Pot Roast in a Slow Cooker

Ingredients

Roast: three pound chuck roast with plenty of visible fat (seriously, the fat is an ingredient and pot roasts exist to turn it into food) (the perfect roast will be 1.5 to 2 inches thick, but thicker will also work fined)

Mushrooms: eight ounces cut to around one-inch square pieces

Yellow onion: medium, cut into thin half moons

Carrots: about two-thirds of a pound, peeled and sliced 3/4 inch thick (for skinny carrots, cut longer slices to get something in the neighborhood of similar proportions.)

Garlic: eight cloves minced

Olive oil

Half a tablespoon of dried thyme

Half a tablespoon of dried rosemary

Half a tablespoon of salt

Fresh ground pepper

Broth: a quart of chicken broth with a plan not to to use it all (Good beef broth is hard to make right, so the standard grocery issue isn't made right, but store-bought chicken broth is quite good)(Having four one-cup boxes of broth on hand will let you open only the ones you need, but I am rarely able to plan that way and usually just throw away what's left in the quart box)

Process

Prepare the vegetables as listed above

Heat a wide skillet over medium heat, film with olive oil when warm, and then warm the oil.

Brown the roast on all wide sides (this is where a two-inch wide and mostly flat roast saves time: one that's close to bread-loaf shape has more sides worth browning.)

Put the roast in the crock pot.

Add a little more oil to the skillet and swirl.

Add the mushrooms, give them a minute on the heat, and then turn them once a minute until you like how brown they are.

Put the mushrooms in the crockpot.

Lower the heat on the skillet and add a little more oil, giving it half a minute to warm.

Put the carrots and onion in the skillet and cook for around three minutes, stirring often. (This lower-heat step can be called "sweating" the vegetables, because the aim is to soften them and strengthen their flavors, without browning them.)

After three minutes, add the garlic and stir steadily for two more minutes. 

Dump the entire skillet into the crockpot.

Sprinkle the thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper over the surface. (For pepper, I aim for it looking like around the same amount as the salt.)

Move the vegetables down around the sides of the roast.

Add enough broth to just barely cover almost everything. (See why the amount of broth is unsettled above?)

Cover the crockpot and cook either:

• for seven hours on low (best)
• or two hours on high and three on low (quite good and helpful if you get a slow start)

Enjoy!

(Want potatoes in the pot? Don't add pepper at the beginning, and do add the full quart of broth at the beginning. Cut the potatoes bite-sized and add half-way through the cooking. Offer pepper at the table since it isn't in the pot.)

Chicken and Garlic

This recipe is absurdly easy and extremely good. I haven't included onion when I cooked it, so I can vouch for it being great without them. The hardest parts are:

• Already having a bottle of vermouth
• Believing that the foil part matters (I think what's happening is that the vermouth steam is gathering, spreading, and merging the flavors, and the foil keeps the steam circulating tightly)
• Believing it can be this simple

Added thought: is there another meat and flavor combination that would like being steamed with something alcoholic this way?

Covid-19 Homecare Preparations

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

I'm working, as carefully as I can, on being ready to handle all but the worst of the menacing illness at home. With the burden our hospitals, we are likely to need to do more to nurse one another and ourselves if this hits.

Here comes what I've got so far. I'm aiming for science-based approaches, but not settling for planning to have professionals show me how when it hits. Send more ideas if you've got them.

Medications in stock, plus a tool
Tylenol for fever (not ibuprofen because of starting worries about how it works in troubled lungs, with a plan to pay close attention to not letting the fever get very strong because I kind of believe Chris Cuomo that it saps the will to fight).

Guafenesin for loosening congestion It's the active ingredient in Mucinex, and I choose a version without a cough suppressant added.

Dextromethorphan for cough suppression (planning to take quite rarely because the cough is a path to getting stuff out of lungs)

Trioral rehydration salts: a powder to add to water that restores the big things your body loses, which are salts and sugars. It fits WHO recommendations and it aligns with a doctor friend's advice when one of you was unwell at her house. Gatorade works the same way, but this adds fewer other ingredients on top of the needed ingredients.

A thermometer for knowing your temperature yourself and alerting medical folks.

Health boosting steps now
The wretched virus is most dangerous if it gets a grip on our lungs. Here's what I'm going to become a harder target for the nasty invaders.

Walking more for improved endurance and practice with drawing in air. Beau goes out with podcasts, while I mostly stay inside with news or The West Wing.

