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Chicken-Fried Steak

Alton Brown had an amusing take on these flat meat diner foods in which he concluded that regional variances render this American staple undefinable. And if you were to try to find agreeable definitions, you would indeed be engaging in folly. Fortunately, I’m never too concerned with being agreeable here, so I’ll happily offer definitions.

Chicken-fried steak: flattened beef cutlet breaded with flour and deep-fried, then topped with sawmill gravy. Served with fries.

Country-fried steak: flattened beef cutlet breaded with flour and pan-fried, then topped with broth-based brown gravy. Served with fries.

Salisbury steak: cubed beef cutlet breaded with flour and pan-fried, topped with onions and braised in tomato sauce with broth. Served with mashed potatoes or vegetables.

There. I’ve managed to piss everyone off now.

But as for the nostalgia-based reason for this post: I miss chicken-fried steak, which was a staple of my west-Texas childhood. Every restaurant, diner, and cafeteria had it – usually as the first item on the kids’ menu. The Midwest, however, seems to favor country-fried steak. And I don’t remember ever seeing Salisbury steak outside TV dinners. And none of these variations are very common at all now, seeming only to occupy a niche in country home kitchen type restaurants like Bob Evans or Cracker Barrel (neither of which are very good, I’ll add).

But not being terribly culinary difficult, it can be easily made at home. Which I did.

Family reviews indicated that it was “not terrible”, and “not the worst thing I’ve ever had”. So I guess that’s why it doesn’t find its way onto many menus. It’s in actuality cheap food with minimal spices, relying on flavor through caloric addition.

But it did bring back memories.

–Simon

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Bourgeois Booze

It’s funny – I remember a line in The Catcher in the Rye where the whiny social commentator protagonist reflects on the overuse of the term “bourgeois” and his disdain for those who use it. If memory serves, and I’m not looking this up to verify right now, it’s the adjective form of Bourgeoisie – the rising merchant middle class in France, which at the time was a new concept in their history of traditional peasant/aristocrat societal roles. Acting bourgeois was attempting to be aristocratic, sans-title, through money alone. It’s not difficult to find modern examples of this behavior, ergo the term’s continued prevalence today (though I doubt many who use the term could provide so eloquent a definition).

But like the whiny Holden Caufield, I agree with its overuse. Worse, we’ve dumbed down the pronunciation. “Bougie” is its contemporary variant, which I quite frankly find to sound uneducated, although that may be the point, seeing as the term is only used in the context of punching up. The well-off might suffer delusions of nobility, but the social elites have no need to acknowledge those beneath them at all. The term’s usage, therefore, appears to be reserved for those at the bottom, who berate those slightly above them for perceived snootiness.

A modern variant is the Yuppie, of which I myself have been previously accused. When you rise above, there’s jealousy by former equals, and in flow accusations of ostentation, no matter how seemingly benign. Oh well. I’ll file that away for future analysis after I drink this bourbon, which I’ve placed on our new home-made bougie Yuppie liquor shelves!:

I lamented just recently on how difficult it is to find well-made niche products, and how the better alternative is to instead build it oneself. This applied, unexpectedly, to some very basic shelving as well, which was needed to more efficiently store liquor that did not fit upon the cabinet with the rest. Some stained oak planks and mounting hardware solved the problem. Additional storage built. For storage.

…And maybe to display some of the nicer stuff. There’s the Bougie factor, I suppose. Guilty after all.

–Simon

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Kurobuta Copa

I’d never had a copa roast. It’s apparently from the neck meat. Which means lots of connective tissue. Which means low and slow cooking…like in a crock pot!

Paired with mashed potatoes and an oniony brown sauce = yum.

–Simon

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That Which Can’t Be Found…

…can be built!

I’m growing increasingly weary of the construction quality of purchased products. It’s nothing new, of course. Every product, once popular, is imitated by other manufacturers (patents allowing). And what begins as a consumer-friendly price reduction quickly turns into marketing gimmicks to build brand loyalty, followed by a race to the bottom. The prices stabilize somewhere beneath the original price, and then once that maximum price a consumer is willing to pay for the product is determined, the profit margin can only increase by reducing manufacturing costs. Ergo, in capitalism, a good idea turns into a readily-available mediocre product that breaks much sooner than it should. And we put up with it.

But what really irks me is when I can’t even throw money at the problem and find a luxury-priced version of an item that’s actually built better – what I call the “lazy tax”. Apparently I’m an aberration to consumer spending habits, for what I want usually doesn’t even exist. And in the time I spend searching for the unicorn, I could have built it myself.

So fine! Here’s my new cucumber trellis:

Constructed with treated lumber, PVC-coated fencing wire, and deck screws; this bad boy certainly isn’t going anywhere. Especially since it’s mounted to stakes driven 3 feet into the soil. Total price? I dunno, maybe around $40? Certainly no more than $50, considering I had some materials on hand already.

A flimsy bent wire prefab? Definitely more.

Don’t stand for this people! By all means, be lazy and spend your money. That helps the economy and drives up shareholder stock values (hopefully mine, most importantly). But don’t settle for cheapness!

Wasting your money on cheap imported good is definitely American, but so is ingenuity.

Lecture over.

–Simon

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Post Bow, The Echo of the Hook

In continuing my theme of asinine titles for meteorological terms, here’s a more dramatic sequel to April’s inclement weather.

Don’t Squall Line – Take a Bow Hook

A particularly nasty bit of weather had descended upon us the evening of May 16, preceded by the familiar calm. And as the wind picked up, I checked the weather radar. This time, I was more concerned than my usual apathetic American High Plains upbringing self would normally be. And this static image doesn’t replicate the still image transitional timeline. There was a very clear storm rotation in progress, and one of the most easily recognized of radar signatures was to our southwest.

A hook echo, and so well-defined that the NWS had issued a radar-confirmed tornado warning. And it was 100 miles out and on a direct path to us. Admittedly, that’s a bit far to expect a tornado to travel on the ground, but it’s happened before.

There were 5 confirmed tornadoes in Indiana that day, presumably this among them. Fortunately for us, it dissipated before reaching our home. But as the remnants of the storm passed overhead, it was obvious it hadn’t lost its rotation.

There’s the devil’s sphincter for you.

Out west, these storms were always rain-wrapped, so the funnels were not so clearly defined. They were ominous masses of dark creeping across the cotton fields, and they were clear indications to move your ass. Here though, you can see shapes, and these were the clearest I’ve seen up close. This time, winning the meteorological lottery came with pictures.

(23 people died in the storms that weekend.)

–Simon