What.

Just because I don’t post in a few months doesn’t mean the blog is dead.

Does it?

I dunno. This is the kind of quandary (def: a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation. origin: late 16th century, perhaps partly from Latin quando ‘when’ ) you get when you have a 6 year old formerly extremely popular blog that is struggling to make posts every 2 weeks.

Yes, yes, yes. I know it should be easy. But it’s not. And I don’t want to hear a PEEP from those johnny-come-lately bloggers who’ve started a food blog in the last 2 years who keep writing in to say, “Man, how hard is it to come up with a Cheap Eats post twice a week?”

Man, I’m in a salty mood. Mutha f…

This has become my bread and buttah, if you will. Complaining about the millions of food blogs started last year by bored housewives (I love you, housewives, but I’ve chosen Facebook) who have nothing better to do than provide Google with deliciousy content to chew upon.

Hold on, I have to pee.

Done. Well, you should be happy to note that I did bake a half ham the other day. I baked it offhandedley and capriciously, while doing the whimsical laundry, with a mustard-honey glaze. The whimsical laundry turned out the nice, according to my thesaurus. The capricious ham turned out well too, though not exactically (Alice in Wonderlandly) capricious.

So then, we had about 3 weeks worth of ham sitting around. I decided to transmogrify the ham in a Philip K. Dickensian manner into several different dishes including, but not limited to, ham and eggs, ham fried rice, ham steak, and chowda with some ham.

The latter is the subject in the photo. Preety, isn’t it? The chowda turned out nice actually, but this ham (Smithfield) wasn’t really a flavorful, smoky ham. So I had to add a few drops of artificial smoke into the mix. Incidentally, I’m thinking of starting up a business selling artificial smoke. What I think I’ll do is run around burning down various houses of ill repute, collecting the sexy artificial smoke in various vast glass globes. Then we’ll distill that down into various bottles of sexy ill reputed smoke that I’ll sell on the internet for fifty dollars a pop.

Man, I’ve certainly got a plan. And so it goes, Panama!

Seriously though, the chowder turned out fine and all was well with the world. Until I discovered I hadn’t posted on Cheap Eats for a few months. Thusly, and hencely, this post.

I’ve come to accept that there are very, very few people who understand the direction that this blog has shuddered toward. I would like to thank you personally, fondly, solicitously, lovingly, amorously (what!) and affectionately, but I would also like to say that I completely understand if you decide to slink away Gollum-like from this blog because of its demented, defective bent. Bollocks, I forgive you, and all that jazz. No problemo!

The new year is coming up, and I’ve been considering calling it quits. However, this blog just has too much traffic still to let it rest in peace. I’ll never understand blog advertisers who don’t actually read posts – but I love you anyhow. I love you personally, fondly, solicitously, lovingly and somewhat amorously. Somehow, through thick and thin and somewhat inbetween, I’ve managed to still attract a middling number of advertisers. And that’s money in my poor pocket that can’t be ignored.

Therefore, Cheap Eats will continue to make lovingly concocted food related posts every now and again.

Yasss, yass, yass as Dean would say.

As a measure of how out of touch this blog is, I didn’t even know about the Jack in the Box two free tacos until just a few days ago. And I had to find out about it the same way that a normal shmuck would – through one of their TV commercials.

After 2:00 pm today, on Tuesday November 16, 2010 you can get two free tacos at Jack in the Box.

Back in “The Day” (bloggin circa 2005), fast food companies like Jack in the Box were beating a path to my email inbox. They would’ve probably sent me a notice about the free tacos 2 months ago. It was all I could do to keep up with the amount of submissions, press, free food and beg letters coming in.

I am SO glad that’s over with.

Even spammers have left, seeking fresh blogging morsels elsewhere. I only got 28 fake comments last week, all saying “nice job, how come your blog doesn’t work on the new google browser.”

Though I found out about it awhile ago, I just decided to post it the DAY of, like 20 minutes before it’s about to go into effect. Because, I like to procrastinate. And you probably shouldn’t be eating too many JITB tacos. I’ve sworn off them myself.

But once every 3 months or so, in a moment of great hangry weakness, I will schlep my way through the drive through and stun my stomach with Grade QuestionMark ground beef mishmash ladled into oil-drenched corn shells, sprinkled with warm shreds of lettuce.

