Saladosity, Part 7: The Savory Proteins

[This is the seventh post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


So far in our journey to salad nirvana, we’ve bought a whole lotta produce, plus some trail mix fodder.  Now it’s time to pick out some proteins: meat and cheeses.

Meats

The main thing we’re going to need meat for is our chef’s salad.  In my opinion, you can’t make chef’s salad without meat, but your opinion may vary, especially if you’re a member of the Vegan tribe.  We won’t need meat for any other salad (although I’ll throw in a few optional ideas), so, if you happen to be a firm vegan, you could skip this particular salad (and this whole section), and not be any the worse for wear.

For those of you still with me, let me tell you what you’re going to need for the perfect chef’s salad.  Finding good pre-sliced, deli-style meat is a challenge, even in a relatively good shopping environment such as Trader Joe’s.  If you’re a TJ’s fan too, I’ll give you exact brand names.  If not, you’ll just have to do basically what I did: spend 10 or 15 minutes at the lunchmeat section of your favorite store reading labels.  What you basically want is to find the meats that:

• don’t have any added sweeteners, and
• don’t have any preservatives (e.g. sulfites, nitrates, etc).

This will be remarkably challenging.  When you think about eating a nice turkey sandwich, it may seem insane to you that anyone would want to stick any sort of sugar into your slices of turkey.  But nearly every label you check will tell you that it has molasses, or honey, or just plain sugar.  It’s downright weird, once you start realizing how much meat has been pre-sweetened, ostensibly for your tastebuds.  Trust me: your tastebuds don’t need that, nor do they particularly want it.  Meat isn’t supposed to be sweet.  It’s supposed to be ... well, meaty.  Savory, and juicy, and just plain yummy.  But not sweet.  Yeck.

And, when it comes to preservatives, lunchmeat is some of the worst offenders in the store.  Lunchmeat needs to have a longer shelf-life than, say, ground beef.  So they fill it full of chemicals to make it last.  You don’t need that.  Pay a little extra for the preservative-free meat and just eat it quickly.  This will probably not be a problem, as it will be so tasty.

You will have to work extra hard to find meat without any added sweeteners or preservatives, but you’ll be better off in the long run: not only is it almost certainly healthier by nearly any tribe’s standards, but it’ll taste better too.  Win-win.

Turkey.  At my Trader Joe’s, I have 3 brand options for sliced turkey: Applegate, Columbus, and the TJ’s store brand.  Of these, only Applegate fits my criteria.  Columbus has brown sugar, not to mention a moderately frightening list of -ites and -ates, including sodium nitrite, sodium phosphate, and potassium chloride.  The TJ’s brand has sugar and disodium phosphate.  Applegate, on the other hand, has no sugar, and only carrageenan in the “what’s that?” department.¹  Carrageenan isn’t technically a preservative, and it comes from seaweed, so I give it a pass.²  Applegate makes an organic version of their sliced turkey, but my TJ’s doensn’t carry it.  I would probably buy it, if it wasn’t too much more expensive than the other kind.  But so far I’ve been very pleased with this product even in its non-organic form.

Roast beef.  I only have 2 options here: Columbus and TJ’s.  Again, the Columbus is a bit of a mess; it has brown sugar and/or dextrose (yet another cleverly disguised name for “sugar”), plus potassium acetate and potassium lactate, plus some varities throw in sodium phosphate as well.  Happily, the TJ’s brand is much nicer here in the roast beef department than it was in the turkey area: the worst thing on the ingredient list is xanthan gum, which is not too awful in comparison.  Again, no organic options, but I’m okay with that.

That’s all we’ll need for our chef’s salad, but there’s a few other options I can recommend.

