BS: guess what's coming to dinner?

Subject: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Morticia
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:26 AM

Tonight, on account of my not being arsed to go to the supermarket, we are playing Student Roulette, i.e. I have taken a random bag of frozen something out of the freezer and proposed it for dinner without the first idea of what it is.

I can only tell that it is a yellowy colour and has green flecks in it, that may, or may not,be parsley. Idris reckons it looks like botullism in a baggie but has promised to notify my friends and family should the worst happen.

I know it can't just be me that does this sort of thing ( i.e. not label what went in the freezer) or who have been stewed ants in their time so what have you defrosted or opened on the off chance that it might be edible and what did you find?

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:33 AM

The only help I can offer is to recount the story of a jar of orange juice that was kept in a school locker for about a year. It changed colour, and all sorts of weird things began to happen inside the jar. Things were growing in there. Alien lifeforms. No one dared open it. There it stood, month after month, getting more and more awful looking. People kept stopping by to take a look at it and say "Eeeeew! Gross!". We left it there in the Spring for the custodian to find...

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:41 AM

Once when I was young my siblings and I found an unopened, unlabeled can in the street. We took it home, and Mother put it in the pantry. Some months later, being devoid of ideas for dinner, she decided to play pantry roulette and serve the contents of the can.

It was roofing tar.

We had something else for dinner.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:45 AM

LOL!!!

By God, here's a practical joke for the guys at the canning factory...switch around the labels at random on the canning assembly line so that people get a surprise meal every time! What will it be tonight? Is it chicken soup? Beans? Canned peas? Asparagus? Goulash? Pickled crabs? Artichoke hearts? Contact cement? Duck oil? What will it be this time?

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:47 AM

You ever lived in a household where very young kids took the labels off all of the canned goods?

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:54 AM

I have a secret trick I developed in an effort to prevent exactly the kind of disaster you outline, Morticia. I process all meats as soon as I get home-- cook up the chicken and pork and then freeze it in meal-size wraps. I usually ccok them with just a little pepper and olive oil, so that when I use them I can flavor them any way I like. I learned this from a wonderful Greek cook whose restaurant we regularly visit. Her menu is enormous because all the main ingredients are on hand for her to cook with.

Last night's meal took about 30 minutes to microwave-thaw 3 chicken thighs, pull off the meat, and warm it in a fresh onion/chicken gravy sauce made of the pan juices saved at the time of cooking.

A night or two before, it was pork steaks pre-cooked plain and then frozen pre-slathered with BBQ sauce. I put those up in foil and just chuck 'em in the oven till heated through.

Another trick I learned for thawing things is that if you set the frozen package on top of a flipped-over cast iron frypan, they thaw in about 1/3 the time and keep a nice texture, too. Steaks don't stand pre-cooking very well but I break down the large economy packages into meal-size packs. Sometimes I don't even open the origianl packaging, but just slice through it and toss the resulting portions into a freezer bag.

I usually keep one large bag for pork, one for beef, and one for poultry in the freezer, so I can tell them apart easily.

With this approach I can chuck a couple of baking potatoes or sweet potatoes in the microwave, open a bag of salad, and get it all ready to serve while the meat dish is heating.


Sometimes I thaw the meat to use it, and sometimes I don't-- depends on a number of factors. Also, I know one Mudcatter who repacks whole chickens (minus giblet bundle) and other roasts before she freezes them, and then chucks them in the oven frozen for a nice long cooking.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: JennyO
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:59 AM

Little Hawk's story of the orange juice reminded me of a song by one of our favourite groups, the Shiny Bum Singers, who write and sing Work Songs of the Public Service. This one is from one of their books, The Tiny Shiny Bum Songbook

The Office Fridge

Tune: The Red Flag (O Tannenbaum, O Christmas Tree)

The office fridge is full of slime,
No-one has cleaned it in our time,
The shelves a feast of green and grey -
And what's that lurking in the tray?

Chorus:
So raise the putrid morsel high
To throw it out, or eat and die?
Though gourmets flinch and drinkers sneer,
We'll use our fridge for more than beer.

A squelchy bag of nameless gunk,
A hardened roll falls with a clunk.
A long-lost lunch, its fate is plain,
Let mankind's loss be compost's gain.

Chorus

There is milk but no-one's keen -
Fluorescent pink and lurid green.
A blackened lump, right up the back,
Provides a salmonella snack.

Chorus

The ice amid the freezer's ooze
Is broken glass that once held booze.
A reaching hand, one finger less
The final colour in the mess.

Chorus

Copyright � David Walker, 1999

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Becca72
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:00 PM

My mother's cooking was all the chance I was willing to take at dinner time...