I just can’t help myself.

Ah yes, that ubiquitous question:

Eat or Chuck It?

I’ve often thought that this would make a great reality TV show. Because we know just how GREAT those shows are. It goes like this: line up contestants and put a container of food with a label that says its expiration date in front of them. They either trust the date on the container is correct, or they can call your bluff and eat the food.

Higher elimination levels in this reality game show will feature “obviously” expired food, so that the expiration date doesn’t even make a difference. You know – black pudding, salmon, moldy peaches (ha, not the band), slices of raw liver – just to see who has the cast iron stomach to get to the next round. Last contestant standing, all others eliminated – literally. All contestants will, of course, have to sign waivers of responsibility and blah blah…

Wait, let me guess – you’re the type of person who throws away the milk the day it hits the expiration date.

Shakes head.

No really, I’m really shaking my head. You see, I have a bug in my ear. It’s buzzing.

It is a Class 4 IntelliCovert Miniaturized Operating ThingyDevice. The suits are telling me to tell YOU that there is no conspiracy about expiration dates. That there is no Central HAL-ish Computer subliminally running our lives through these numbers.

Well, they can’t see me typing, so I think we’re safe. At least I don’t think they can detect what I’m typing from the pattern of the sound of the keys I’m pressing, though to be safe I’ve been Hi Pa, Uncle Nathan’s doing just fine! inserting some extra commentary How’s the rutabaga harvest, ey? every so often.

OK, so I’ve pulled a few boners (no not THAT kind of pulling) in my day. I think I may have mentioned this before, but one time (in band camp, of course) I took out a plate of seafood fried rice from the microwave and ate it, thinking that my parents had put it in before they had left for Vegas. Little did I know, it was actually from the day before. Hey, how was I to know – IT WAS WARM.

Son of a gun. I will not even BEGIN to describe the projectiles…

I think I actually fall somewhere in the middle between folks who are paranoid about their milk and yogurt dates being correct, and that lady from the first episode of Hoarders who couldn’t bear to throw away food. Like, the Chicken Tortillla Soup above wasn’t sitting in the fridge. It was frozen solid, so I figured it would probably be good.

Got wood knockers?

The date of January 28 is a little misleading, since there’s no year. Well, it was from the beginning of this year – that’s only nine months expired, so not bad at all, right?

I’m still alive and pearl jamming.

I think with a lot of the “fresh foods” like milk, vegetables, meat, fish – it’s just common sense and using your nose. Stuff like cheese – I’ve been known to slice off the “green” part. Good as new. Moldy bread, good for the head?

A bit more of a gray area when it comes to those dry and canned goods. I think you can usually tell when you open up a can and it smells. Or the bottom of the can has rusted out. Or there’s so many bugs in the dry pasta that it looks like it came seasoned…

My mom is quite a proponent of “Old Food Usage”. Their refrigerator, freezer and pantry are full of all sorts of anachronistic edible treasures. Frozen mystery meats from the 80s. Cans of food where you can tell what era they’re from because of the Mad Men style of font in the titles.

I had to tell her it was time to stop using the old Marjoram to season up stew. It tasted like weeds. I think it was because it was dated 1968…

I have a lot more Matured Food stories to tell but The weather’s been nice here, a little rainy maybe but hey the kids like it I’ve got to run. I’d be curious what the limits are on “expired food” for other Cheap Eats folks…

[Editor's Note: This post was brought to you by Rubicon, the "Soon To Be Cancelled Because Critics Like It But Scuttlefish Don't" show. Season 1 is over, but I'm still basking in that old timey, warm glow of government conglomerate Aunty Nellie is doing fine but her hip's bothering her conspiracy theory. Hmm... I'm slowly realizing that this blog is not really about food - it has morphed into a weird, muddled treatise on Paranoia and its effects on society. I will catch you later, but for now I have to "adjust" the other implanted Class 4 IntelliCovert Miniaturized Operating ThingyDevice I've got on me. Want to know where it is? Surprise Beans!]

Hello. Howzit.