Breathing exercises, following this video, up to the point where the doctor is unclear about how to do the lying prone (on your stomach) part. For me, these are a bit taxing, and I'm hoping that doing them now several times a day can change that a bit and get me a bit stronger. More confidently, I think if I understand them and am no longer puzzled about how to do them now, it will be easy to use them if I'm ill.

Nutritional supplements. I'm taking an ordinary multivitamin, plus a slow-release iron tablet because I'm prone to anemia and anemia is prone to leave me breathing heavily after small efforts, plus vitamin C to support metabolizing the iron. All young persons related to me: my mom also gets anemic, and this may run in the family, so I recommend at least a multivitamin with the iron. I've seen references to zinc but haven't gotten confident about trusting that advice, so I'm settling for "hey, my multivitamin has a modest amount of that."

Something old, something new
Steam. In case of a challenging cough, consider letting the shower turns the place into a steam room, and staying there for, say, half an hour. This is an idea from my mom, more aggressive than a humidifier in the room. (Humidifiers can be good, but I'm not good at maintaining them).

Postural drainage is the other approach I will apply if anyone here gets ill, starting from this description. I've seen multiple websites with versions of this, and I think it's way clearer than the video I shared above about the thing to do while prone. This is also about helping one's lungs clear by not spending all one's rest time in one position, and a bit about raising the lowest parts of your lungs higher than your wind pipe for a while.

Food in case
If the people in your house take turns being sick, you can take turns offering each other help getting food you can manage. If you go down together, that's tougher. To give us some lead time, I've stocked extra:

• Frozen juice
• Ginger ale
• Saltines
• Canned soup
• Chicken broth

I hear I should also add:

• Pedialyte popsicles

With many delivery services backed up, I recommend also thinking about which friends you could ask for help to restock if you need more.

Not alone
For ordinary colds, there's no reason to tell a neighbor, a friend who lives near by, a clergy member, or (ahem) a parent or child. You have a pretty good idea of the limits on how bad it gets.

Our current enemy is a different matter. Accounts from survivors and those who cared for those who didn't make it suggest the lung difficulties can kick in rather fast and decisions to pursue hospital care can turn urgent quite suddenly.

Accordingly, I plan to let a family circle, plus several neighbors, know pretty much at the first sniffle, and then check in daily. I recommend a similar plan for all and sundry. For certain persons who know who they are, "recommend" can be accurately replaced by something like "insist on". Having each other is one of our strengths, and we need to use that strength for this struggle

"We will get through this, and we will get through it together."

Chicken with a LOT of Garlic

This is James Beard's recipe, cut in half and without the hassle of fresh parsley.

INGREDIENTS

8 chicken thighs (the kind with bones and skin)

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 celery ribs

1 teaspoons dried tarragon

1/3 cup dry vermouth

1 teaspoon salt

A little freshly ground black pepper

A little  nutmeg

20 garlic cloves

French bread (or something else crusty)

NEEDED EQUIPMENT

Dutch oven or heavy casserole with a tight fitting lid

Aluminum foil.

STEPS

Preheat oven to 375.

Peel the garlic cloves (you’re going to use them whole).

Cut the celery into thin half moons, and put it on the bottom of the dutch oven.

Put the tarragon on top of the celery.

Dry off the chicken.

Put the oil in a shallow dish and turn the chicken in the oil to coat on all sides. 

Put the chicken in the casserole, ideally in a single layer.

Sprinkle the chicken with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Sprinkle the garlic over the chicken, spreading it out kind of evenly.

Pour the vermouth over everything.

Put a piece of foil over the chicken and press it down as a tight cover. Put the lid on the casserole.

Cook for an hour and a half and serve hot from the pot.

Spread the garlic on pieces of the bread, like it was butter.

Lemony Chicken and Farro in Half an Hour

General concept: While the farro cooks, you cut the chicken and start it cooking.  Then you prep the shallot and garlic and lemon while watching and turning the chicken. It's fast because you're doing it all at once.

