Steak and Onions, Pan-Style. #Louis

Scorch it, Baby.

 

#Louis

Steak and onions. I start with a chunk of butter in the pan, some large chunks of white onion, and a few slivers of red pepper. A splash of beer, a generous handful of black pepper. Slow-cook that a while until the onions soften up. A tin of Bush's beans, original recipe, $1.99 in the flyer. That's good for about three servings for a single old feller.

I got the large tub of potato salad for $3.99 on promotion from Food Basics. The tomatoes on the vine were on sale today, and that pretty much sums it up, other than the cheap #beer

Oh, yeah, after a while you want to turn up the heat and scorch the steak just a bit. Right about the same time you want to turn down the beans.

***

Write what you know, they say.

Who in the hell would want to read a very big book full of very blank pages...

I'm just some scruffy old bachelor.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know a single, God-damned thing, pretty much all of the time.

#Louis

I don’t even really know how to cook, I just get lucky sometimes—

Yeah, so my little table-top grill has bit the dust, they’re just cheap shit anyways, and the landlord also hates people with barbecues on the balcony. This is a real bad time in history, to attract any sort of negative attention from the landlord, so pan steak it is. Otherwise, it’s the broiler in the oven—not so good in the warm weather, but there you have it.

The prices are faekin' ludicrous, lads and lasses.

I saved $11.99 on $35.55 worth of groceries, which shows just how ludicrous prices are to begin with. I have five tins of tuna in the vehicle for the feral cats of Plympton-Wyoming. At a dollar a tin, it beats the hell out of tinned cat food at the gas bar for $2.00/tin. I can get shitty bacon at Giant Tiger for $2.47, the Schneider's is a superior product. These are the thick cheese slices, but I can tear them in half for small cheeseburgers, and the cats will get a few of them as well...there's at least two meals of steak, two to three of bacon and eggs, one chili...I do like the occasional tuna sandwich. The chips, the chocolate bar, self-explanatory. One would hope.

Just to clarify the math, we're not subtracting eleven dollars in so-called savings, from thirty-five. The thing is, we add it on and it comes out to a clearly, very ludicrous, forty-six fucking dollars. Just let that sink in for a minute, perhaps gazing in stupefication at the photo...

I just cringe when I see someone with a grocery cart absolutely heaping with crap. I don't know how they do it. Six hundred dollars, a family of four, one week, holy schmoley, no wonder they don't want to carry the cash around with them. Better off to use the overdraft...

Fuck.

The best potato salad is, of course, the potato salad that you don’t have to make yourself. Normally, I prefer the potato salad with egg, but this stuff is fine at the promotional price of $3.99 for an 800-gram tub. And you know how I love my little plastic tubs, which we can use for all sorts of things, including leftovers.

#shopping

History. We’re making history here, ladies and gentlemen, and someday, history will be just another tired old ghost, blowing in the wind. I don’t know why I say that, but in the meantime, a man’s got to eat, after all—

...and I have always wanted to say that.

If I was to give one good piece of advice to young people today, it would be, stand up straight (for crying out loud), look me in the eye when you're talking to me, and read the fucking grocery flyers once in a while. Some of you guys are forty years old and your mother is still packing a lunch for you, and that’s just the truth…okay, that's two or three pieces of advice, but you know what I mean.

It's good advice, if you can take it.

END

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about...

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Cooking for a Heat Wave. #Louis

The compleat bachelor...

Louis Shalako

 

With a heat wave of four or five days looming, the plan is to use the microwave or eat cold foods.

I won't be doing a big roast for a while, or frozen lasagna or cabbage rolls, which take over an hour in the oven. I probably won’t be doing spaghetti sauce and boiling a big mess of noodles. I can do a pizza in eleven minutes, at 450 F. It might be better to avoid the labour-intensive cookery and just sit here in my chair as much as possible, properly hydrating, or in my case, beerdrating.

My brand is 94.9 % water, ladies and gentlemen, and so that’s all right.

