and I'm done.... until my favorite part.

Peeling off the shells.

This is also a stock photo.

I don't know exactly what it is, but I find peeling the shells from hard-boiled eggs very therapeutic. At first, it was sort of a challenge. I found myself pulling small chunks of the hardened albumen away with the tiny fragments of shell. I realized that there was a thin, almost invisible membrane that is between the shell and the egg white. I had to remove that membrane as well as the shell in order to keep the white in tact. After a while, I discovered different techniques with which to successfully remove the shell and be left with a perfectly smooth hard-boiled egg. I even watched a few YouTube videos showing several vastly different methods to attain the ultimate goal of the unblemished egg white. Some prescribed adding the eggs to already boiling water. This, as the video claimed, would prevent the membrane from creating a strong bond to the solidifying egg. Another suggested peeling the egg under running water or — better yet — submerged in water. I read an article on the internet about the subject (this is what my life has come to), including one that insisted on chipping away a quarter-sized opening in the shell on the wide end of the egg, then forcing a metal teaspoon into the opening and rotating it around the circumference of the egg. The promise being that  this action would force the membrane to separate and the hard-boiled innards would just pop out with no resistance. This has yet to be tried by me. There are other procedures that include adding vinegar or salt to the boiling water, but I think I will pass on those.

This is why I use stock photos.

I have found a technique that works well, using a little bit of several of the techniques I learned. I peel the eggs over the sink with a constant, fairly forceful stream of cold water running from the tap. I crack the egg fully on the edge of the sink and roll it around until the entire outer surface is covered with a spiderweb pattern of fractures. Then, it seems, that the shell is easily removed and the egg is left glistening, its exterior uncompromised.

So, what have we learned? Well, we learned that I have an awful lot of free time on my hands and that, given the opportunity, I can write four full paragraphs about hard-boiled eggs.

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