Making Panko

My breadbox was a mess - I must have had about eight different "bread ends" in there. What the hell is it about bread that no one wants to eat the last three pieces? Most of it hardly even seemed "day old," which I guess is typical of factory-baked white bread anyway, and even though I knew no one was going to eat it, I didn't want to just chuck it. So I did the next best thing: I made panko.

Panko crumbs are dead easy to make.  Trim the crusts from leftover white bread and push them through the grater on your food processor. Spread the resulting crumbs in a thin layer on a cookie sheet and bake in a 300 F oven for a few minutes until they're dried out but not toasted.

I store mine in a big jar until I need them - anywhere airtight is fine, and they keep a long time, so you can make more as you get more bread that needs used up rather than making it as needed. (It's better to have panko and not need it than to need panko and not have it.)

Green Giant Chipotle White Corn

I'm not a big fan of canned veggies.  Canned green beans are okay, I guess.  And some brands of canned corn are good too.  Green Giant, for example: their canned corn is always decent. Crisp and flavorful, like it was just cut from the cob a few minutes before it was put on the table.

And therefore, when I found this Green Giant Chipotle White Corn at the supermarket last week, I picked up a couple of cans knowing that even if I was disappointed in the overall product and it's chipotleness, the actual corn involved would still be pretty good.

So I opened up the can and found crispy delicious white corn studded with little bits of sweet red bell pepper, and clinging to it all was dark mahogany-colored chipotle powder.  It smelled rich and roasty and smoky, with the familiar aroma of chipotle in the background.  Everything seemed to be in the right place and I thought that I might at last have found a "chipotle" product that actually lived up to its label.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.  Green Giant made sure to play it safe for this product, and the chipotle is just another faint flavor note that added nothing to the side dish. - a shame because chipotle pepper and corn are a natural and delicious combo. Lynnafred and I kicked it up a notch by hitting our servings with an extra dose of chipotle powder from the spice cabinet.  Mmmm.  Heat and flavor, even if it was a do-it-yourself seasoning job.

Seriously, though, I really wish that companies would stop slapping the word "chipotle" on everything they churn out of their factories. This ingredient has thoroughly jumped the shark.

Bacon Lattice Pie

Happy Mother's Day! How about a nice slice of Bacon Lattice Apple Pie?

The recipe has been wandering around the internet for about three years now, but it's pretty simple to do without a real recipe.  Just make your usual apple pie preparations but add four slices of crispy-cooked bacon, crumbled, into the filling.  Instead of using a top crust, build a lattice crust using strips of raw bacon.  For a ten-inch deep dish pie, it should take about a pound of standard sliced bacon all told. I considered using bacon fat in the crust, but Lynnafred talked me out of it, saying that it would overpower the apples.  She might have been right - the standard crust along with the bacon in the filling and on top gave a very good flavor balance to the whole thing. Maryanne was a bit dubious of the very idea of a bacon-topped pie at first, but because she's a sport she gave it a try, and actually liked it.

It was fun and delicious. Sometimes dumb internet stuff works out pretty well.

Benton's Fig Bars

So, you're jonesing for a fig bar, but your favorite Fig Newtons are going to cost more money than you can shake loose from under the cushions on the couch.  WAT DO?

Well, you can go to the dollar store, the job lot place, or ALDI and see what you can get for less than a dollar-three-eighty.  At ALDI, that would be Benton's Fig Bars.  But how do they measure up against Fig Newtons - the Real Thing, the Gold Standard against which all fig bars are measured?

Well, for starters, the cutting blade at the bakery must not be up to Nabisco sharpness standards, because the Benton's bars always look like they were cut apart with an old hack saw.  Other than that, the cookie part of the bars are pretty much the same thing you'll find wrapped around the center of a Newton.

The filling is sweet and figgy, as you would expect, though it is somewhat "wetter" and more gooey than that of a Newton.

These cookies will satisfy a fig bar jones, to be sure, and are perfectly fine for the casual fig bar fan, but if Fig Newtons are your OMG FAVE cookie, you won't be satisfied with Benton's.  You'll spend every bite comparing them unfavorably with the Newtons you wish you had bought in the first place.

No, really, it's just pork.

I got this really "uncomfortable" feeling walking by the meat case at Stop & Shop today after work...

PotatOH

Would you pay $1.50 or more for a single medium-sized russet potato?  What if it was individually shrink-wrapped? And came with a label telling you how to microwave it?

Photo by Roger Rice

I used to wonder if the PotatOH! company actually sold potatoes, or whether they just sold licenses and labels to supermarkets, who would then shrink-wrap and label their own taters.  But there is an actual PotatOH! website, where you can go and order a six-pack of PotatOHs for $12.66 plus shipping.

Whatever.  There really is an ass for every seat.

Help Identify This Thing

This pan was in the Savers thrift store in Manchester CT last weekend.  It is a 4-inch-deep, 11-inch-diameter pan, made of medium-weight aluminum.  The wooden handle on the left is fitted into an aluminum collar riveted to the pan. The most interesting feature, though, is the crank handle in the center. It is attached to a central "tube" rising from the pan, and is made of cast aluminum with a wooden knob.  The handle turns two "legs" that descend into the pan, along the tube, across the bottom of the pan, and about an inch up the outer wall.  It's important to know that this assembly, which appears to be some sort of stirring mechanism, does not actually scrape the sides or bottom of the pan, but move slightly above them, so no actual "stirring" can be done.

It's not a popcorn popper - there is no lid, nor any way to put a lid on without said lid enclosing the handle - but I have no idea what a pot like this would be used for.  There were no maker's marks or logos on the pan, either, so I don't have a starting point for research.

I invite you to leave a comment if you think you know what this odd pot is, or even if you'd like to speculate.

PS: I didn't buy the pan. Savers had it marked at $19.99, which I considered far too much to pay for something I probably won't use anyway.

EDIT: The mystery is solved!  Thanks to reader steve06082, who suggested that the pan might be a nut or coffee bean roaster.  When I Googled "nut roaster," here's what came up:

Thanks, Steve!

ANY Recipe?

"I added garlic to my recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie, and my life has never been the same!"

Expired Yogurt

Will eating yogurt past the "expiration date" printed on the cup kill you?  I found a couple of forgotten yogurts in the back of my fridge.  Let's find out if they've retained their deliciousness.

Siggi's Skyr (Icelandic strained non-fat yogurt)

Expiration date: 17 March 2011

Date opened: 1 May 2011

Comments:

Yogurt had turned a light brown color. There was little or no liquid seepage. Very thick - the yogurt mass actually cracked when it was scooped. Pronouncedly sour and spoiled flavor. I could barely choke down half a spoonful.

Breyer's Fruit-on-the-Bottom Strawberry

Expiration date: 5 March 2011

Date Opened: 1 May 2011

Comments:

Some separation had occurred; a pool of clear liquid was at the top of the container but was readily stirred back into the yogurt. This was quite delicious and tasted as good as it might have before its expiration date.

Wait...what?