Tinned soup, chili, ravioli, flakes of ham and mayo for ham salad, tomorrow I stop in and get some lunch meat, maybe a tomato. I have buns, cheese, lettuce, mustard. I can microwave a potato. I can get freeze-dried soup for a buck and a quarter. It used to be $0.39, but the bougies decided that poor people having too much money caused inflation...I picked up a rotisserie chicken this morning. I can handle cold chicken, and heating up a tin of beans doesn't put a lot of heat into the apartment. I can spend five bucks on a frozen entree...the tubs of deli salads, potato and egg, creamy noodle salad, classic-creamy or deli-style coleslaw come to mind, and they’re only $3.49 for the smaller sizes. What with being single and all, I really don’t buy the bigger tubs as I can only it eat it so fast.

Quite frankly, I throw out enough food already.

Hot dogs don't take much to heat. A box of cheese crackers is always good. A couple of junior cheeseburgers and small fries from Wendy's is less than ten dollars, and the occasional little treat of fast food has its place. An assorted cold cuts submarine from Subway will cost ten or eleven dollars, I eat half for lunch and the other half for dinner...if the portable a/c is inadequate, I can drag my mattress into the other room, or drag the a/c into the front of the apartment and sleep on the couch.

It's those night-time temperatures that bother me.

***

You know what I really want to do. I want to get one of them frozen shrimp rings, the ones with the little bowl of sauce in there and everything, and to hell with the cost.

You can never eat enough seafood, ladies and gentlemen.

#the_plan

If you think it’s warm in the apartment, step outside. Try sleeping on the balcony—

I can make stuffing mix by boiling the kettle. Or dried soup. I can get pho broth and cut up some stuff, perhaps a few mushrooms in there as well, (I’m actually making a list for tomorrow, so don’t forget to remind me to pick up a couple of apples), and just let all that simmer on low heat, with rice noodles and some of the shreds of chicken, stuff I pull off the rather small wings, the back meat, maybe some cubes off one of the thighs or something. Right?

I call it guerilla cookery.

I could buy any number of cheeseburgers, bring them home and stick them in the fridge. They do require some gentle attention in the microwave, I might do them for forty-five seconds, let them sit for half a minute, and then flip them, and do them for another thirty seconds. Wait again and then another few seconds—it depends on the size of the burger, I suppose.

I will be Frank with you, I will be Ernest if you prefer: but I never buy flakes of chicken; the flakes of ham, and this is especially true, is (or are) salty enough. The chicken, on the other hand, doesn’t taste like much at all.

This morning I grabbed soup, a red pepper, a bag of barbecue flavoured potato chips.

I grabbed a tin of sardines—I kid you not.

Here’s a funny thing. If I boil corn on the cob, when it’s done, I simply turn it off and pour off the hot water down the sink. All that excess heat goes down the drain. Ah, but if I use the oven, all that excess heat stays in the apartment.

I bought a beautiful head of Romaine lettuce this morning. Combine that with onion, red pepper and tomato, it’s a nice salad, served with an Italian house dressing with herbs, spices and that wonderful Parmesan cheese flavour.

Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, you can cook on bits of moss and twigs, if it comes right down to it. Back in the good old days, Tommies in the desert war did their ‘brew-ups’, (making tea), using metal cans or buckets full of sand. Pour a little gasoline in there, hit it with a match, and voila! You can at least boil water, which, if one was careful, really didn’t even pick up much of the flavour of gasoline.

The Western Desert was very hot, and so this analogy is valid.

We can always live on candy bars and pepperettes from the local gas bar. Quite frankly, (or earnestly if you'd rather), these foods are very safe to eat, and probably ain't going to kill you. 

It's not the heat, right. It's the humidity.

Stay #beerdrated and that is my advice.

 

END

 

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On Frozen Cabbage Rolls and Aging Gracelessly. #Louis.

Colby cheese that thinks it is old chedar.

Louis Shalako

I walked out to the kitchen, pulled a pan out of the cupboard, set it on the counter. Then I came back and sat in my chair. In a few minutes, I'll go out there and put the frozen cabbage rolls in the pan. Then I will come back here and sit in my chair again. After a while, I will go out there, put that in the oven and possibly crack open a beer--I haven't really decided yet. That leaves all kinds of time to make a salad, slice up some cheese, put a little celery on a highly-polished plate. Trust me, I will get there...

