Update

I'll be posting a little less frequently because I broke a bone in my ankle.

Cell phone companies think you're stupid

No really, they do. I called up my cell phone service provider yesterday. I had seen an ad they had that gave an expensive phone to new customers for free. The only requirement was to sign a one-year contract. I've been with this same company for four years. I asked them about the deal and they said it was only available for new customers. But, they told me, they really appreciated my loyalty and therefore would give me any phone I wanted at a discount. So I asked about the phone in the ad. I could have it for only $99. Wow, what a deal! Pay $99 for something that's $0 for everyone else. When I told them that it wasn't much of a deal compared to the one I saw in the ad, they dropped it to $70. So this is what they think of loyal customers. We have to pay for everything, but new customers get everything for free. That seems to be the exact opposite of appreciating loyalty.

"What to do?" you ask? I'll tell you. Switch cell phone providers every twelve months or so. Never sign a contract longer than a year and as soon as that expires, start looking for deals at competitors. When they're giving an expensive phone away for free, switch. And remember, you can take your phone number with you. If you catch a good deal through Amazon like one of my friends did, you can end up getting paid money on top of a free phone. Maybe they'll catch on at some point, and start treating loyal customers well.

Confessions

I know, from the way it started, this blog gave the impression of being a food blog. It's not. While I will talk about food and drink often, I won't restrict myself to those subjects.

I need to post the second part of the banana series but I'm waiting for an oppportunity to cook for some people. While I have made several variations on the dish I want to post about, they've always been improvised so I don't have a solid recipe. As soon as I try a few things out and make sure I've got something worth posting, it'll be up here.

So, onto today's subject. If you're not a Turkish speaker, you probably haven't heard of the very popular website itiraf.com. The name of the site means "confession". I guess initially the idea was that people would post anonymously about things they've done that they're ashamed to talk about with most people, but still want to get off their chests. Well, the scope has widened considerably, to the point where there are posts about cute things little kids do or impressions of foreign locations visited. With this widening came a small loss of popularity, but you can still find some posts that are genuine confessions, that, I don't know, I guess warm you up inside. Posts that actually seem worth putting on paper.

I saw one such post today. Since it's in Turkish, you will have to make do with my translation of it. There's a big difference between being bilingual and being able to translate well, so please excuse the poor job I did. I think you will get the gist of the post though.

"Over the weekend, my nine year-old dog and I went to the forest. We sang, we howled, we cooked meat over an open fire and drank wine. We played games, but he got tired very fast. In the evening, we came home. I took him in my lap and helped him get off the car. He moved forward using his front legs because the other two don't work. Happy and in pain we entered the house. I put my shovel and my gun down. I couldn't do it to my friend."

Bananas for dessert: fruit in disguise, part 1

(alternate women's magazine title: Guilt-free desserts!)

Bananas are a little different than your run-of-the-mill fruits. Take apples for example: sure they taste good, but you look at one and it screams "health!" at you. You know, "an apple a day keeps health insurance companies in business"... Well, sometimes I want something that will taste great as a dessert but not remind me that I'm trying to eat healthy. Bananas, although quite good for you, don't have that image problem apples have. So, eat one as a snack. Or if you want something just a little richer and fancier, try the following recipe:

Sultan's snack
Cut a medium sized, ripe banana into thin, diagonal slices. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

It tastes great, but it doesn't contain any simple, processed sugars. It's relatively low in calories and you can control the fat content by how much walnut you use. The fat you get from the walnuts is the good kind, the kind that helps you increase your good cholestrol.

Of course, for people who think of dessert as warm fudge brownies toppped with ice cream, this may still look a little too heatlh-foody. No worries, we'll take care of you people in part two.

Boring as chicken

(alt. title: "in which the author solves two culinary problems with one recipe")

I never understood people complaining about blog sites losing their posts. It never made sense to me that software specifically made to post to blogs would make your posts vanish. It's like a bank not being able to handle money. Anyway, I had a post up about roast pork, but it got lost when I was mucking about with the template. I'll try to repost it some day.

If you've ever tried to change your eating habits to consume less fat, or to exclude red meat, or if the first thing you learned to cook on a stove was chicken, you're probably really bored by now. Even though slapping a piece of boneless, skinless chicken breast onto a pan is a shortcut to a healthier dinner, it also ends up being very boring quite soon. This is sad, because chicken is good.

Another culinary phenomenon I would call sad is the use to soy sauce by soy sauce neophites. I can't remember how many times I've had "chicken with soy sauce" that was just chicken with soy sauce. Adding soy sauce to a dish is not a stand-alone method to create flavor. Soy sauce needs help from other flavorful ingredients most of the time.

In light of these two problems, after careful and lengthy consideration, I came up with the following recipe, which as yet, is nameless.

(Nameless chicken with soy sauce recipe)
for one person
-1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into approx. 1.5cm cubes
-1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced vertically
-1/2 cup chopped/diced tomatoes
-3 tablespoons soy sauce
-small amount of hot sauce (optional, adjust to taste and spice tolerance)

Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil into a pan and put it over high heat. After 1 minute add the tomatoes to the pan. Let them cook while stirring occasionally. Put the cubed chicken in a small bowl, add the soy sauce (and optional hot sauce) and stir. When the tomatoes have lost their shape and most of their juice is released, add the mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms are almost done. Clear a space in the middle of the pan and dump the chicken (with the sauce) in there. The chicken, being in small pieces, should cook quickly. Turn all the pieces over once to cook the other side. When the chicken is cooked, stir everything together and cook for another 30 seconds, and you're done!

Good food according to Aegeans

good food according to aegeans
Originally uploaded by liquirizia purissima.

While we're on the seafood theme, here's a very basic, but also very good Aegean fish dinner. The fish is only gutted and cleaned, the head remains intact. Medium sized fish are most commonly grilled. They are brought to the table whole. If the fish is intended for more than one person, it may be cut and served by the waitstaff. Otherwise customers usually debone their fish themselves. Finally, flavor may be added by squeezing a little lemon over the fish or drizzling olive oil.
Various small cold and hot dishes called "meze" are served before the fish. Usually, only salad and bread accompany the fish on the table.

Fruit of the sea

Shrimp have very few calories and almost no fat. Lots of protein. They are also cheap when you get precooked frozen ones. What I'm saying is, if you're not concerned about your cholestrol, write shrimp into the "things that take no time to prepare and still taste ok" section of your brain.