Tools
Saucepan with lid, large skillet with lid, tongs, knife, cutting board,

Ingredients
2 cups farro
1 pound boneless chicken breast
1 lemon
1 shallot
2 cloves garlic
12 ounce bag of frozen peas
Olive oil
Cornstarch
Salt
Pepper

Steps
In saucepan, bring four cups water to boil
Add the farro
Bring back to a boil, cover, and lower heat to a simmer
Set timer for 20 minutes.  All the other cooking can be done in those 20 minutes

Start heating skillet over medium heat
Cut chicken into bite size pieces
Add olive oil to skillet to cover the bottom very lightly, and heat until you smell it
Add chicken pieces to oil, spreading them out

Peel and mince shallot and garlic

Check a piece of chicken to see if it has some nice brown on the bottom.  If it does, turn over all the pieces so they cook on another side.

Cut lemon in half and squeeze juice into a cup.
Add water to make the cup a full cup.

Check the chicken again and turn

Watch the chicken, turning as need to get all sides to look cooked and have some nice brown sides.

When all sides look cooked, add the shallots and garlic, stirring them rapidly around the pan until you smell them and then for another 10 second

Add the lemon and water to the skillet and bring to a boil
Add the peas to the skillet, spread them out, and bring back to a boil
Cover the skillet and turn the heat to low
Cook for about five minutes

While chicken and peas cook, combine two tablespoons of water with one tablespoon of cornstarch (or flour) to make a smooth liquid

After chicken and peas have cooked the five minutes, stir in the cornstarch liquid to thicken the liquid.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

When timer goes off, drain any remaining liquid from farro, and combine it with the sauce.

Serve in big bowls or mugs

Pork and Farro Improv

This is a dish I invented on the fly, and it worked.

What I Used
Two cups uncooked farro
One pound of ground pork
Two big cloves of garlic
Half of a medium-sized onion
A bit of olive oil
A bit of apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper

What I Did
1. Put farro in a three-quart pot and added four cups boiling water.  Then I put that pot on the burner on high until the water boiled again, lowered the heat to simmer, covered the pot, and set the timer for 20 minutes.

2. Stuck a standing colander in the sink.

3. Put a dutch oven on the stove, added enough oil to cover the bottom thinly, and set the heat to a low-medium.  (For enameled cookware, standard advice is to heat with the oil already added.  That's the opposite of the advice for stainless steel.)

4. Peeled and chopped the garlic into little pieces, and the onion into slightly larger pieces.

5. Put the garlic and onion in the dutch oven, and stirred until it began to turn a little bit brown.

6. Added the pork to the dutch oven and broke it up into little pieces and then stirred it and the garlic and onion until everything was light brown.  (At this point, I had a little problem because there was a lot of liquid in the bottom of the dutch oven, so that my pork was going to steam instead of browning further.  So I ran the sink tap until the water was hot, left it running, poured the pork mixture into the colander, and then poured the pork back into the dutch oven with much less liquid--and put the colander back in the sink.  The hot water protected my pipes from clogging with fat.)

7. Continued cooking until the pork was the darker brown that says "Yum.  Cooked meat."

8. Added maybe a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the dutch oven and stirred everything around in it until it all disappeared into the meat.  I plan to experiment with adding a bit more next time I cook this.

9. Heard the timer go off on the farro and did a chew test to confirm it was nicely soft even though some water was left.

10. Poured the farro into the colander, shook the colander over the sink, and then poured all the farro into the dutch oven.

11. Stirred it all together, tasted, and added a bit of salt and fresh pepper. (For someone on a low fat diet, don't do the mixing. Let them choose the ratio of pork and farro.)

Cinnamon could be a lovely addition. 

Cinnamon with lamb in place of pork would mean heading toward Moroccan flavors. Maybe a few sliced apricots or some golden raisins cooked with the farrow would suit that?

Mushrooms could contribute, though probably not with the cinnamon option, maybe added with the pork rather than with the onion so they don't get cooked to oblivion. 

Other vinegars could be fun, and I wouldn't be surprised if wine or beer also worked nicely.  

Rice in place of farro would be great, or quinoa or bulgur.  

One more idea, imagine using the mushrooms and adding cream or half-and-half after the farro and the meat are combined.  I can't decide whether the vinegar would be a plus or a minus that way, but I'll try both next winter.

