A few changes and a lot of vinegar
I was prepared to announce a pivot from $40/week strategy to a $200/mo strategy, but got hung up trying to figure out what my "fiscal month" was going to be. I chatted with ChatGPT about it and it turned me on to the existence of the accounting year of 13 consecutive 4-week periods, and while that's metric enough to be slightly distasteful to me, it's still random and odd enough to feel passably comfortable to my Customary soul. So I'm moving to a...$184/4-weeks budget. I made a new page to track my spending publicly. Keep an eye on me.
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After blowing my mind on ramen yesterday, my friend and I went to a bookstore and read a lot of books for hours without buying anything, like people do.
I picked up a lot of food books. I can already tell my view of them has changed. They seem more promising of useful information than they used to, rather than seeming full of shadows and confusion. There were the usual recipe books, but also some very intriguing pedagogical books on cooking, and a really, really book from the New York Times:
It's sort of what it sounds like. The inside is full of general instructions and a listing of ingredients but no amounts. I love it. I couldn't buy it, but I see it's available from the Queens Library, that wonderful font of free knowledge whose urban history tome I dropped on the subway floor today (sorry). I'm maxed out of books at the moment but I will check it out (literally) when I return a few of the ones I have.
Another awesome book that I knew about was the somewhat famous "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat. Paging through that book at my parents' house a year ago is what planted the primordial seed of hope in my decidedly non-cook's brain for the first time. Little things I remember from it have informed some of my cooking decisions even in the last few weeks. Her talking about the need for acid in delicious food was transformative, and she specifically talked about the power of vinegar, which until then I had mostly thought of as good for cleaning, science experiments, and making substitute buttermilk when making pancakes. Since then, I've tried putting it in many things, and the effect is always wonderful. And I'm talking plain white vinegar; I'm sure a real culinary vinegar (red wine? white wine? apple cider?) would be even better.
Well, even yesterday, paging through it again, the page I opened to was talking about "chicken with vinegar", and a quick scan of the ingredient list showed that it was mostly stuff I had and that what I didn't have was probably skippable at least for this educational phase. I was instantly intrigued! Thinking about it in the store I realized that of course, all that chicken was missing to be complete was being drowned in vinegar. I didn't write any of the recipe down or take a picture, but I noted down quickly "chicken vinegar" in my notebook and tried to soak in as much as I could from the procedure. The thing is, the procedure sounded so much like what I had been doing anyway, it didn't seem like something I could forget.
So today I tried it. I properly floured the chicken before browning it in butter and setting it aside. I cooked the onions down in the same pan, then poured in a bunch of vinegar and put the chicken back in. Then I closed the lid, sat down at the kitchen table, and prepared for a zoom call.
Fortunately it finished before I had to get on the call, and also happily, it was very delicious. It was almost the same as what I usually do except I added vinegar instead of water. So much better! Why didn't I think of that myself? I made my typical pan sauce with butter and yoghurt added to the vinegary onions left in the pan when I took the chicken out. It was delicious but I wonder what else I could do.
There's also something sliiightly weird about cooking this chicken this way, on the stovetop. One, I should probably separate my leg quarters before cooking them. It's a little grotesque confronting a piece of chicken that big. Two, maybe it's just the super cheap feedlot chicken factor. I know that stuff is not super pristine. Maybe that's what I'm picking up on. It's ignorable but something I would like to solve before serving it to someone. Any thoughts?
I was running to my call so I forgot to photograph before trying to wolf it down. I remembered halfway through when I was in the zoom "waiting room" waiting to be admitted, hoping the host wouldn't admit me as I'm photographing a huge plate of chicken on my desk (I got my wish).
Gonna have to hit the store soon but I am grateful that I made it all the way through Monday with plenty. I'm usually running low. Lots of good free food this week. As they say endlessly in everything I watch these days for language study: الحمد لله! Praise God.