To be honest – and when am I not honest – I’ve had a hard time reverting back to non-Hawaiian-vacation mode. Sitting on a beach in a tropical paradise will do that to you.

To be completely honest – I was trying to think of what kind of post would take the least amount of effort and brainpower. I’m still on Hawaii-time and the old bastard brain is not really functionallying correctly.

To be completely, absolutely honest – I would like to end this post right now and run back to the islands. I would set up a shack selling Cheap Eats of Hawaii.

To tell you the absolute, unequivocal, daring, honest truthfully truth – I have run out of ideas. What, you no like?

So here are some words and pictures of fish from Hawaii, and their resulting crispification (this is probably not a word, but I honestly challenge you to refrain from googling it with your itchy trigger finger).

I’ve been a fisherman since birth, and come from a long line of ancient mariner fisherpeoples (Gramps was a well-known handline angler in Hawaii – picture Hemingway’s Old Farking Man and Da Sea). So when I say that catching your own fish for food qualifies as Cheap Eats material, you should believe me.

Honestly, would I tell one lie? Cherry trees, I goin chop ‘em.

There is a large, large issue with catching your own fish – and that is, in most states you’ll need an (expensive) license to fish. Then there are all sorts of boring regulations and limits and size requirements to follow. I’m not even going to tell you how much the California DFG regulation book weighs. Holy crap, I can’t believe the amount of restrictions there are.

And trust me, DO NOT take above the limit and please follow all the farking regulations. Speaking from experience, would you like to know how much the fine is for not having a license or taking more than your limit?

Let me tell you, it is quite a bit more than a speeding ticket.

But in Hawaii – there is no license (no marine license, that is – I believe you need a freshwater license). The limits and regulations are nowhere near as restrictive as the mainland. (By the way, a lot of residents moonlight as commercial fisherman – you just need a $50 commercial license, and you’re ready to go. Sign me up.) And there are obvious “pollution” aspects from chemical factories here in Cali that don’t really exist in Hawaii (well, ciguatera was an issue for awhile.)

It’s a farking fisherman’s paradise. No bulai.

And it makes “subsistence fishing” very, very attractive. My uncle in Hawaii, who is a retired semi-famous chef (no, not Sam Bok Choy), actually says that nowadays, he’ll just go down to the beach in the morning and catch a few fish for dinner. I think a lot of people do that, or if not, damn they should.

Everything is expensive in Hawaii, especially if you’re a tourist. But if you live there, you can get by just catching your dinner and picking fruit.

Trust me, would I lie or exaggerate greatly to da max?

We actually went down to the beach twice to fish – once to try catch some hagi (triggerfish), and the other time it was at night for delicious upapalu (a type of cardinalfish). No luck on the hagis, but we did catch some moana (goatfish) shown in the photo at top.

But then, our nice neighbor brought over some menpachi (u’u, or soldierfish) that were leftover from his commercial fishing venture. Nice guy. Menpachi are a pretty popular fish around here.

Menpachi have a distinct smell, so you really gotta fry ‘em. No boil or steam the buggahs. Also, try watch the bones. But ho, they ono.

We fried em up outside the house fo’ prevent da kine stink. Ono, with light beer and smiles all around. Uncles and aunts, all talking story.

[Editor's Note: This post was brought to you by honesty and Hawaii. Much Mahalo-ness to you. I am sure that I've over-simpified fishing in Hawaii versus fishing in California. I'm sure there are other ramifications and hidden cost of living issues. I'm sure the grass is always da kine greener. However, I just want to say that if you gave me a choice, I'd choose fishing in Hawaii. One of my fondest memories is handlining uku with dad and grandpa from a small boat off the Kona coast. I don't even know if that's possible any more.]

Well, seeing as I have to skedaddle (and just try looking up where that word came from), let me leave you here with a picture of chicken meatballs on sticks. I’ve been trying to find a good recipe for them, along with a non-sweet sauce to dip them in, so let me know if you know of one.

Actually, wait a couple weeks to send your recipe. That’s cause we’re skedaddling off on vacation. Where we’ll go, no one will know. Or actually: try wait we going go. I come back bumbye. I would elaborate, but I’m afraid of further butchering the language.