First of all, what are you going to do with any leftover slices of meat you have?  You can make sandwiches out of them, of course, but that involves grains and carbs,³ which you probably don’t want to deal with.  Happily, I’ve discovered that I don’t need bread to enjoy a sandwich: I just make a “cheesewich” instead.  Cheesewich (patent pending) is my personal concoction for enjoying sandwiches without bread.  The concept is extremely simple: Get yourself some decent sliced cheese that isn’t going to fall apart on you, take two slices, put your meat in between them, then eat it.  The end.  Brilliant, no?  I’ve honestly found that I don’t even miss the bread any more.  A turkey and roast beef cheesewich is really awesome, and I’ve come to like it even more without the bread.  Another excellent choice for the cheesewich is black forest ham.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find any without added sweeteners, but, if you’re willing to overlook that (or cheat a little every once in a while), a ham-and-cheese cheesewich makes a pretty awesome lunch, especially when paired with a small salad such as the ones in this series.

Now, while none of the salads I’m going show you other than my chef’s salad will require meat, that’s not to say that you can’t add meat to any of them.  One excellent choice is canned chicken.  It’s precooked, easy to use, and typically has a ridiculously short ingredient list (look for something like: chicken, water, salt—this is what the Trader Joe’s brand has).  You can toss this into a salad as is, or add some simple seasonings first and maybe even give it a short trip in the microwave to add a hot element to an otherwise cold salad.

Cheese

Havarti (sliced).  When it comes to sliced cheese, Havarti is my new best friend.  Way more interesting than Monterey Jack (which is hard to find sliced anyway), typically firmer than provolone, more solid (and less ... distinct, shall we say) than Swiss—it’s the perfect pre-sliced white cheese for our chef’s salad, and excellent for cheesewiches as well.  Don’t get the “light” stuff: it tastes awful.⁴

Mexican blend (shredded).  Typically this will be a blend of cheddar, Monterey Jack, asadero and queso blanco (although some crappier brands may try to sneak in Colby or even mozzarella on you).  The TJ’s store brand is pretty good.  This is crucial for our Mexican salad.  Note that nearly all shredded cheese uses corn starch to keep it from clumping.  I generally accept this as an exception to my “no grains” policy, as it’s a pretty small amount.

Bleu cheese (crumbled).  So far I have yet to find a bleu cheese dressing that I like that’s also free from disreputable ingredients.  But happily I’ve found that, if you buy blue cheese crumbles and just add them directly to the salad, you don’t actually need bleu cheese dressing.

Feta cheese (crumbled).  Feta cheese is remarkably versatile; you may recall that it’s a crucial ingredient back in our original salad.  I still like the “Mediterranean herbs” version that TJ’s sells, but whatever you can lay hands on is good.  Just look out for preservatives.

Parmesan (grated).  We won’t be adding this directly to a salad, but it’s a vital ingredient in one of our dressings.  I actually like the blend of parmesan and romano cheese that TJ’s sells, but choose your own favorite.  As always, be wary of unnecessary preservatives.

As far as other cheeses go, we won’t need any, but I can always recommend a good sliced cheddar as being excellent for cheesewiches (I actually make all my cheesewiches with one slice of cheddar and one of Havarti), and you could try some crumbled goat cheese instead of feta if you’re into that sort of thing.  Personally I find goat cheese to be a bit strong for my tastes, but to each his own.

Storage

Typically you want to put your meat and cheese into the refrigerator drawer that’s not the fruit drawer (where you’ve got the humidity cranked up) or the veggie drawer (where you’ve got it cranked down).  But the main thing you want is a good, airtight seal.  If your meat comes in one of those packages with a little piece of plastic that “seals to keep in freshness,” screw that: stick it in a Ziploc bag.  For me, my roast beef will fit nicely in a quart-sized Ziploc, as long as I cut off the corners with a pair of scissors first.  (If I don’t, the sharp corners will tear holes in the bag.)  The Applegate turkey thankfully comes with its own Ziploc-style sealer.  The black forest ham is a long package that requires a gallon-size Ziploc.  Meats stored this way should last a few weeks.  The ham will eventually get white, crusty stuff on it (this is the fat congealing), and the roast beef will just turn shiny and make rainbows in the fluorescent kitchen lights.  The turkey will be hard to identify visually.  Trust your nose for all the meats: if it doesn’t smell yummy, toss it out.⁵

If you don’t use an entire can of the canned chicken, you’ll need to put those leftovers in your own sealed containers (either Tupperware-style, or Rubbermaid-style glass containers if you’re trying to avoid plastic).

