Saturday, February 04, 2006

Good Gravy

Advancements in toaster-ovens. Or how to rotisseire a small bird in Winter, without firing up the outdoor grill.

Yeah. Pretty mundane stuff that. Small kitchen applicances are so blasé. However, a several months ago, I noticed a new form of toaster-oven at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It was a toaster-over that was also a rotisseire. This one was made by Euro-Pro, the people who bring you the charming line of Shark hand-held vacuum cleaners. We have several of them scattered throughout the house.

I didn’t think much of it at first, as we had a toaster-oven. A Black & Decker thingie we’d had for a long time. And I don’t make toast that often anyway. However, the B&D was showing it’s age AND the toast button would not function properly UNLESS you held down an additional button to get its attention so that it would work properly.  Then there was the annoying tendancy to not toast a second batch properly unless it had cooled down to room-temp before doing anything else.

I got to thinking about it. I remembered how good a rotisseire-cooked chicken tasted. And I attributed the excellent flavor and juicy texture of the meat to the rotisserie approach. Oh. Sure. You can back a chicken and get something like that, but the rotisserie technique is continually basting the meat. That’s an important part of good cooking. Keeping the meat propelry moisturized. Rotisseire does that better. With less time and effort on the part of the cook.

So, I got to thinking about this and decided we should get one. Not just for the cooking of chicken, but for other things as well. I’ve got a killer barbeque sauce for pork based on a Virginian recipe from the 18th century. I like pork. Especially done this way. But doing it for two and firing up, i.e., wasting, the gas of the outdoor grill for a small meal just doesn’t sit right with me. Therefore, I had two reasons for getting this dingus.

I talked it over with the distaff a couple of months ago and she acquiesed.

Off to Bed, Bath & Beyond. Guess what. They were ‘sold out’. Heavy sigh. But they were planning to restock.

Yesterday, we tried again. Only THIS time to be told the item was discontinued. And, just to make things more irritating, no other toaster-oven offered had the rotisserie. Talk about flumuxed. Guess I’d have to order it ont he web. [Note: Isn’t it interesting that all too many things you want to buy these days have to be bought on the web? I’d invest in FedEx and/or UPS, if I played the market.]

So, as we trudged through the rest of the store, as the distaff had noticed a lot of things were on sale, we were picking up things here and there; flannel bed-sheets; cotton is TOO cold when slipping between the sheets on a cold Winter night. At the end of the circuit, I was standing beside a large rack of clearance items and what do I see—the toaster-oven-rotisserie. The display item. Sure. It has not box. It has no manual. It seems to be missing the pizza stone. Heck, it might not even WORK. But it’s half-off the original price.

I grabbed it like Larry Byrd does a rebound, before heading for his goal.

Well, we got it home and, along the way, we got a roasting chicken.

Set the dingus up. It fits perfectly in the space the old toaster-oven sat.

I prepped the bird; dousing it with rosemary-garlic seasonings. Trussed it onto the spit. Put it into the oven cavity. Fired it up. The dingus worked!

I cooked the bird at 350°F for two hours. Occasionally, I’d baste it, as I wanted to make sure the seasonings were continually applied to the skin, which was dripping them off like a drip coffee maker.

The bird was GREAT! Better than Safeway and Sam’s. Probably because I’m pleased with my own cooking. But, what the heck. I don’t see either of them offering rosemary-garlic rotisseire chicken anyway.

However, another thing I was impressed with was the amount of gravey I was able to generate from one chicken. There was 3/4 of a cup of oil in the drip pan. All flavored with the rosemary-garlic seasoning. I put that into a saucier and added an equal amount of white flour; making a roe. To this I added the water drained from the mashed potatoes I’d intended to have as a side dish. I added additional water until I got the consistency I was looking for. I wound up with almost two quarters of superb gravy.

What to do with all this gravey? I think I’ll get some extra chicken breasts from Sam’s and some mixed veggies too. And make chicken pot pies.

I’ve missed chicken pot pies, since Sam’s stopped carrying the Pepperidge Farm line. Those were good pot pies. Great for when you were in a hurry and need a tummy-warming meal, which can be frequently in Winter.

So, bottom-line. If you’re current toaster-oven is going south, I highly recommend you get a toaster-over-rotisserie when you get to the point of replacing your current system. In the long run, if you cook yourself, you’ll end up saving money; all the way around.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Defining a Problem: Graduation Rates

Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

The Drudge Report carries a story today that Senator Al Gore claimed on NBC television that only 53% of our children graduate from high school. A lot of folks, including the Drudge Report and the Census Bureau, dispute this statement.

Let’s bear in mind that Mr. Gore’s vocabulary skills are so weak that he thinks “invent” and “use” are synonyms, e.g., “I invented the internet.”

In fairness to Mr. Gore, however, let’s look at this statement and see if it could possibly be true. (We will ignore the implication Mr. Gore is trying to make that, if true, this is a problem for the federal government and not the local school boards, which would be another example of his ignorance.)

First, what does he mean by “children?” If he means everyone who was ever conceived, then, considering that 30% to 50% of all conceptions end in miscarriages (according to my gynecologist), then it could be true that only 53% graduate from high school.

If he is defining children as persons under 18 years of age, and considering about half, or more, of all high school seniors are 18 years of age at the time they graduate, and are technically adults, not children, then about 53% graduate as children, the others graduate as adults.

What does he mean by “graduate from high school?” Home schooled youngsters don’t attend high school and therefore, technically, don’t graduate. Many other youngsters eventually test for a GED, and don’t, technically, graduate, although it is acknowledged that they know everything they should have learned in high school. If he means the high schooler went through the graduation ceremony, then you have a certain percentage of people who don’t participate in the ceremony, even though they finished the requirements and received a diploma. Others miss out on getting their diplomas because of things like unpaid library book fines, not because their academic requirements are incomplete.

What SHOULD we call the percentage of graduates? In fairness to our schools and our parents it should be the percentage of persons who start school or home schooling who are still alive and healthy at, say, age 21, and who have met all the academic requirements for a high school diploma or who have received a GED. This means that those children who do not complete school because of death, accident, disease, or deliberate harm aren’t held against schools and parents in the graduation rate.