Wonderful World of Meal Preparation

I would like to take a few minutes today and talk about the wonderful world of meal preparation. As a working individual I would hate to have to come home every day to make dinner, and then use the rest of my limited spare time to create a lunch for the next day. Eating out becomes ludicrously expensive and is often less healthy than a home cooked meal. My solution? Cooking in batches. Making multiple meals in one sitting is one of the best ways to save time, and means I'm less likely to slink over to the golden arches because I didn't have time to make something the night before.

Let's take one of the staples of my diet -- a meat sauce pasta. The time it would take to make three servings versus one is negligible -- I'm still going through the same motions, just with a slightly larger quantity. Instead of rationing out all of the ingredients and storing the rest, I can throw everything in -- one whole package of ground beef, a bag of brown rice pasta fusilli, a jar of tomato basil marinara sauce, and however many onions I'm feeling like. Just like that, I have three boxes of an estimated 826 calories, meaning I'm covered for 3/5ths of my work week. Package in a piece of fruit, two cups of yogurt, a bag of baby spinach, some mixed nuts, and a fiber bar and I'm all set for a workday.

ZipLoc loves me.

As I begin to rev up for my October Body Challenge (more on that later), it is important that I establish and maintain good eating habits. Like many Americans, I used to constantly skip breakfast (which we're continually drilled as the most important meal). I'm sure many can relate to rushing out to our first class of the day thinking the granola bar hastily stuffed into the backpack would tide us over 'til lunch. The theory behind why this meal is the one that loses out over the other ones is simple: time. We simply don't have time in the morning to prepare anything.

So... what to do while that lunch above is heating up? Make sure we have food available for breakfast, of course! Cereal and milk is a decent start, but you don't just eat bread and dairy for lunch or dinner do you? No, breakfast is a whole meal and should be treated as such. Inspired by one of my favorite breakfast eateries, Voula's Offshore Cafe, home of the cable-TV famous Greek Hobo, I put many of my favorite breakfast foods together and swirl them all about. The result is a breakfast concoction that I would make time for to eat if needed.

I can fry up enough hash browns and simmer enough turkey bacon to last me a week, needing only a short microwave burst to revive them. Then each morning all I need is the five minutes it takes to scramble up two eggs, mix it around with the hashbrowns and bacon, throw some cheese and ground flaxseed up on top, and pour a glass of OJ to have about 530 delicious calories to start my day with.

I call it the homestyle hobo.

In the span of 75 minutes on one night, I have put myself in a position to be able to need only ten minutes each morning to have my food ready for the next nine hours, for the majority of the week. Saving time, not having to spend money out at restaurants, and being healthier for it? Sounds like a trifecta to me.

Untimely Breakdown

I awoke this morning to find that at some point during the night my automatic watch had stopped working -- well, actually at exactly 1:40:37AM according to the frozen hands. I was pretty upset about this because I had just spent $20 last week getting it repaired. The original problem was that the date pusher button had popped out, and simply would not stay in. It turns out this was caused by a missing c-clip, which does exactly what its name suggest: a c-shaped piece that clips onto the pusher's bar to make sure it doesn't pop out. As I left the repair shop, I was given a warning: they couldn't find a c-clip in the watch. Either it never had one, or it was floating around somewhere within the inner workings. If it was the latter, it would be extremely expensive to get out because it would require systematically taking the watch apart piece by piece to find the clip. But I wouldn't have to worry about that -- unless my watch stopped working.

My first reaction was to smash my watch against something to see if I could dislodge the clip, but after hammering it into a myriad of objects ranging from my hand to an armchair I gave up. I put the watch on my desk and stared at it. If it cost $20 to put in a clip the size of a large grain of sand, it would probably cost more than the watch itself to perform some sort of part extraction. So with nothing to lose, I decided to open it up myself.


