When I was a kid I disliked soups and stews, and hated even the idea of lentil soup. (which, as a child, I somehow equated with Barbara Streisand – probably due to the publicity of her movie Yentl.) Fortunately I became more open-minded as an adult, and found that I absolutely love lentil soup. It’s very healthy for you, to boot.
The red lentils in this recipe break down and make a very creamy soup. Green and brown lentils may be substituted, but black lentils don’t work out well.
This is our family dog. She is waiting for me to take her for a our regular after-dinner walk.
I am changing her name from “Butter” to “Aka Lana Lana” (“Hopeful Shadow” in Hawaiian) as she closely follows me around the house from the moment we finish dinner until I actually take her for a walk.
Last night, Beta spent half an hour out on the deck. She was wearing the wool cape I got her last Christmas. She had her new noise-cancelling headphones that block so many of the sounds that bother her. She used the new family telescope to check out the Pleiades.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you! that my children actually enjoyed this recipe. I’m not sure why, perhaps they have given up all hope of enjoying a decent meal from my kitchen and now sullenly submit to my demands that they eat the goddamn food that I paid for and worked hard to put in front of them and it’s not like you do any chores around… Ahem. I got a little off track here.
Whatever the reason, they ate this one on my first attempt.
These are basically middle-eastern meatballs. You can cut in other things with the meat, serve them in a variety of ways, whatever floats your boat. (I rather enjoyed wrapping them in some naan with rice.) It’s a meatball. It’s the spices that make it.
The oven instructions are below. We haven’t grilled them yet, but they should do great, just use a little grill-sense. It’s a reasonably easy and fast recipe, ~20 minutes to prep and ~20 minutes to cook.
The recipe plus rice and other sides makes enough for 6-8 people.
Ingredients
2 pounds of ground beef – don’t get a lean mix! 80-85% seems good
mix in other ground meats as your fancy takes you, but you need some fats – don’t go too lean
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, or 1/4 cup dried
1/2 small onion, diced fine
1 red bell pepper, diced fine
Garlic, 3-4 minced cloves
Paprika, 1 tsp
Salt, 1 tsp
Cumin, 1/2 tsp
Pepper, 1/2 tsp
Directions
If you plan on skewering the meat, and you’re using bamboo or wood skewers, soak them in water for ~30 mins.
Preheat oven too 350°
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl (don’t overmix)
Form the mix into oblong patties, about kielbasa-thick
If you’re skewering, shove in the skewers now or form the patties around the skewers
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or grill for ~20 minutes, flipping at least once
For the last couple of minutes turn on the broiler to brown the meat
Usual disclaimer with ground meat dishes: make sure the internal temp is at least 160° before serving.
Serve with some traditional middle-eastern sides, like:
14ozInstant udon noodlesdiscard flavor packets, if included
1poundGround pork
1bunchScallionsroughly half-dozen stalks, chopped and separated green from pale
2tspGingerFinely grated or minced
1tspCrushed red pepper flakes
1/3cupMirin
1/3cupSoy sauce
1tbspSesame seedsoptional
Instructions
Put on a pot of water to boil, for the noodles later
Heat a tablespoon of oil in your skillet over medium-high heat
Add cabbage/slaw to the skillet, tossing often, until edges are brown. Reduce heat and continue cooking until thickest parts of the cabbage are tender.Remove from heat and transfer cabbage to bowl
Wipe out skillet, add a tablespoon of oil, and bring back to medium heat
Add pork to skillet, break it up, and cook until browned. Once the meat is broken up, don't keep fussing with it, give it a chance to get browner bits.
Once water from step 1 is boiling, turn off heat and add noodles.Let noodles sit for 1 minute, then drain. Toss with 1 tablespoon of oil and transfer to bowl with cabbage. Mix together.
To the pork, add the pale scallion bits, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Toss for a minute or so, until scallions start to soften.
Add noodles and cabbage, mirin, and soy sauce to skillet. Mix until noodles are well-coated with sauce.
Remove from heat and toss in green scallion bits and sesame seeds (if desired).
Notes
Requires a large skillet. Our 14″ cast iron is the perfect size. It’s not quite a one-pot meal, because there’s a swap of ingredients in the middle, but it’s close.
Mirin is like sweet sake syrup. The Japanese equivalent of cooking sherry, you should be able to find bottles of it in the grocery store.
The original recipe was pretty strict about amounts, but we’ve found that this recipe is pretty tolerant of variation.
After the first full week of quarantine, some observations.
The public has gone completely crazy.
By last weekend people had purchased all available stocks of toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex, and ibuprofen. Store shelves were completely bare across the nation.There was no real shortage. Panic buying and speculation rules the day. Stores have mercifully instituted per-person maximum purchases to ensure availability for the unlucky or slow-to-act, so paper products are starting to trickle back onto the shelves.
Today the shortages are pasta, rice, french fries, and pepperoni. We couldn’t find any presliced pepperoni in Market Basket.
The veggie aisle continues to be well-stocked, except bananas. (but that’s not completely out of the ordinary.)
Unemployment claims are rising precipitously. Experts are warning that we could reach 20% unemployment this year.