The grated and crumbled cheeses come in plastic containers that seal pretty well.  I can keep the grated parmesan roughly forever, but the crumbled cheeses will start to smell a bit sour if they last more than 3 weeks or so (at which point, toss ’em).  The sliced and shredded cheeses typically have a Ziploc-style sealer, but really make sure you get as much air out of those packages as you can before you seal them.  Air is your enemy.  (Well, actually aerobic bacteria are your enemy.  So squish all the air out of the package and starve those little buggers out.)  For the sliced cheeses (or the meats), squish the living hell out of the packages to remove maximal air.  For the shredded cheeses, be a little more gentle, or else you’ll end up with a giant rubber cheese mass that won’t work in your salad nearly as well.  If you do a good job keeping the air out, the sliced and shredded cheeses should also last several weeks.  When they give up the ghost, they will nearly always start growing mold.  Unless you’re a qualified penicillin extractor or something, that means it’s time to toss ’em out.



Next time around, there’s still more shopping to do!  Next up: condiments.

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1 The ingredient list for my particular package has only 4 ingredients, actually: turkey, water, salt, and carrageenan, in that order.

2 However, Whole30 does not.  Carrageenan is specifically prohibited on Whole30, so bear that in mind if you’re trying to follow the program strictly.

3 Which aspect of the bread you consider worse depends on which of the nutritional tribes you’ve joined.  And let’s not even get into the whole gluten debate.

4 Of course, this is true of “light” cheese in general.  If you’re a staunch member of the low-fat tribe, this will be difficult for you.  But hopefully you at least believe that fat from cheese is “good” fat.

5 Or give it to your dogs.  Remember: their digestive systems can kill bacteria that would make us sick.

Another week drifting away ...

Well, it’s been a tough week, with some work stuff going on, a sick kid, an aborted camping trip, and some outside editing duties that I’ve been trying to catch up on.  So, unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find the time to gen up a proper post for you.  I do apologize.  But next week should be much more satisfactory, I’m thinking.

Numeric Driftwood II

"Did I Dream You Dreamed About Me?"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

As (nearly) always, my initial list for Numeric Driftwood was plenty long enough to fill out two volumes.  We have two more tracks from Kitaro, also off India, and another from Enya (the title track from Shepherd Moons, in fact), which is pretty good representation from two of my three favorite sleepy-time albums.  As far as the Cocteau Twins goes, I certainly couldn’t resist including them, but I decided to expand beyond merely reusing Victorialand.  As magnificent as that album is, it’s only one of only 7 Twins’ albums I own—which is the maxium number of albums I own from any single band¹—so it’s only fair to branch out a little and share some of the other Cocteau goodness out there.  In this case, I chose one cut off Treasure, the Cocteaus’ first album with Simon Raymonde, and one from their penultimate album Four-Calendar Café.

I’ve also drawn in my other favorite relaxing music album, which I talked about at some length when discussing Shadowfall Equinox II: This Mortal Coil’s It’ll End in Tears.  In that discussion I noted that IEiT is really more for relaxation and contemplation than drifting off to sleep, but, if there’s an exception to that observation, it surely must be “Song to the Siren,” a stunningly beautiful song sung by Elizabeth Fraser and played by Robin Guthrie, i.e. two-thirds of the Cocteau Twins.²  I’ve heard the original, as sung by Tim Buckley, and Buckley’s version is pretty, granted, but This Mortal Coil’s version is transcendent, and beautifully soothing as well.  The lyrics (which include our volume title) are beautiful as well, and, as this is one of the few times you’re going to be able to understand what Fraser is singing, definitely take advantage of it and listen to the words.

