Category: General Crap You Don’t Care About

Emergency Oatmeal

WFMH

Listening to: Death Atlas- Cattle Decapitation , or alternatively, you could listen to whatever the fuck makes you happy right now

Uncooked oats, yum yum!

‘Sup fuckers! Uncertain times call for usual coping mechanisms, which includes my grand return to my cute little blog I forget I have, with the rant at the end if you care to read it. Here’s a recipe for some oatmeal I bring to work so I have something low-cost to munch on. Fuck those disgusting little flavor packets, you can make your own with a lot less packaging and minimal effort.

Emergency Oatmeal- Yields about 3-4 servings depending on how many feelings you’re dealing with

  • 2 cups quick oats (from a 25# bag you keep for these occasions)
  • 1/4 c brown sugar
  • 1/2 t cinammon
  • 1/2 t nutmeg
  • 1/4 t cloves
  • Optional: raisins or other fruit fruit if that’s your thing

0. If you don’t have brown sugar, it’s easy to make if you happen to have molasses and white sugar: mix about a cup of white sugar with a few tablespoons of molasses until it’s the darkness you’re used to (the brown sugar, not your inner demons).
1. Mix all the ingredient together. Note that I don’t actually measure my spices, I just give a shake-shake until it looks like enough. Add more oatmeal if you manage to fuck it up.
2. Shake some of the oatmeal mix into your microwave-safe bowl and cover it with water so it’s soaked but not a huge soup, ya dig? Blast it for maybe 99 seconds, keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t explode. Alternatively, you could do this on the stovetop and cook for longer, but that’s another dish and more time.

Look what a fancy container I have to keep this in at work, I am just the definition of bougie, aren’t I?

Okay, so the past few weeks have been crazy. Many of you don’t have an open workplace to bring your frugal oatmeal to anymore. Everyone is adjusting to a new normal these days and it’s hard. Cattle Decapitation really started something when they busted out their single “Bring Back The Plague”. If you sing the refrain, using your most creative interpretations of Travis’ vocals and controlling your timing, it’s almost 20 seconds long to wash your hands to.

If you can, buy some merch from your favorite bands so they can stay afloat while they’re having to postpone or cancel their tours. This is a great time to work on your battle jacket. Do your best Chopped (in Half) meal plans getting creative what you might have left in your pantry. I know you like to feel evil, but you probably have a backlog of bathbombs, special soap, or whatever you’ve been saving for “the special time”. This is the special time. Look better than you feel. Master your wingged eyes for your corpsepaint. I believe in you douchebags, okay? <3

Sourdough Starter- A Different Kind of Pet

WFMH

Listening to: Rituals- Rotting Christ

My SD starter, lovingly-dubbed Rodger, straight out of the fridge.

Step up your baking pleb, it’s time to learn to use sourdough.

This simple magical goop is made of flour, water, and wild yeast that grows on every surface. Pioneers usually made it by accident by leaving out dough and letting it ferment, this was how bread was leavened before commercial yeast was available. Ask me for a piece of my starter, I am happy to share. If you’re far away, you can make your own. Soon it will become a part of your family and will keep you company. Name your new friend and feast upon its cooked flatulence.

Rodger, 8 hours after the first feed right out of the fridge. Right after this pic was taken, he was fed a second time.

Why keep a sourdough starter if I can just get yeast at the store?

Yeast at the store is just fine and works quickly. Sourdough is much less convenient, but the taste it brings to your baking can’t be matched. There’s so much to learn with sourdough recipes and see how you can make more homemade items. The starter I use isn’t particularly “sour” as with commercial bread, but I can taste the tang when I made crackers or pizza dough. 

If you enjoy experimenting with baking the slower, more old-fashioned way, this is for you. Many recipes will call for commercial yeast as well as starter, so don’t dump your packets or jar of commercial yeast just yet!

How to take care of a starter

  1. Find a good sized glass, ceramic, or food-grade plastic crock for your goo to live in. Depending on how much you need, try for at least 1 or 2 qts. 
  2. “Feed” the starter: Use a food-scale to tare your container and set the units to grams. Add all of the starter you have, add equal parts water and flour, in that order. Add the water first, as you can always remove some if you add too much, THEN the flour, as it it much more difficult to remove once it’s incorporated in the mixture. Make sure to mix it very thoroughly until there are no lumps of flour. The yeast that is in the starter now has food, and will start to foam up. 
  3. Keep an eye on the starter. Sometimes it will open the lid to its container and shit all over your counter if it’s really excited. Once it’s really frothy and bubbly, it’s ripe and ready to use. This can take a few hours, depending on how much it’s been fed. 
  4. Keep the starter in the fridge when you’re not going to use it for a few days. Chilling the starter will let the yeast remain dormant if you’re not going to bake for a while. Make sure to bust it out at least the night before you plan on baking and feed it. 
Rodger, 8 hours after the second feed. At this point, before feeding again I discarded 4.5 cups to make waffles for dinner. Fed what remained a third time.

I have too much starter, wat do, WFMH?

Fear not, young headbanger. For baking purposes, you might only need 100g or so of starter, depending on your recipe. You’re going to have a lot extra. Don’t dump the excess, you savage! Plenty of recipes call for “discard” sourdough or unfed starter. I make focaccia, waffles, crackers, popovers, and plenty of items that use the discard. Those recipes will come in due time, my dude.

The only time you want to throw away your starter is if it gets moldy. That, my brutal buddies, is no bueno. If your starter has been in the fridge for a while, you’ll notice that some of it has separated, a sort of black liquid \m/ on the top, which can just be drained off.

Overnight after the third feed, Rodger is getting frothy and light in texture. Fed for a fourth more time after this pic was taken. 

Bread is an expansive topic and can merit its own metal-themed blog, so I’ll only post the basics and my favorite recipes and let you do the rest of the research if you want to get more into it. King Arthur Flour is definitely an authority I refer back to time after time. You can get as fancy and into the hobby as you want, or just do the basics and you’ll still have homemade delicious bread.

Day 2, from fridge to frothy after 4 feeds. This is where you want the starter to be for baking bread or things that need a strong yeast presence, especially if you don’t want to add commercial yeast.

I acquired my starter from the bakery I used to work for and have since shared chunks of my starter with at least half a dozen pals. I named mine Rodger, he is a part of my little family. 

If your bread isn’t perfect the first few times you make it, don’t worry, just repurpose it. Seasoned croutons, bread crumbs, bread pudding, or French toast are all options to reuse sub-par bread. Worst case scenario the bread isn’t great but your house smells like a home.

Welcome to Well Fed Metalhead

WFMH

Listening to: Nordland I- Bathory 

Greetings, viewer. This is the Well Fed Metalhead. I am a Washingtonian who enjoys cooking, canning, and most importantly, heavy metal of all flavors and styles.

My style of cooking is generally pretty simple with as many homemade elements as possible. My influences are Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, Anthony Bourdain, Ted Allen,  my grandmas Renée and Shirley, my dad Charlie, and all of my crew at Purple Café and Wine Bar, where I used to work. I have learned so much form each and every individual I worked with, for better or or worse. 

This is mainly a spot for me to find the recipes I’ve made. Almost all of my canning projects are done by the USDA guidelines and will have links to the recipes, I just want to type them out in a fun way so I can refer back to them. 

I’m making a promise to myself to keep the blah blah blah short so no one needs to scroll through thousands of words about my mundane existence to get to the recipes, talking directly to you boring-ass mommy bloggers.