I was ready for anything -- except for how to open the thing up. Luckily we live in the internet age and after five seconds of Googling, I managed to get the back off using a Dr. Grip pen as my unscrewing tool. You could say that thanks to the internet, it really took no time at all.


What the heck was I looking at? I saw the automatic winder, some gears, and tiny screws; they were... minute. I played with the crown and day pusher for a little while to see how they worked from the inside (gaining no knowledge whatsoever), and after killing some time with that I was ready to go with my tools.


Fortunetely for me, I was hit by a timely jolt of [what I'm not afraid to admit as] genius. A c-clip is a very small piece, and it supposedly loose and causing havoc probably meant that it was dislodgable. If not by physical blunt trauma, then perhaps with the power of wind! I assumed that with the cramped confines of the watch combined with the small size of the clip, it would probably be like Twister in there (the clip, of course, being the cow) with my friend, a can of compressed air. So I stuck the red tube into the only part that I thought could be a viable opening...


...and pulled the trigger. Nothing flew out, but the previously motionless gold wheel started to turn! I flipped the watch around in my hand and sure enough, the second hand was ticking away -- a heartbeat. I had successfully performed a watch repair. I looked around for someone to hand me a merit badge, but the only one I could celebrate with was my Blund bear -- and he doesn't give out merit badges for just anything. I had fixed my watch, but really it begs the question of its quality if it just randomly stops working. Only time will tell if it happen again, but if it does I'll be ready for it -- although I'll be pretty ticked tocked.

How-To: Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

I've never claimed to be perfect at anything (especially when it comes to cooking), but I think I've cracked the secret on the best way to make hard boiled eggs. And by "cracked the secret", I mean found a website containing a process that I've worked to perfection. A perfect hard boiled egg is one with yellow yolk (not nasty green) with tender white that peels easily. These can keep in the 'fridge for days, ready for snacking or a quick breakfast. The steps are broken down into thus:

1. Don't use eggs that are fresh (just brought from farm, or bought from store) -- make sure they've sat in your refrigerator for days (if not weeks). Needless to say, that doesn't mean wait until they are expired.
2. Put the eggs inside a pot or pan in a single layer configuration.
   
3. Pour cold water over the eggs, filling the pot/pan until the water level is approximately 1" above the eggs.
   
4. Put in a few dashes of salt and bring the pot to a boil.
   
5. The second it reaches the boiling point, remove the pot from the element and turn the heat down to low.
6. Return the pot to the element, and leave on for one minute.
7. Remove the pot from the element and cover it, letting it sit for 12 minutes.
8. Remove the eggs from the pot and rinse with cool water until eggs are cool to the touch. Stow eggs in refrigerator.
   

Source: How to Make Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs (for those that want to read background info.)

So that covers the cooking aspect. But anyone who's ever made hard boiled eggs knows: half the battle is de-shelling them. The key to this was using eggs that weren't fresh, as they are are allegedly impossible to de-shell cleanly no matter what technique is used. The way I've found best to do the deed is to:

1. Crack the top and bottom of the egg with a handy spoon or chopstick. A poke with a knife will work also -- the key is to rupture the egg shell and skin on both sides (and by skin I don't mean the egg white, I mean the small clear skin that sits between the shell and the white).
   
2. Roll the egg between your hands like you're trying to start a fire, gently applying pressure to crack the shell all around it.
   
3. Move the egg under some cool running water (it doesn't have to be at full blast!), and start peeling the egg at the fat end, with the fat end up -- there should be an air pocket there. With a little peeling, the shell should fall right off (as the water works under the egg skin).
4. Clean the egg off of any shell pieces left with the water.
5. Enjoy!

Hard boiled eggs provide a quick ready-to-eat snack that is relatively quick to make if you prepare 'em in batches (I did a batch of over four dozen this past weekend while watching a Mariner's game), are very healthy, and can be cut up and thrown into a salad. Follow the above steps and you'll get yellow-yolk fresh tasting compact foods -- absolutely perfect every time.