I will get there, ladies and gentlemen.

And I get my exercise, too. Up and down, up and down, up and down. It's better than trying to do it all at once, in some kind of a hurry.

***

Today’s Roman brand frozen product is from Giant Tiger, and a dollar off in the weekly flyer. I’ve had it before, and the sauce is nice, light and tangy, not dark, strong and overpowering.

I got the Romaine lettuce at Food Basics, as well as the old cheddar cheese, which turned out to be Colby cheese, somehow wrongly packaged.

I like Romaine, due to the dark green colour of the leaves. I can rinse Romaine, which people seldom do with iceberg lettuce. I rinse it to get any little dark specks of snail-poop off of there, ladies and gentlemen. I cut the centre stem out of two big leaves, rinse them, and then roll them up and cut them first cross-wise, and then turn the knife ninety degrees and chop it the other way…the slice of tomato was perhaps a half-inch thick, which leaves a good bit for cheeseburgers tomorrow or the next day—be that as it may.

The salad is comprised of tomato on the vine, (also on sale), chopped jumbo white onion, and a little bit of leftover green pepper. If you pull out the pepper and it’s beginning to feel a little slimy, it’s time to throw it away, although this one still seems okay.

That will be served with an Italian house dressing, which has herbs, spices and just a touch of parmesan cheese flavour in there. I never keep more than one bottle of salad dressing in the fridge, and the next time it will be something different. Over the course of time, I get to try them all, for better or worse.

My aunt gave me a gift card from Giant Tiger, and I picked up celery, the frozen cabbage rolls, a bag of cat food for the feral and stray cats of Plympton-Wyoming, and package of Voortman’s cookies. These are raspberry turnovers, soft cookies with a gob of stuff in the middle. I haven’t had cookies in years…if I had a half a brain, I’d pick up a litre of milk on the way home from work tomorrow. Or, we can always have cookies and beer.

Other than that, any idiot can microwave some leftover beans. This is just a nice, hearty meal for a rainy day here in southern Ontario, and it didn’t cost too much either.

As I always say, the best revenge lies in eating well. And this is a very nice lunch. 

Best served with beer. This Old Milwaukee Ice is essentially two beers in one can for $3.30. 

And now it's time for a nap, possibly slumped in my chair, aging gracelessly, but not dead yet.

Check out My Criminal Memoir.

Not that anybody really gives a damn.

END

Poor old Louis has books and stories available from Amazon, in ebook, paperback and audio formats.

  

#aging_gracelessly

 

Routine Maintenance on the Globe SP-30 Dough Mixing Machine. Louis Shalako.

 

The control panel has to fit through the hole...

Louis Shalako.

I've been alone in the shop since about October, and the routine cleaning jobs sort of fall by the wayside. A bit of help makes a big difference. What's interesting is the empty shelf. With a shit-load of totes, you can't really get in there without pulling them out--something which offers a real psychological hurdle, to a certain type. Or maybe I've just been putting it off.

With several freezers pumping out heat, a/c goes in pretty early in our #superdough shop. I put one in today, and the next one goes in when I get a chance.

What I need is a surplus of time, or doughballs. We do have some help, for however long or short that lasts...

Sweep out them corners...

***

Routine Maintenance.

The challenge with the control panel, is that it has to go back in through the hole in order to get the cover off. For that reason, I pull the knob off the timer, and I've also been thinking of grinding a little section to make the hole bigger. The gearbox tends to pick up grease and stuff it into the top of the chamber, to the extent that grease is coming out of the upper bearing on the main shaft. This is actually different from the pulley shaft. All I can do is try and get that out with a bit of paper towel, poking it around with a screwdriver, hopefully keeping that off the drive belt. Okay, looking at the duct tape on the micro-switch for the stop button: the wire broke off, the metal tab is still in the slot, along with the tip of a jack-knife, which I broke off trying to get the metal tab out. All I could do was to shove the wire in and hold it with tape. For safety, the machine will not run without that wire attached, in a simple feedback / safety loop.

