Hitting to all fields

I would thought I would spend one post to catch up on a lot of past subjects, so here it goes

• I ran 9 miles the last two Sunday's with better times each Sunday. Yesterday I finished in 82 minutes, which is much faster than I planned. I am getting better at pacing myself, so I think I will do more short runs outside rather than on a treadmill. Looks like I will be getting up early to get a few miles in several mornings a week.
• I have been real good about varying breakfasts each day. A new favorite is a small bagel, smoked salmon and a splash of cream cheese. I am not eating much cereal these days, as I find it too sweet. Another good morning treat is Canadian bacon, tomato, and cheese on an English muffin.
• I picked up a Bobby Flay cookbook a couple of weeks ago, mainly because I was bored with my standard fair. I didn't know what to expect from the book, except he has a lot of great pictures of food. The book itself is a poor cookbook. It lists lots of recipes with a variety of sauces scattered all through the cookbook, but very little instruction on which sauce with which dish, or how they should be assembled. I ended up making a few of the main dishes and a handful of his mother sauces. I took a whack at putting them together and I must say WOW! The flavors are bold and because the sauces are very colorful, the food looks wonderful. I will report more on his recipes after I experiment with my family this weekend.
• I was doing some research on ticketing systems for work, and I came to realize tickets to Padre games on the secondary market are much cheaper that similar tickets to Angel games. Good thing I am a Giant fan, but it makes going to Angel games with good tickets very hard to do without getting your own season tickets.
  
• I need to find a better way to publish recipes. The Google pages are not set up real well for repetitive style pages.
• I have been doing some web 2.0 research as well. So many social network sites, so many web identities. I think we all need to create a single web identity that has two faces (one personal and one work) and if you come across a social network you like, you just submit your personal or work web identity. Probably exists, but I haven't found it yet.
• Ok, I am a Giant fan, and Barry Bonds is probably a jerk to all but his closest friends (I am sure he is not the only other great player to be called a jerk, Ty Cobb comes to mind), but why do I have to listen to all this scorn about Bonds breaking the home run record. One, Bonds has never been a jerk to me, so I can't hold that against him. Two, It is probably safe to assume, Bonds is not the only player (betting more pitchers than hitters) to take performing enhancing drugs, whether it be steriods, HGH, amphetamines, cocaine, or enhance their skills with contacts, lasik eye, knee, shoulder and elbow surgery and many other medical miracles. Baseball encouraged performing enhancing drugs by ignoring the issue for a dozen or more years. Baseball owes the fans more of an apology than Bonds, Giambi or any other accused player. We should admire these players for what they accomplished on the field. Over time the whole steroid issue, will be just one more argument for writers at Hardball Times to add in their statistical analysis to compare players from different eras.
  

Your Favorite TV Chef?

Rating Food Network Chefs

Someone asked me the other day who are my favorite chefs on The Food Network. I like to judge my favorites by how many recipes I made from that chef that are successful. The number 1 is obvious from my last post. Giada's recipes are easy, well balanced flavors and are pleasing to my friends and family. Second place goes to Alton Brown. Although I wouldn't consider him a chef, most of his recipes are cullanarily sound and use good everyday techniques. I have usually been able to slightly alter his recipe to improve on depth of flavor. Number 3 is probably Ina Garten. Her outrageous brownies are the best I have ever tasted (verified by my daughter, niece and nephew all in college).

My least favorite you ask? Tyler Florence comes to mind. Charming on TV, I watch him regularly, but each time I make one of his recipes, its bland and lacks depth. They usually taste like something you would get from a box or premixed package.

Paula Deen is right up there. With my desire to eat more healthly, her recipes contain at least a pound of butter, a pound of maynaise or a pound of sour cream. All of which is out of scope for me. I dont think she can make anything without one of those ingredients. My dad used to say the difference between food and gourmet food was the quantity of butter in the recipe. If this is true, her recipes must be on top of the gourmet list.

Sandra Lee uses processed foods to make her recipes. As i have migrated to quality ingredients, using processed foods in any recipe makes that recipe taste like processed foods.

The others like mega stars Emeril and Rachael Ray are interesting. Emeril's recipes are complicated, lots of technique and plenty of ingredients, but usually tasty (his food at his Orlando restaurant was outstanding). Rachael is a personality that cooks things quickly. She has some good ideas, but nothing that grabs me by the tongue and says wow.

Next post i will tell you about my favorite chefs from other sources.

Food Network and cooking

There is no question that the Food Network has advanced my abilities to cook. What started as a need to make some cookies for a team party for my daughter's softball team, graduated to different breads from a bread maker and then, thanks to the Food Network, I not only expanded my knowledge of food, but also expanded the techniques to cook food.

People now say I am a good cook, but I think I have an ability to follow a recipe. What I am good at is being able to look at a recipe and determining if my family and friends will like the result. I now review hundreds of recipes from all sources (Food Network, Epicurious, Google Search and magazines) and pick out a few that I think will please my family and mostly myself. 95% of the time, I get rave comments from the food consumer.

In my mind three things are required to produce a decent meal.

• Good Equipment - Having good pans, spoons and mixers makes all cooking easier and more fun.
• Good Ingredients - When a recipe has only a few ingredients, it is crucial to make sure that each of those ingredients are of top quality.
• Simple Recipes - If you have good ingredients, the more simple the recipe the better. Complicated recipes make things difficult and mistakes are easily made. Simple does not mean short, as many great recipes call for long cooking times. By simple I mean easy to do. Let the artistic chefs create those multi layer goose liver pates.