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: SINSULL
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:15 PM

LOL So I've heard!

My mother insisted on saving leftovers - it was a sin to waste food. So after about six months, we would call in Jonas Salk to see if there was anything he could use.

The worst? The day I opened a cardboard Chinese Food container and discovered blood worms in seaweed. My brothers put everything in the fridge.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: MMario
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:23 PM

I have to admit, that though my mother never threw anything out - we didn't have the "science experiments" in the fridge either - because at least once a week we would have either "clean out the icebox meat loaf" or "clean out the ice box soup" - depending on what the major leftovers were....

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:24 PM

Ah, when my brother was a biology major he kept various bits of animals he was dissecting in the freezer. Mother insisted that they be clearly and legibly marked after she opened a package of rat spleens!

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Micca
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:27 PM

Morty, you PROMISED you would never mention the Chili Spagetti that was supposed to be Spag Bolognese!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: MMario
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 12:29 PM

What we aways dreaded was the burlap sack on the porch. My mother would always try to have it out of sight before we got home from school if at all possible, because it meant my Italian grandfather had dropped of something - such as a bushel of starlings, a bag full of eels, or some such...If we spotted it before she cooked it up into something something vagulay resembling food we were likely to not touch ANYTHING for at least several days...

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 01:48 PM

I have a book for you, MMario. I'll dig it out and send the title.

We had the missing label problem every so often when I was a kid, because we used to play with the cans in the cupboards. I think Mom solved this problem by getting a few cans that looked familiar and opening enough till she could make something with them. Her purchases were predictable--canned veggies, tomato sauce, canned soups. She could usually make something from it.

The latest time I got tired of throwing out food I lost track of in the back of the fridge was last summer. I cleaned it out and have simply made a point of doing what MMario described and gone back to having at least one meal a week of leftovers. Whoever is there first gets first choice. When they invented the microwave they gave a whole new outlook to the prospect of leftovers for dinner.

I have frozen garden stuff in the freezer, but it's in quart plastic bags and I can tell what it all is. The frozen cherry tomatoes are just like little marbles!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 02:05 PM

For anyone actually living in a student house,keeping milk in a beaker with a sticker on it clearly stating the date & time the batch was irradiated is a very good way of preventing anyone from just helping themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: frogprince
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 02:13 PM

The neighbor kid down the road from my aunt and uncle dug worms for fishing one day, then had to delay the fishing trip, so put the worms in the refrigerator.
His little brother managed to make a sandwich for himself for the first time.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:06 PM

When he was young (second quarter of the nineteenth century) my grandfather was convinced by his "friends" that eating cooked worms would create big muscles, but it would only work if you rubbed the juices from the cooking onto your biceps. He tried it, once, and then his parents caught him.

No, it doesn't work!

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:16 PM

Mortica,
How was dinner tonight???
See you soon.
Scooby.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: lady penelope
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:54 PM

I once thought I had taken out cream of mushroom soup, only to find it was a snowball Parker had thoughtfully saved for summer time........

How was din dins Morty?

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: MMario
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:57 PM

More importantly - "WHAT" was dinner?

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: gnu
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 04:10 PM

A few years ago, I bought me mum an upright frost free freezer and cleaned out the old one, a massive chest type deep freeze. Found a lot of "stuff", but, the one that struck me most was a frost encrusted package labelled, "Deer steak... save for Gary.", in my father's handwriting. He passed in 1983, so it was at least 20 years old. I pegged it at 24 years old. Yes, I chucked it, but, I kept the label.

Hehehe... even with the new upright, the old girl has already kept stuff beyond being usable. I'd say 20 percent of the contents are bird feed or garbage. And, I have stuff of hers stored in my deep freeze.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 04:37 PM

You know things are getting near the wire in our house when it's 'scrapey stew' - a meal made of all the bits of things I've found that need using up or have been lurking in the back of the freezer for a year or three. Nearly had 'ice cream supreme' one night, but I realised just in time that the lumpy white stuff was ice cream with marshmallows, rather than chicken.....

My parents were also fond of bargains and many's the meal of unknown tins we've had. A way of sorting them is to roll them down a slope. Baked beans will roll haltingly as the semi liquid contents don't rotate. Tinned meat will roll freely as a solid lump.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 05:28 PM

In an ancient time (circa 1952), between the sinking of Atlantis and the rise of Seattle's University District, wa-a-a-a-ay back when I still had hair, I became acquainted with a group of people who lived, or at least frequented, a very large, very old house on 15^th Avenue N. E., right across for the University of Washington campus. One of these was a fellow named Ric Higlin. Another was a name familiar to many Mudcatters:   Sandy Paton. This was before he picked up his guitar case, hung his thumb out, and headed East. Who all lived there, I'm not sure, because, as I said, there was a great deal of coming to and fro. There was Dick Landberg, Pat Cassidy, the sisters Liz and Freddy (Alfreda).   Plus a few others. Freddy and Ric soon married. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes people actually did that back then. From time to time, Walt Robertson lived at this house as well, and in October of 1954, Pete Seeger stayed there for a couple of nights.