#Louis

The PDF has links right to the store.

So, there is current going through the stop button. Push the button, it kills the current. This shuts her down, and it won’t start up as there is a relay on the start button. It’s a momentary switch, no matter how quickly you lift off, she will not restart herself. Even with the carriage lever in the ‘up’ position, the lever has a micro-switch which must be engaged or she just ain’t going to go. The mixing bowl sits in the carriage, clamped in due to the forces of torque, with heavy dough and that big spiral hook going around to mix it.

Try explaining this to someone who honestly believes we should spend $12,000.00 on a brand-new machine. Why don’t we just try to learn how to operate the one we have, right…??? Right?

We had a little problem with the machine. It made noise, it spat a little grease, we destroyed a couple of loads of pizza dough due to contamination. Unfortunate, but it happens. Here's an interesting thing. We've been pumping grease into the machine for fourteen years. The machine makes a noise, we put grease into it. I asked the Boss where does the grease go? Where does all the grease go, ladies and gentlemen. Of course the Boss didn't know. The answer is that it doesn't go anywhere. Every bit of grease that we ever put in there is still in there: no wonder the thing is shoving grease out the top end, no wonder it goops out and scares the hell out of us once in a while...I haven't put grease into the machine since December 2022. I poke the grease in the gearbox down with a screwdriver. I wipe the grease off the screwdriver with a paper towel. I have been removing grease for over a year and a half at this point...the machine runs fine.

Yet any little problem is serious, but then this is how we make our money.

There is a company in London, Ontario, who will charge $220.00 to drive down to Sarnia, have a quick look, and then turn around and go back to London, at which time we get to set up an appointment, an appointment for them to again charge $220.00 to come down again, and maybe do something with the machine. Presumably, this would involve taking it apart in some exploratory operation. Assuming they find anything at all, they would put it back together again, duh, go back to London, order some parts, at Darwin knows what kind of a price. Then they would come back, charging $220.00 just for the drive, and spend Darwin knows how long taking it apart, sticking in a new part which it may or may not actually need, and which may or may not actually solve the problem, and after that, we’re on our own again. The hourly rate is comparable to any auto repair shop, or any service in the mechanical trades. In other words, it ain’t cheap.

We’re already on our own, and my way seems to be a bit cheaper, ladies and gentlemen…the truth is, no one really wants to fuck with the machine. It’s a greasy job, and the truth is, the thing runs fine. In that sense, they’re absolutely correct. Why fuck with it if you don’t have to.

***

Duct-tape the hell out of it...

Quick Notes.

The motor runs on 110V, the electronic guts run on 12V, which means there is an internal power supply of 12V. This is probably a simple step-down coil, as for the relay, you can hear it ‘snap’ when you push the start button.

The motor has a thermal overload. Overload the machine, the motor gets hot and automatically shuts down. It won’t start up again until it cools down sufficiently. This scares the shit out of the employees, but just try and get them to carefully weigh the load.

Just try to get them to try and not run the machine constantly, fuck, slow down, finish one job before you start the next. Its simple human nature: they figure if they go fast, they can clear the building a half an hour early and still get paid the same. Fuck, if we wanted them on piecework, we would have asked for piecework.

Like I said, it’s only human nature, which is sometimes incomprehensible when you consider that if you stick around for another half hour, wash a few totes, sweep a bit of floor or whatever, you would get another half an hour’s pay…you’re always complaining about money, right…

Try telling them that.

It’s like they just can’t listen sometimes.

 

It's not that hard.

END

 

Resources:

PartsTown.

W. J. Barnes.

ServQuip.

Cardinal.

Here is the PDF parts manual--with links. 

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from iTunes.

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Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

A Stiff Lecture on Food Safety. #Louis

What does it say on the bottom left corner??? Keep Frozen.

Louis Shalako

 

This is a public service announcement regarding food safety in Sarnia, Ontario. Frozen chicken wings as seen in the No Frills flyer, purchased this morning, April 18, 2024, at 10:30 a.m. were not frozen. The wings which had been in my freezer for over two and a half hours. They were not frozen. Every other item in my freezer was frozen, hard as a rock. The chicken wings were not frozen. Do not consume the not-frozen Schneider's Chicken Wings from Kyle's No Frills in Sarnia, Ontario. Salmonella is no joke. Maybe we will get to see that medical evac helicopter after all, ladies and gentlemen...

