Monday, March 2, 2009

In Which Mrpeenee Reveals the Depths of His Martha Stewart Fascination

I make my own vegetable stock. There. I’ve admitted it. I am not ashamed, I do not need an intervention, I make my own stock. As someone who cooks a lot, I generate a lot of kitchen scraps, flotsam like onion skins and carrot peels, the occasional exotica of sweet potato skins, all that. For years, I dumped them in a corner of the yard, just like my granny did, and built up compost. Incidentally, there’s a jasmine and a rose growing out of that patch which have responded to the mulch so enthusiastically that they are now collapsing the trellis they’re on. It’s always something.

But the stock, queen, what about the stock? Oh, yeah. For my birthday last year, R Man gave me a pressure cooker. I was thrilled, which in itself says something pretty Martheusian about me, doesn’t it? One of our friends mentioned how excellent the cookers were for making stock and I was off like a shot. Now, instead of composting, I keep the scraps in gallon baggies in the freezer and when they’ve accumulated to a volume that makes getting to the ice cubes challenging, I know it’s time for a new batch of Mother Peenee’s Homemade Vegetable Stock. Trademark.

I pulverize everything in the Cuisineart (whee! Extra appliances!) until it’s the texture of baby poo, shovel it in the pressure cooker, seal the lid and let the magic happen. Twenty minutes later I have delicious, delicious stock to make beans or lentils or rice or, because I’m a wild man, curry.

Of course, part of it is the thrill of using a pressure cooker. I’m sure all of us raised in the 60’s remember the rep these miscreants had as Killers of the Kitchen. Headlines like “Housewife scalded by exploding mashed potatoes” play out in my mind every time I use mine, but if Martha can live dangerously, so can I.

Next up: Starching your linens using the by-products of your yeast infection. Stay tuned.

9 comments:

  1. Fascinating Granny but can you make possum stew or gopher gravy? Also Martha I’m most interested in your tips for using the pressure cooker to starch my linens with a yeast infection stock.

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  2. Nice!
    You've inspired me....either to make my own stock...or maybe just attempt to blow up an old pressure cooker for fun. Not sure which yet but either way, it should be fun!

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  3. Pirate
    I saw your garbage diving post, so I wouldn't be too snarky about True Confession posts.

    Jeisean
    science is always enlightening.

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  4. I've been doing some baking for charity. This post has convinced me to STOP all forms of cooking. And it also has given me a new appreciation for the fact that I've never had a yeast infection.
    ~Mary

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  5. Makes perfect sense to me - but then I was raised in a strange world that was half the 1960s in which we actually dwelt and half the Edwardian childhood of my grandmothers, so children wearing sailors suits and being forced to eat junket also make sense to me.

    We make all our own stock except vegetable, and now I think you've inspired me!

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  6. This does not inspire me to cook, but now I do want to buy the whole Mother Peenee's line of products.

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  7. I've always loved Martha, but people look at me funny when I admit it out loud. ::shrug::

    I'll pass on the starching of my linens though....ack.

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  8. Pssst. I know a secret about Martha. DON'T TELL ANYONE!!!! She's a narcoleptic. Really. My sister-in-law is a big-wig NY trusts and estates lawyer and Martha is one of her clients. She routinely falls asleep at meetings and her assistants say 'Just keep going. She's narcoleptic. She'll wake up in a bit.'

    "I pulverize everything until it's the texture of baby poo." I think you have to put that in your ads!

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  9. PS One of my favorite things about Martha is how awful she is at casual banter on her show. So fun!

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