Not everyone there was into folk music, but there was a fair amount of guitar picking and folk song singing going on there. This was well before the Kinston Trio had even met, and Bob Dylan was probably still in rompers. Most people had copies of Lomax's Folk Song U. S. A. and Sandburg's American Song Bag. Leadbelly was big. There were also a few records around (10" LPs) of Susan Reed, Burl Ives, Cynthia Gooding, a very few others. . . .

Those who lived at this domicile, those who visited there, and those who just generally hung out there, referred to the place as "Cockroach Manor." It has since been demolished. It used to be at the north end of where the A. S. U. W. Bookstore is now. Save in the memories of those who have been there, there is no evidence of its ever having existed, not even a commemorative plaque.

But during the heyday of Cockroach Manor, there was a fair amount of communal living going on there, sharing of resources, and whatnot. Let those of a conservative bent make of that what they wish, but I detected no particular ideology there. They eschewed the word "Beatnik." They might have been referred to as "Bohemians" (Smile when you say that!). But the word "hippy" hadn't been invented yet, or at least had little currency, and just didn't apply. They were mostly students, artists, writers, and musicians and didn't have a lot of money, so they found that sharing and helping each other out was a matter of practicality rather than ideology. Perhaps there's a lesson there.

Anyway, one of these intrepid souls managed to come up with a large quantity of lentils. So someone who had a few culinary skills and had a general reputation for cooking meals without too many people toppling over with ptomaine poisoning or botulism assembled a few more ingredients and cooked up a great cauldron of lentil soup. When someone experienced hunger pangs and couldn't afford, or did not want to go a block west to one of the many restaurants or coffee shops that lined University Way N. E., they could wander into the kitchen and ladle out a nutritious and delicious bowl of lentil soup.   It may have assisted in the survival of several members of the crew.

At any time, if one ever wondered about possible bacteria content, because there was a lot of soup and it often sat there on the stove in its cauldron for long periods of time, one could turn on the heat and, given sufficient time, bring it to a rolling boil. But, of course, as weeks passed into months, the quantity began to diminish. As it did so, people would add things to it:   various kinds of meat, produce, and God knows what all, altering its flavor in interesting and mysterious ways and bringing the level back up to where one had little fear (or hope) of it ever running out.

This, as I understand it, went on for several months. And although it had started with a large quantity of lentils and a few other things such as a couple of diced onions, a bunch or two of sliced carrots, and a few condiments that the original chef had added to the brew, by now, nobody had a clue as to what the hell it really was. Although no one ever got sick on it, and it still tasted pretty good (a most mysterious bouquet of flavors and aromas), some of those who partook began to experience a certain apprehension.

Finally, someone announced to the multitudes with a note of regret in his voice—or it may have been her voice, as those of the feminine gender are often more cognizant of such concerns as the possibility of death by food:   "Sorry, there is no more lentil soup—or whatever it was. I dumped it out. When I went to get a bowl of the stuff, I lifted the lid, looked inside, and something looked back at me!"

Don Firth

P. S. Next time someone sees Sandy, ask him if he remembers Cockroach Manor and the lentil soup.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 05:44 PM

Reminds me of the guy I met in the Army. He was going to school and rooming with a couple friends. Finally, all they had to eat was a 25 pound bag of brown rice. They were three-quarters of the way through the bag when he got his draft notice, which probably saved him from starvation.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Morticia
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 05:56 PM

I still didn't recognise it even after cooking it...I served it up anyway, without,as it were, a formal introduction but it is my sad duty to tell you it was bloody disgusting, whatever it was. There must be a moral in that somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: frogprince
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 06:18 PM

Morticia, it sounds like this time you really would have been better off with some SPAM. It might even have given you more SATISFACTION...

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 06:36 PM

Someone referred to canning factory hijinks, which made me remember (this is not QUITE on thread, but sort of) the summer between freshman and sophomore years at the U. of Minnesota, the first year I worked in the canning factory. We worked LONG hours during the season, so much so that we joked that if we didn't work twelve hours on a given day, it wasn't worth coming to work. Sixteen hours was far from unheard of. In the late season, the factory, which was not heated, got pretty durn cold come midnight or so. (Have faith; I'll get to the point presently!)