I had those home within twenty minutes. They were not frozen.

Scenario: the much-publicized medical evac chopper is grounded due to chronic underfunding, and Kyle's No Frills is selling un-frozen chicken wings to unsuspecting Sarnia residents...

#scenarios

Kyle's No Frills, here in Sarnia, Ontario, has had trouble with that particular bunker before. A bunker, is a freezer unit with an open top, often used to display frozen food items in the weekly flyer...I know this, because I have gotten sick from frozen foods from Kyle's No Frills here in Sarnia, Ontario, before. Funny thing was--it was Schneider's frozen chicken wings.

#food_safety

So. You are the manager of a No Frills supermarket, one of your bunkers has gone off, and you have a bunch of un-frozen, frozen Schneider's chicken wings now not frozen. Although they are still a bit cool. You need to let the head office know immediately, or at least a good three or so days ahead of time, so that they can squeeze that into the #flyer, as some sort of promotion.

#busted

This morning I spoke to another food service professional. I told them about Schneider's frozen chicken wings that were not frozen. The first thing he said: "Their freezer is not set to the correct temperature." That is especially true when you consider that after over 2 1/2 hours in my own freezer, they were still soft and squishy. Before I left this morning, (April 19/24), I stuck my hand into my own freezer, the meat patties and bacon are hard--not soft and squishy. But let us consider the refrigerated transport. The trucker picks up a load. He drives down from the Toronto area. He makes deliveries here, there, along the way, and he ends up in Sarnia. He backs up to the loading dock. He leaves the engine running...it's noisy. He cannot hear if the reefer unit is working or not. Staff unload the products using a small forklift or skid-steer device. They might wear gloves. The products are packed in cardboard boxes. They are rolled into the No Frills refrigerated storage area, and essentially no one thinks twice about the process. It would be a simple thing for a store employee to pull out a digital thermometer and poke it into the back of that truck and just see what the temperature is in there.

#food_safety

Symptoms of food-borne illness can include intestinal cramps, sweats, chills and fever, as well as the bloody diarrhea. Most folks get over it in twenty-four hours, but some cases are fatal, in the case of the elderly, children and infants, as well as people suffering from compromised immune systems. It is not fun, and it is not a joke.

#food_safety

So, 'while supplies last', over the course of a one-week promotion, potentially, hundreds of Sarnia residents could consume frozen chicken wings, that had thawed out, whether in the truck, in the store, or in a distribution warehouse. Most of them wouldn't know what hit them, assuming they bring the product home, stick it in the freezer and when they pull that out some days later, it will be frozen--or refrozen, and they will have no idea of where that came from.

And that bit about the helicopter ain’t no joke either.

 

#Louis

 

END

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My First Pho. #fritz

#pho made easy.

#fritz

 

Well, I’ve gone and done it now—

My first pho.

I saw a little restaurant at the Northgate Plaza, the name was Pho Nung. I’ve never been in there, yet I had heard the term before and it sort of hit my curiosity bone.

Guys like me look stuff like that up on Wikipedia and read all about it…I’ve also tried the dehydrated product from Dollarama.

The broth, (a shelf-stable product), only cost $1.97 for 908 ml at Walmart, and it has been hanging around in my cupboard for at least three or four months. I had also been seeing the rotisserie chickens, at various outlets, Walmart and Food Basics among them, and not being exactly immune to #temptation , I had been meaning to try them. Only problem there, is they were never there when I wanted them, and they were there when I didn’t want them.

***

Anyhow, once I’d picked up three or four chickens, had chicken dinners a few times, stripped chicken carcasses a few times, taken little plastic tubs of shredded chicken into work in order to feed my little stray and feral cat buddies out there in the wilds of Plympton-Wyoming, Ontario, Canada, well it only seems right to conduct the experiment.

