Instant Gratification

22Jan10

Why is it as a society we seem to be suffering from a massive case of the need for instant gratification?

Obama has been in office for a year and people are upset that he hasn’t closed Guantanamo, gotten us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, fixed the economy, provided universal health care, secured world peace and given everyone a pony.  President Kennedy in 1961 said he was directing scientists to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade and everyone thought it was impossible.  The health care bill that was supposed to happen within a year was going to be taking way too long.

People walk into a restaurant and get told the wait is 15 minutes, then turn around and leave because they don’t want to wait that long.  They completely ignore that by the time they get to another restaurant and get a table they would have been seated and placed their order at the first one.

At stop lights we keep an eye on the light for the cross traffic and when it turns yellow we start to creep forward.  When the light does turn we stomp on the gas in order to quickly get to…the next stop light.  Stop signs we can’t even come to complete stops, we just roll right on through.

We have instant oatmeal that takes 30 seconds in the microwave when regular oatmeal takes only a couple minutes.  We buy boxed mixes to save 10 minutes in making a cake.  Waffles that take 20 minutes to make from scratch are made (poorly) to come out of the toaster in 5.  Pancakes can now come out of a can.

Stocks used to be purchased so that you would own a piece of a company you thought would be successful and thereby share in the profits (in the form of dividends) over the course of many years.  Now “increasing shareholder value” has become a mantra in corporate boardrooms everywhere.  ”Increasing shareholder value” seems to translate more directly into “increasing stock prices” and not necessarily “increasing profits”.  We want to see our stock increase in value every single day.  We equate the Dow being up today as the economy doing well and if it’s down tomorrow we’re looking at a possible recession.

E-mail, instant messaging, and cell-phones are partially results of this need for instant gratification.  We need to be able to get in touch with people NOW.  It shouldn’t have to wait until we see them at home/the office/lunch on Saturday.

It seems like we used to be happy with progress towards goals, but now are satisfied with nothing less than immediate and complete success.  We used to be OK with baby steps, but now it simply isn’t enough.

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Shiny Object Syndrome

21Jan10

I suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome.  Not the traditional “tech” version where you get sucked in by the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology.  I actually have really good control over that one.  I’ll see these new gadgets and think “Kind of neat, but is it really useful?  I don’t need it.”  I’m talking about being distracted from the task at hand in everyday life.

I have many projects that I have started and not finished.   I get distracted and start something new and it just seems too hard to go back and finish something.   I have 3 fiction books, three non-fiction books, three different business ideas, a musical comedy adaptation, and two blogs I sporadically update.  My kitchen cupboards are pulled apart to redo, half of them in my basement workroom.  Said workroom is a disaster making the cupboard project difficult and cleaning the workroom would be much easier if I had the workroom to help organize it.  I could use the garage as an extra workroom save for two problems: 1) I don’t have a man cave (like my neighbor is building *jealous*) and 2) the garage is a mess (dare I admit that we’ve lived here for over 6 years and I could count on one hand the number of times we’ve used the garage for say, parking a car?).  My kitchen can’t actually stay clean for more than a half hour at a time, although it probably doesn’t help that the minute we actually get it clean I get the urge to make something involving around 6 or 7 pans and bowls.

I’ve heard of Executive Functioning Disorder and wonder if I might have it, or if I might be ADHD or any of a number of other things.  But since I actually am a reasonably well-functioning member of society–I have a job, pay my taxes, vote when I’m interested in the candidates and/or issues, don’t commit horrible crimes–there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to find out for sure.  If I have any of the possible conditions/afflictions/disorders the choices after being officially diagnosed seem limited: get put on drugs to “manage” the situation (not appealing since there are risks and side-effect potentials and as I said I function reasonably well as it is), or use various “self-help” tools to manage the situation which I can do on my own without a prescription.  Only problem with the self-help route is the fact that I can be distracted from using said tools.

More evidence of being easily distracted from things: I originally started this post December 10.  Final posting date: January 21.  And for your U.S.R.D.A. of irony one of those books I have started: Its title is “Shiny Object Syndrome”.

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Food I Like: Pirogies

15Dec09

Back in October (the 8^th to be exact) was the first National Pirogi Day. My son loves them and so I decided I wanted to make them instead of suffering with a premade frozen version. So we emailed my Aunt and Uncle for a possible recipe. I remember that when I was younger, any big family gathering that was held at their house included Pirogies made by my Uncle. (Both my Aunt and Uncle were really good cooks, but the Pirogies were always his thing.)

He got back to me with a cooking lesson on Pirogies: “Latvian Pirogies are made with a softer yeast bread dough that is filled with cooked bacon crumbles and baked like bread rolls in the oven.  This is a different dough and a different cooking process than Pirogies from other parts of Europe than might involve an unleavened dough and boiling as part of the preparation process.  They are very different from the store bought ones. The bread is not intended to be particularly chewy (like an Italian or French bread) but it is not a sweet, crumbly pastry dough either.  The egg is the ingredient that will reduce the chewiness properties (but will also tend to make the dough a bit stickier than a straight, conventional bread dough). The filling that my grandmother used was just finely diced, cooked bacon.  She would dice it and flash fry it in a hot pan until the bacon white clarifies and begins to shed fat.  The bacon needs to be cooked, but you want it ‘juicy’, not dry, when it goes into the circles.”