Two matters:

The "filling and closing machine" operators were considered highly privileged. They sat in a relatively good temperature spot--not too close to the steam cauldrons that cooked the filled cans, and not too far away, either, so that they didn't freeze in the chilly late-summer nights. They seemed to us to do nothing, except occasionally open a tube of can caps and insert them in the machine, and otherwise sit and watch a continuous line of open-topped cans, just filled with peas or corn, stream by them at a rate of perhaps eight cans per second and disappear into the capping machine. (I'll get to it! I promise!)

Smoking was prohibited in the plant, of course. The young bucks often couldn't wait until a break, so they would light up, and keep looking around lest the foreman come up unobserved. If (and when) they saw the foreman approaching--you guessed it!--"psshht!" and the cigarette would be in a rapidly moving can and capped up and gone, and on its way to the cooking cauldrons!

I just wonder how many consumers later identified what that strange inclusion was in their creamed corn. (See, I did get to the point on that one!)

Second memory from the canning factory that year:

That year was a TERRIBLE year for corn borers and a black growth called "smut". The foremen kidnapped every person they possibly could from other jobs around the factory to sit on one of the two block-long moving rubber-belt inspection tables with a big knife to grab ears from the inspection, cut out bad spots, throw them back on the table, grab another, and so on. This is lousy, wet work (because the corn had just been washed, the cold water was always running off the belt in your lap. I should say, "my lap", because I was one of the kidnappees. After you'd been doing this for say twelve to fourteen hours a day for four or five days, we trimmers got weary, slowed down, and not surprisingly, a larger proportion of the smutty or borer-infested ears got by the dozens and dozens of chilled hands and weary eyes.

In a better season, about half of the newly washed, inspected, and trimmed corn would have gone to the whole-kernel corn cutters, and half to the cream-style cutters, which cut just the tips of the kernels off and scrapers would scrape the whole length of the cob to get all the insides loose, all of which dropped down into augers under the cutters for transport to the blenders and filler machines.

The corn was so bad that season that ALL the corn was too bad for whole kernel corn, so all of the corn was destined for creamed corn, where the consumer wouldn't find any identifiable remaining borers or smut.

Now I'm getting to the second point. Remember, this was in 1950. You'll see how that's relevant in a moment.

At lunch time I talked to a girl I knew who worked feeding ears of corn into the cream-style cutters. We talked about the terrible condition of the corn, full of corn borers even after inspection and trimming, and she told me:

"I'm a Catholic, and I'll never be able to eat cream-style corn on Fridays any more!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Deckman
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 06:50 PM

Don,

Your story reminds me of my backpacking days ... 110 years ago. I often would go into the Olympics for 10 to 12 day SOLO hikes. These were grand times and I miss them today. Occasionally, 5 or 6 days up the trail, I might find myself spending the night in the company of another hiker or two. When this happened, we would introduce ourselves, check to see if the new "neighbors" were friendly or dangerous, and usually agree to have a community supper. This resulted in the weirdest combinations of food imagainable. The quality and condition of the food depended on how many days you'd already been on the trail. We sure had some strange meals, but I made many fine friends that way. (a small flask of 100 proof rum always helped the food go down)! CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 07:22 PM

'Scuse me! Geographical goof!

In re-reading my missive above, I left out a couple of somewhat crucial words in the sentence, "It [Cockroach Manor] used to be at the north end of where the A. S. U. W. Bookstore is now. " This may confuse the hell out of people who currently know the area and are trying to figure out where the creaky, leaky old pile actually was.

The sentence should read, "It used to be at the north end of where the A. S. U. W. Bookstore parking lot is now. "

The University Bookstore faces on University Way (which, numerically speaking, should be 14th Avenue N. E). Cockroach Manor faced on 15th Avenue N. E., the next avenue east, and the western border of the University of Washington campus. That would be between N. E. 43rd and N. E. 45th Streets (N. E. 44th didn't cut through, so this was a long block), immediately south of where the Malloy Apartments are now. [In Seattle, "Avenues" run north and south, "Streets" run east and west]

Sorry about that.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: guess what's coming to dinner?
From: Kaleea
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 07:44 PM

When I was a teen & my hair was still naturally dark, there was a groovy shop at the new mall which sold all manner of hip gifts which could, for a small fee, be sealed in various size gift cans. One could then choose a label to place onto the can for gift giving. One Sunday night at church, (of all places) an evil plot was hatched when one of the guys said he had to leave, but he wished he could join us at the pizza joint--even if it was just for a crust of pizza. The next night we went to the mall & had the pizza crusts canned. A week went by, & when Sunday rolled around, we presented him with the can at Sunday school. It was an odoriferous event.