Street traffic has ticked up a bit. Presumably people are starting to venture out, but not soon enough to save local small businesses.
Restaurants are still closing, but takeout pizza joints are booming.
We decided to relax and order pizza from Tremezzo’s Pizza last night. Megh called in an order at 4:40 pm. It took nearly an hour for pickup.
Starbucks, as one of the last remaining food service businesses open, is at least as busy as before. It’s limited to drive-thru and pre-order service (nobody allowed inside) and the line of cars just about reaches the main road.
The kids actually wanted to go out for a drive.
Last night we went across the street with our pizza and salad for a very fun dinner with Debbie and Tom, followed by a round of cribbage.
When we got back home around 8 pm the kids asked us to go out for a drive.
They haven’t been in a car for over a week. They’ve been outside, but there’s nowhere to go so none of us have been further than the grocery store. Their friends can’t come out. It’s weird to go so long without going anywhere, I think it’s comforting to do something familiar like sit in the car.
We swung by McDonald’s for a treat and just… drove around, the four of us. We went out to North Reading, swung through Reading, and came home. It’s weird, but I have to admit that it was relaxing to drive.
As SARS-CoV-2 entered the United States a few weeks ago, we collectively looked at the ongoing experiences of China and Italy and jokingly compared it to Captain Trips. Meghan and I studied the history of the Spanish Flu looking for parallels and worst-case scenarios.
The lessons learned from 1918 are being applied by health officials right now, in an effort to avoid a healthcare-system-crushing pandemic. We can’t avoid contracting the virus, that is clear, but perhaps we can prevent everyone from catching it all at once.
In the middle of last week schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts started closing as a preemptive measure. Many businesses did as well, including my own. A few did not until they were ordered to. This all mirrors the experiences (and failures) in other countries that were hit by the virus first.
As I write this, the governor has ordered all schools closed for at least three weeks. Large gatherings are prohibited, originally capped at 250 people and now capped at 25.
So basically we could go out if we really wanted to, but there’s no where to go right now.
Grocery stores are still allowed to be open, so people can buy things eat, but the doomsday preppers have effectively cleaned the shelves. Stores have struggled to keep essentials in stock, including (oddly) paper products like toilet paper, kleenex, and paper towels, as well as the true essentials that never spoil, like bread, milk, and eggs. Meghan witnessed someone buying five gallons of milk on Saturday. It’s like snow is coming.
Some businesses are instituting, or are relying on, work-from-home policies; unfortunately others, especially service-oriented jobs, are sending people home without pay.
I’m fortunate that I can work from home. We’ve cleaned out the office so I can get real work done, and made a spot for Butter to curl up. Meghan’s situation is a little murky, but so far as we can tell she will continue to be paid for the duration.
Baba has been asking for advice on what social events to attend. (answer: zero.) My own parents have continued to live like nothing has changed, though they’re a bit less social than Baba. All three grand-parental-units are in multiple high-risk groups. Connecticut has been less affected by the outbreak so far. I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll come through without contracting it.
I got a fish tank a year or so ago. It’s one of those Back to the Roots garden tanks that support a betta and three plant buckets. We had an alge problem, so we added a snail. He gets around a lot, so we call him the SpeedSnail.
(The fish is Fish Stick. It’s what was for dinner the night we brought him home.)
Yesterday, I noticed that the tank walls were getting a little brown. I decided today was the day to clear the counters and do some maintenance on the tank. The first part of that maintenance is to take out the plant pots.
So, I take out the middle pot. The roots are a little long, but not bad. Take out the far left pot. That one is ew and I may need to invest in new growth rocks. Then comes the one with the spider plant in it. This was an experimental plant. I look in the pot and notice one of the rocks looks strangely smooth. And round.
We collect shells. I have several snail shells from various beaches and our yard. So the obvious first thought is, “who put one of the shells in there?”
Then I look at the tank, and all the alge. I look at the tiger-striped shell in my pot. And SpeedSnail took a quick trip back into the tank.
He must have climbed up the feeding tube, gotten across the rocks, and discovered there was no water up there. He sealed himself up, and waited for the water to come back.
I watched him for a while before I left to meet Quinn for lunch, and spotted him sneaking a peak from inside his shell. When I got back to the house, he was busy hoovering up alge as fast as he could.
So, the snail had an adventure. The tank will get nice and clean again. FishStick can make aggressive moves against a tank-mate that can’t care less about what he’s doing.
After a few too many close calls, I approached the town about making our street and another into one-way lanes. A counter-clockwise, 1.7 mile loop around the lake.
Silver Lake, bounded by Main, Lake, and Grove
The town said “no” for some very good reasons. I knew they would, but I had to give it a try. They paid the courtesy of taking it seriously, giving me a meeting with various officials, and explaining the reasons.
I had put an actual proposal together in case this went further. I include it here for posterity. Read it here: Better Traffic Around Silver Lake
Today the shortages are pasta, rice, french fries, and pepperoni. We couldn’t find any presliced pepperoni in Market Basket.
When we got back home around 8 pm the kids asked us to go out for a drive.