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons of dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 pound bacon, chopped and cooked

Mix all the ingredients except the bacon together and adjust the consistency as you mix it to get a relatively non-sticky, firm bread dough by either adding small amounts of water or flour. Mix/knead until smooth and somewhat elastic and not too sticky then let rise (an hour – maybe 90 minutes). After rising knock down the dough and roll it out to about 1/4″ thickness.  If it is too elastic at this point, and tends to pull back too much to roll out easily, let it sit for 10 minutes and then roll it.

When it is rolled out, cut out 3” circles from the dough sheet with a mason jar or water glass or whatever.  Put a tablespoon or so of filling in the center of each circle and then pinch the edges to seal them and then fold/roll them into football shapes. When you put the filling in you want to make sure not to get bacon or bacon grease on the edges you are going to pinch together since that will keep the bread from sealing itself and the bacon juices will leak out while you are cooking.  You get the football shape by taking the pinched together half circle that contains the filling and sort of folding in the “points” and putting the Pirogi on the baking sheet with the pinching seam down – the top of the Pirogi is the smooth part that was the original fold line. Let rise for about 30 minutes on their baking sheet brush with egg whites and water if you want a shiny surface. Bake at 400 until they look done.

When I got done assembling these for National Pirogi Day I turned on the oven and discovered it was broken! Our big plans for the evening were shot. The assembled Pirogies went into the freezer for a couple weeks until the oven was repaired. When I pulled them out, I just let them thaw and put them in the oven. They came out just fine. I plan to try this again soon when I can bake them fresh.

I made some with bacon and some with mashed potatoes (my son is a potato freak). I also put sautéed onions in about half of each. Next time we’ll probably use some Cheddar cheese in them and I might even try some “dessert” style with cinnamon apples.

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Food I Like: Rosemary Chicken with Honey-Pear Sauce

03Dec09

This is a recipe I threw together from some random things around the kitchen.  It was time to cook dinner and I desperately needed to make something different than usual.  My wife had gotten The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg on loan from the library and I picked it up.  The bulk of the book is lists of “flavor affinities” suggested to them by a host of professional chefs.  This book is absolutely perfect for my style of cooking.  I was half inclined that night to make a Hawaiian-style chicken (honey glazed chicken breast with pineapple) but I didn’t have any pineapple.  So I picked up the book and flipped open to the list for honey—“Hmmm, pears.  I’ve got some pears in the fridge.”  On to the list for pears and we find rosemary.  I know rosemary goes well with chicken, so now I suddenly have this loop back around to chicken.  And I’m off and running.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup butter
• 1 red onion (about 5 inch diameter) diced
• 1 Tablespoon rosemary
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 3 Tablespoons honey
• 1 cup pear juice
• 2 teaspoons arrowroot

Melt butter in oven proof skillet.  Sautee onion in butter until slightly browned.  Transfer the onions into a bowl and add the rosemary.  Sear chicken breast in pan, pour the onions on top, cover the pan tightly with foil or a lid and place in 350 degree oven.  Meanwhile, combine the honey and pear juice in a saucepan.  Add arrowroot and stir over medium heat until thickened.  When the chicken is fully cooked (about 15 minutes) pull the pan out of the oven and place the chicken on a serving platter (leave the onions on top).  Everything else in the pan gets added to the honey/pear juice mixture.  Whisk together and spoon sauce over chicken breasts.

The first couple times I made this I took fresh pears and threw them into my juicer.  More recently I’ve done it with purchased pear juice.  It’s only marginally more expensive and a lot less cleaning hassle.  The onion showed up because I love sautéed onion in just about anything (almost every night I cook dinner my first step is to chop up a red onion).  I had been playing with arrowroot as a thickening agent recently and chose it because I wanted the sauce to remain a little more translucent.  I didn’t use a traditional pan sauce method partly because I was still experimenting with arrowroot and wanted to make sure I got it blended well.  Also, since the chicken is cooked mostly in the oven there is very little fond to get out of the bottom of the pan so the whole deglazing step of most pan sauces is pointless.

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Thanksgiving

27Nov09

Here I sit near the end of one of the worst Thanksgivings of my life.  I’ll admit up front that I’m whining a bit, and I realize there are lots of people out there that have had crappier holidays than I will ever have.  But for me this one still sucks.  This is the first Thanksgiving of my life that I will spend almost no time with any of my family.   My day was occupied by the fact that I had to work today.  I am a restaurant manager and unfortunately for me, working most holidays is just something you have to deal with.  But this year I worked 9am to 7pm so it was pretty much hopeless for me to be included this year.  But rather than dwell on this holiday’s shortcomings, I will focus on the things I have to be thankful for.

I am thankful for my wonderful wife of almost 20 years.  She is the perfect partner.  We share many common interests, but complement each other in terms of personality.  We have traits that fill in each other’s holes.  She helps me remember to be an adult and get things done.

I am thankful for my too-smart-for-my-own-good son, now a freshman in college.  He helps me remember how to be a kid and have fun.

I am thankful for my family and friends who I can turn to in times of need, get advice from, learn from or just have borderline pointless conversations with.

I am thankful for the roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in.

I am thankful for the ability to put food on the table.

I am thankful for my job (which helps with the last two items).

I am thankful for my health.

I am thankful to live in a place where I have many choices of what to do, what to be, what to think.  I am thankful I can express them (or not) in any way I choose.

I am thankful.

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