We’re hitting the mothership. Well, one of the motherships. Perhaps a half or quarter mothership, or just an adoptive mothership in theory, but one that has a special meaning anyhow.

This post has been brought to you by the words “skedaddle” and “mothership“.

What, pau already.

I am sitting here at the computer. Waiting.

Waiting, waiting for my homemade ginger ale to call. Suddenly, he breaks into song: I’m waiting by the phone. Waiting for you to call me up and tell me I’m not alone. Hello, speak up, is there ginger ale there?

These hang ups are getting me down.

In a world frozen over with over fermentation. Let’s talk it over, let’s go out and paint the town.

Cause I’m waiting by the phone. Waiting for ginger ale to call me up and tell me I’m not alone…

End song plagiarization. Start recipe plagiarization.

So, I’ve been wanting to try out making some homemade ginger ale for awhile now. The idea came to me in a dream. Well, not really in a dream, because I wasn’t asleep. Actually, I was awake and this was no waking dream or nightmare. Actually squared, I was already on the interweb looking for a cheap recipe to try out.

The thing with all these ginger ale and ginger beer recipes is that they often require huge amounts of labor, time, time, time, time and weird ingredients, in that exact order. For the ginger beer, you have to make something called a “plant” and feed it. No thankee. Dude, I’m not going to keep adding sugar and yeast to a bottle for 2 weeks to produce some crappy tasting, slightly alcoholic ginger swill that I could just buy at Trader Joe’s.

But I found one ginger ale recipe that seemed pretty simple, both in ingredients and procedure.

Plus, it was written by a Professor-guy.

Man, that’s enough to convince me. Who would you rather trust with potentially exploding ale – a 30 year old mummy [sic] blogger or a Professor-guy of Biology and Chemistry?

The math, it should be done.

So I tried it out and the results are sorta detailed below.

The Professor-guy’s Homemade Ginger Ale

1 cup sugar — $0.30
1 lemon — $0.30
2 tbsp grated ginger — $0.25
1/4 teaspoon yeast — $0.15
water — negligible
2 liter plastic bottle

Total: $1.00

OK – you probably want to grate up the ginger first. This took me the longest time, even with a really good microplane zester thingy. I just have the habit of grating knuckles and fingertips when going too quickly. You can use less ginger – we actually felt like it needed MORE, but then we’re ginger eating maniacs.

Get the plastic bottle and make sure it’s clean. Oh, dude, I would NOT use glass bottles. No way. Using that much yeast makes it ferment like a fermenting madman. Just know that I will not be held responsible for any inadvertent boom-booms. Trust me, or rather, trust the Professor-guy whose recipe this is.

Get a plastic funnel, pour the sugar and yeast into the bottle. Shake it a little. Get a glass measuring cup, stick the ginger in it. Juice the lemon, and pour it into the cup as well. Swirl it around.

Now dump that lemon-ginger mofo into the funnel. Professor-guy said to not worry about it sticking in the funnel. Fill up the unwashed glass measuring cup with clean water. Pour that into the funnel and it’ll wash all the remains into the bottle. Damn, I like this Professor-guy – such attention to detail.

Fill up the remaining space in the plastic bottle with clean water. You can use the funnel if you like. Just don’t fill it up too much. I actually left about 2 inches at the top, though Professor-guy says 1 inch is OK. Cap it and shake to distribute – turn the bottle upside down to make sure the sugar is not sticking in the crevices.

Now comes the sketchy part – leave the bottle in room temperature for between 8-48 hours. I would say to put it in a bomb-proof bag, but not everyone has one of those. The reason for the great range of time is that the temperature of the room and the efficacy of the yeast can be REALLY different.

So how do you know it’s done – you kinda “squeeze the bottle forcefully”. So much for science! If you can’t really dent it in, then it’s time to refrigerate it. Then chill it in the fridge overnight. When you’re opening it the next day, make sure to open it slowly. Dang, there’s a lot of gas in there.

You’ll want to strain it into a glass, unless you like bits of ginger and lemon floating around in your glass. I actually do – feels more homemade.

This entire recipe was copped from Professor-guy. Thank you, Professor-guy.

Some quick thoughts – I didn’t use a standard 2 liter bottle because I didnt’ have one at home. I used one of those harder plastic containers, but it seems to work the same way.