Of course, as is typical of a volume II, we see lots of returning artists, even above and beyond those I’ve already mentioned.  Angels of Venice are back with two more songs, as is Anjey Satori, with two more tracks off of For Relaxation.  Celtic/jazz/world fusionists Skyedance return as well, with another quiet tune from Way Out to Hope Street.  All of these provide the backbone on which we hang the jewels of the new artists.

We kick off this volume with a 1-2-3 punch that starts with the lovely (and maritime) “Song to the Siren,” then traipses through cello master David Darling’s “Eight String Religion,” which sprinkles down like a light rainfall, and winds up with Sade’s “Mermaid,” a lovely underwater piece.  Darling was one of the artists I discovered via Hearts of Space; his album Cello Blue is well suited for Shadowfall Equinox,³ but Eight String Religion is a lighter affair which works well here.  Sade, of course, is well known for her smooth-jazz-like compositions such as “No Ordinary Love” and “The Sweetest Taboo,” but she occasionally puts out a sweet, slow instrumental like this one.

Also, as promised in the footnotes from last volume,⁴ we have a tune from my favorite cello player, Jami Seiber.  We heard from her once before, on Smooth as Whispercats, but this track is more typical of her œuvre; although much of it is darker, almost all of it is slow and languorous like this track.  Sieber is yet another Magnatune artist, proving once again that the “We Are Not Evil” folks are as awesome as their motto suggests.

Numeric Driftwood II
[ Did I Dream You Dreamed About Me? ]

“Song to the Siren” by This Mortal Coil, off It'll End in Tears
“Eight String Religion” by David Darling, off Eight String Religion
“Mermaid” by Sade, off Love Deluxe
“Mountain Streams” by Kitaro, off India
“Sea Surround” by Anjey Satori, off For Relaxation
“Otterley” by Cocteau Twins, off Treasure
“Sara's Dream” by Angels of Venice, off Music for Harp, Flute and Cello
“Rain Surround” by Anjey Satori, off For Relaxation
“Ganga” by Kitaro, off India
“Tell It by Heart” by Jami Sieber, off Second Sight
“Skerray” by Skyedance, off Way Out to Hope Street
“Light at the Edge of the World” by Angels of Venice, off Awake Inside a Dream
“Shepherd Moons” by Enya, off Shepherd Moons
“Essence” by Cocteau Twins, off Four-Calendar Café
“Submarine Bells” by the Chills, off Submarine Bells
“Cradle Song” by Shriekback, off Big Night Music

Total:  16 tracks,  76:42

Which just leaves us with our closing pair.  Coming off the dreaminess of “Essence” by the Cocteaus, we hit two vocal tracks (a rarity for this mix, which is of course mostly instrumental).  The first is from New Zealanders the Chills, who normally craft sublime alterna-pop, but the title track off their quite lovely Submarine Bells is less poppy and more calming.  And we close with a tune from Shriekback, another alternative band who’s more often known for their poppy numbers—in fact, Shriekback is often full-on dancy, with tunes such as “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “Go Bang.” But they can also do mellow as well, and their album Big Night Music is almost nothing but mellow.  “Cradle Song” is a true lullaby that provides a beautiful closer for this volume.

Next time, we’ll perk things up by taking a walk on the female vocal side.

⇐ Numeric Driftwood I

Numeric Driftwood III ⇒

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1 There are 3 bands from whom I own 7 albums, actually (as of this writing), which is why I had to phrase that so qualifyingly.  The other two are INXS and They Might Be Giants.

2 Yes, the Cocteau Twins, like the Thompson Twins, are composed of three people, despite the name.

3 Although we won’t actually see a track there until Shadowfall Equinox IV.

4 Footnote 8, specifically, in connection with my discussion of cellist Martin McCarrick.

Perl blog post #52

As promised last week, this week I’ve published another part of my long-ass series on my Perl date module over on my Other Blog.  This one doesn’t even have much of a non-technical philosophical thread running through it, so I won’t be offended if you’re a non-techie and want to give it a pass.

Next week I’ll see if I can drum up someting more interesting than Perl gobbledygook.