Now that I got a minute…

From the photos, yes; I did have fresh, white mushrooms and took one fairly big one and sliced it up. I had a fresh red pepper, which I clean and gut as soon as I get it ashore, and this is one small segment of that.

I have onions growing from setts on the balcony, dang they’re small but flavourful. I’ve basically just taken a couple of leaves off of a couple and tossed that in for garnish. Any idiot can take a thin slice off a regular onion and chop that up into little bits. 

Four bucks worth of noodles goes a long way.

As for the noodles, I have to admit they’ve been in the cupboard ever since I originally conceived of this project. I got them for about four bucks at Food Basics in some sort of International Foods section. 

For that sort of search, I will often take my reading glasses and just sort of lurk there until I get some kind of a clue. Some of this stuff is pretty good at hiding, until you learn your way around a bit.

The chicken is beautifully cooked and I usually get a few meals off of that. In the photo is about four or five ounces of white and dark meat, minced along with a bit of the skin, mostly due to the bit of lovely fat under there.

Shredded along with a bit of skin...

***

With all of that stuff in the pot, I put on the glass lid, after taking suitable photos for social media of course, and let that sort of languish—I hesitate to call it anything else, on low heat for about an hour and a half. 

When it comes to slow cooking, leave it to some guy with only half a brain, right.

I reckon a bit of salt, perhaps some Ritz crackers, a little processed American cheese slices on the aforesaid crackers, and who knows, maybe some beer or something and we will see how this one turns out. 

That being said, they also have vegetable, chicken, and other broths for about the same price. As the reader can see, as a North American, I may be loading up on the meat and cheating a bit on the noodles. I would also point out that this is in no way a dehydrated ramen product, which tend to be heavy on the ersatz noodles and monosodium glutamate, if you know what I mean.

 I have also wondered about trying that with cooked shrimp, for example.

As previously stated, this is my first pho. We'll see what the cat thinks of that, ladies and gentlemen...

END

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The Classic Tuna Salad Sandwich. #fritz

...image stolen from some nice lady.

 

#fritz

Today (a couple of days ago. - ed.) I made a special point of picking up a $1.00 tin of tuna in water at Dollarama. I was in the store.

I had eight bucks or so, and I was picking up a couple of cans of cheap cat food for the stray and feral cats of Plympton-Wyoming, and of course while I’m there I always grab a pepperoni stick or two, that would be for the feral humans of Sarnia-Lambton, i.e., myself included. I suppose I just needed an excuse. It's a happening, man.

Groovy.

Yeah, so, the other day I was bored or something. Hungry, too. I drained a tin of tuna. I chopped up a tablespoon or so of onion. I finely-chopped celery, roughly the same amount. I chopped up a bit of sweet red pepper, and then, in a fit of inspiration, (maybe even passion. - ed.) I scooped in a forkful of pickle relish. Another three or so forkfuls of cheap-ass mayo, a quick stir in the usual plastic tub, (three for a buck and a quarter or so) from the same store.

The buns are about three bucks for eight buns. I prefer the artisanal buns from Maple City Bakery, failing that, I bake up a loaf of fresh #superdough bread and toast that up.

One dollar.

You can also do melted cheese, in my opinion, toast your buns or your bread. Melt the cheese on the bread, in the microwave, and then spread your tuna salad. I prefer the salad cold, even when the bread is hot, but then, I am a maze of contradictions…as are we all.

You want the lettuce and the tomato cold as well. That seems logical enough...

Romaine lettuce is the best, I like the dark green leaves. Funny thing is, we rinse Romaine lettuce, and yet no one ever does that with iceberg lettuce. It’s just one of those things that we can't talk about because nobody knows the answer.

I like a nice, firm tomato, and a nice, sharp knife. It just makes it a lot easier to slice, very, very thin, and after that all one needs is a good crunch of freshly-ground black peppercorns and a whiff of salt, which as everyone knows isn’t very good for you but we can hardly live without it.

Just to make sure that it wasn't a total fluke, I did the same thing again today. On fresh buns, I got two sandwiches and there is still a bit left in the tub. Not quite enough for another sandwich, but this is why they make Ritz crackers after all.

 

END

 

Images: likely stolen.

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