Pork following "Pollan's Second Recipe"

Ingredients:

• A pound or so of thin boneless pork chops, patted dry
• An onion, sliced thin
• Four cloves of garlic, chopped small
• Six ounces of shitake mushroom, chopped into bits no bigger than an inch square
• Half a pound of raw green beans, cut in one inch slices on the diagonal
• Grapeseed oil or another oil with a high smoke point (not olive oil or butter)
• Tablespoon of chicken Better than Bouillon
• Tablespoon of soy sauce
• Tablespoon of corn starch
• A cup of quinoa or rice or some other grain you like or have around

Steps:

• Assemble the ingredients, including measuring and chopping
• Put the grain onto cook as per its own directions and set a timer so you don't forget it.
• Measure three-quarters of a cup of water and add the Better than Bouillon and the soy sauce.
• Put half a cup or water in another cup near the stove.
• Put some of the oil in the dutch oven, and heat on the stove until it shimmers--probably a bit below maximum heat, but pretty seriously hot.
• Put one layer of pork chops in the pan and check after three or four minutes.  
• Flip when they are no longer stuck to the bottom of the pan and nicely brown on one side.
• Remove from pan when no longer stuck to the bottom and nicely brown on the other side.
• Do another round if needed.
• Add a bit more oil to the pan and heat for a few seconds
• Add the onion and garlic and stir constantly until you smell them and then a bit longer until you notice that some of the garlic is brown
• Add the green beans and stir constantly until you notice that most of them are a bit brighter green.
• Add a bit more oil and then the mushrooms, and stir constantly until you notice that most of the mushrooms are a darker brown (bonus: the onions are likely to be brown and caramelized and lovely by this time)
• Add the water and use it to deglaze the bottom (meaning scrape gently until the lovely tasty brown stuff mostly comes off the bottom and some of the water has evaporated
• Add the water-Better than Bouillon-soy sauce, stir, and then put the pork chops back in
• Lower heat and cover for maybe five minutes, and then check that you like the green beans (cook more if not, and cook more if Molly is worried about the chops being done.)
• Mix the cornstarch with three tablespoons of water
• Add that to the pot and stir until the sauce thickens nicely
• Check to see if you like the level of soy flavor (add more if not)
• Serve over the grain (you did remember to set the timer and get the grain off the heat, right?)

Chicken following "Pollan's second recipe."

Ingredient:

• a pound of chicken boneless chicken thigh, cut into cubes of about an inch
• three cloves of garlic, minced
• one onion, chopped up small
• about a quarter pound of mushrooms
• about half a pound of snow peas
• grapeseed oil (though only because my olive oil bottle was empty)
• a teaspoon of “Better than Boullon” stirred into half a cup of water
• the juice of a lemon, squeezed into the water with the bouillon
• a tablespoon of cornstarch, stirred into three tablespoons of water
• some farro, cooked according to its directions, which are the familiar one cup with two cups water brought to boil and simmered twenty minutes--but rice, guinoa, or anything else that cooks like that will work as well.

Process

• Get the farro started
• Heat the oil in a dutch oven (or big frying pan)
• Brown the chicken pieces at a moderately high temperature in two batches and move to a plate
• Lower the temperature a bit, add the garlic and stir until you can smell it, add the onion and stir until it gets kind of soft, add the mushrooms and a little more oil and stir until they darken a bit.
• Add the liquid and use it to deglaze the bottom of the pan (meaning scrape it gently to get most of the brown bits of flavor to come loose)
• Add the chicken, cover, and simmer for about ten minutes.
• Add the snow peas and simmer for another two or three minutes.
• Add the cornstarch mixed with water and stir until the sauce thickens.
• Serve over the farro or other grain

Footnotes:

• The Michael Pollan part is "Roots browned in fat, then simmered with protein, vegetables, and liquid."  In Cooked, he has great fun working through world cuisines as separated mainly by the choice of which roots: carrot-onion-celery is French, but onion-garlic is Italian and scallion-ginger means you're in Pacific Asia.  It's kind of a master rule that allows for infinite variations based on what looks good at the store or what has been in the fridge long enough that it probably should be cooked tonight.
• I originally planned to use soy sauce rather than lemon juice, but found my jar had vanished. Then I looked for white wine, and had none of that in the pantry.  Lemon was my third choice--a sign of how flexible the recipe really is.   It could also be done with pork.  Or beef.  Probably shrimp.  Certainly broccoli if added a a few minutes sooner.  Or whole green beans.  Or whole chicken thighs and allowed to simmer another ten minutes before adding the vegetables.  If I didn't have soy sauce or wine or lemon juice, I'd probably add some parsley or thyme to the water and bouillon.

• Pollan's first recipe is basically dead animal over slow fire watched by a group of people (often all male) consuming some fermented liquid.