However, I found my ginger ale bottle got rock hard within like 5-6 hours! This is probably because I used double the yeast recommended by the professor. I did not have any inadvertent boom-booms, but this is probably not recommended. However, it did produce some passable carbonated ginger ale in a shorter time. I used the Fleischmann’s instant active yeast packets.

I’ve heard you can use dried grated ginger with similar results, but we always have the fresh stuff around. I thought the lemon juice was just for flavoring, and Professor-guy indeed said it was optional. However, I’ve seen another person say it’s important to balance the pH or something. I’ll let the other Professor-guys (or gals) comment on that.

The refrigeration is actually necessary to stop or slow the fermentation process, so make sure you put the bottle in the fridge before it has a chance to get really sketchy. Because the liquid is cold, the sugar sometimes doesn’t dissolve right away, and that may affect the time as well. I might experiment with using a simple syrup instead of sugar next time.

Overall, the ginger ale was surprisingly good. In my humble non-Professor-guy opinion, it was more of a “lemony soda drink with a ginger taste”. But I’d much rather drink this than Sprite.

It lasts for a few days in the fridge. For grins, on the 3rd day I dumped a little more sugar and yeast into the bottle to see if it would make it more fizzy again. I left it out until the bottle got hard, and then refrigerated it. That actually worked pretty nicely, except it tasted a little too much like breadahol (alcoholic bread) than it probably should.

On the subject of alcoholic content – I don’t think that there’s that high a level of alcohol in this type of homemade ginger ale. I think if you keep on “feeding it”, it might get higher. It certainly tasted more like alcohol after I tried adding more yeast. Well, maybe some of the Professor-guy-types out there can weigh in on that.

Anyhow, at about $1 a bottle it’s a pretty nice drink to sip, while waiting on the phone.

[Editor's Note: I am not a Professor of Grungology, but Magic Bonus points will be given if you knew the song I was singing. Without googling it, genius.]

Breaking news flash: Over the past couple weeks, I’ve finally started to slightly enjoy sashimi, i.e. raw fish.

And it only took me 38 years.

This will certainly help with my J credibility. I’m sort of an “egg” – or is it a banana? Still heavily anti-wasabi but I’ve slowly come around on the raw fish thing. I guess it doesn’t hurt that this is probably the freshest yellowtail sashimi I’ve ever had – it was probably swimming (minding its own fishy business) around 2 days ago. I know, because my dad caught it – or rather, caught like 15 of them.

This is not an isolated incident.

Maybe I took it for granted, but we’ve always had this kind of fresh fish. If it wasn’t my dad or relatives, it was his friends. I still live with this crazy fish-flinging culture that’s always been more the rule than the exception. “Oh, you’ve been a great friend – here, have a whole albacore tuna.”

I still remember high school friends being bug-eyed at an enormous 7 pound plate of sashimi. Oh, I understood how much it would cost if you bought it at a sushi shop. Probably hundreds of dollars. I could only smile and nod, while secretly wishing for a big plate of fried chicken with a side of mac and cheese instead .

Hard knock life, eh?

I mean, I could eat a piece if I was forced to. I just didn’t see why it was so great. Since it was so expensive, I felt it was my sacred duty to abstain from eating as much of it as I could so that other people could enjoy it. More for them. Imagine your parents own a saffron farm, but you really don’t like the taste of saffron. Now replace “saffron” with “sashimi”, “farm” with “catch”, and re-order the words around variously and welcome to my world.

I know: sux to be me.

Something in my brain, maybe an anti-sashimi brain slug, has caused me to take a pass on raw fish for all these years. I don’t know what it is, but suddenly I’m sort of OK with a few pieces. Maybe all the Jack Daniels we’ve been sampling at Friday night’s dinner-with-the-folks has finally neutralized (or pickled) the anti-sashimi brain slug.

In any case, I’m also sorta proud that I actually sliced up the sashimi shown above from a huge slab of the yellowtail. Just call me Morimoto.

Nothing else to report today.

Move along.

[Editor's Note: No anti-sashimi brain slugs were hurt in the making of this post. Some slabs of yellowtail, however, were slightly mangled.]