Summer and the grilling is easy. And safe.

I have family members that have long been in the food safety industry, so I really can't be messing around when making food for them. Since I do a lot of grilling, I especially want to keep things safe when handling meat, fish, and poultry. 

The CDC has a nifty Grilling Safety Infographic and the bottom corner has the most important info (pictured to the right). If you're a carnivore or eat fish, make sure your food reaches the listed temperatures. 

Don't overcook your food in the name of safety. If you can, spend a bit of coin on a good instant read thermometer. I have this Lavatools Javelin PRO thermometer and I love it. I'm actually on my second one because I accidentally submerged my first one in water. Overnight. It's easy to use and accurate. It takes a second to check and it will be worth it to keep germs out of your family and friends' bellies. 

Roasted Chicken

There are about a million ways to roast a chicken. I looked. For my first chicken roasting attempt, I was dismayed to find the grocery store shopper picked out a monster, 6.5 lb. bird. Was it going to be raw? Was it going to overcook? I had no idea, but you gotta' start somewhere and apparently this beast would be my first roast chicken. I needed a base recipe and could improvise from there. I found a two step process that I will cherish. 

Step 1: Brine that bird.

I dry brined the bird. This means salting the hell out of the whole chicken, and seasoning with additional flavors. On the skin. Under the skin. In the cavity. Do not fear the seasoning. The bird's mighty girth made maneuvering a bit difficult, but I got the job done. Have it sit in the fridge between 24-72 hours. I did 48 hours. I did not truss the fatty, but this did not seem to be a problem.

• Link: Best Dry-Brined Roast Chicken from Simply Recipes

Step 2: Cook that bird.

The bird cooked at 350°F in a roast pan on the second from bottom rack (had to take one out). The regular heat method called for 20 minutes for each pound, plus an extra 15 minutes. My final cook time would be 2 hours and 25 minutes 😳. That seemed...excessive. I seriously thought I was going to pull a lump of coal out of the oven. I pulled it out and let it sit for about 20 minutes as I prepared the sides.

• Link: How to Roast Chicken: Tips and Techniques from one of my long-time favorites, Allrecipes.com

It was perfect. Juicy. Crispy skin, flavorful meat fell off the bone. I also learned I need some better kitchen shears, but the struggle was worth it. I really should have taken a picture, but it really didn't look that amazing. It appears looks can be deceiving. 

Flour and Yeast

With all this new found time, I decided I wanted to try to learn to bake bread. Well, turns out it's hard to find yeast in the stores right now. My bread making will have to wait, but in the meantime, I learned these fun little tidbits from McGee's On Food and Cooking, cause I was like "What the hell is yeast, anyway?"

p. 531 - Flours
Both pastry and cake flours have low levels of weak gluten protein for making tender baked goods. Cake flour is distinctive because it's treated with chlorine dioxide or chlorine gas.

Leavenings are ingredients that fill doughs and batters with bubbles of gas, thus reducing the amount of solid materials in a given volume and making the bread or cake less dense and more light and tender.

p. 532 - Yeasts
The yeasts are a group of microscopic, single-celled fungi, relatives of the mushrooms. More than 100 species are known.

Air frying is great + cookbook recommendation

In my house, we like to use all kinds of gadgets in the kitchen, from little garlic mincer machines, to stuff like the Instant Pot and air fryer. I have had much more success with the latter.

Air frying is a great way to cook with much less oil. As with any new gadget, it takes a second to get used to and probably the biggest complaint about air fryers is that they are too small. As with any recipes, you'll have to think about how many you'll be cooking for and opt for the proper size air fryer.

Also, when getting an air fryer, I would recommend making sure the dial for the temperature can turned at 5 degree increments. Mine only does 25 degree increments, i.e. 300 to 325 to 350 degrees and requires adjusting times and stuff.

I found a book that was pretty great and gave me tons of ideas and temperature/time charts to work with: The Super Easy Air Fryer Cookbook by Brandi Crawford. I checked it out from the library and will immediately be adding it to my book birthday wish list to own.

Five stars ★★★★★ for both the book and the cooking method.

Storytelling and Identity Cooking

Henry David Thoreau said that "An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day." My walk this morning certainly was. It's not only the fact I'm out and about, moving my feet, enjoying a perfect Michigan morning, but it's also what I'm listening to. Today, I tried out two new podcasts and wanted to share them with you.

Terrible, Thanks for Asking

Without a doubt, I subscribed to this podcast because of its name. The first episode I listened to today was episode #41 and it's called The Stories We Tell. As a fundraiser, my work is based on relationships and storytelling is an important part of that, so I'm always looking to hear stories from all walks of life. This particular episode had me tearing up for a number of reasons: it was a story of a daughter's relationship with her parents, how memory fails us, how stories change and family myths are born. However, when I really got emotional was when the father started talking about how important HIS father found education. In Laos, in the early 20th century, a man felt as passionate about educating his kid because he knew it was a way out of abject poverty. He was right. I learned a little bit about the "Secret War" that was happening concurrently with the Vietnam War in that part of the world. Finally, I was so delighted to hear that the matriarch of the family, after being on the podcast, wrote and sang a song about her family's experience.  So cool! It is a haunting song. I think this podcasts has some interesting surprises, so this is about as detailed as I get, but I highly recommend this podcast and this episode. I think Nora McInerny is great. She describes her podcast as "a funny/sad/uncomfortable podcast about talking honestly about our pain, our awkwardness, and our humanness, which is not an actual word." Definitely my jam.

To the Best of Our Knowledge

Closely following Terrible, Thanks for Asking, I took in my first episode of the Wisconsin Public Radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge. I browsed some of the episode topics and felt that there was quite a potpourri of knowledge to sift through. Since I am trying to expose myself to more random bits of knowledge lately, this was exactly what I sought in a podcast. It did not disappoint. The episode was In Search of "Real" Food. First, Simran Sethi talked all about chocolate and how there are actually 14 gene clusters of chocolate across the world. At first I didn't get her point, but by the end of the segment, I knew that it was to savor and truly appreciate the food that we love, like excellent chocolate. REAL chocolate. Then I discovered the author Michael Twitty, who wrote The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African-American Culinary History in the Old South. He was fascinating because his cooking is at the cross-section of African American, Jewish and gay culture. He is so connected to his ancestors through his cooking. It's amazing. This entire episode made me really think about how flavors tell stories.

So my walk this morning was great because I got to discover and listen to two new, excellent podcasts. I hope you get a chance to enjoy one of these. Never stop telling stories! And never stop listening to them.

Treat Yo Self: Top 10 Ways to Escape Reality and Relax

Lifehacker is really great. Sometimes, they just provide simple reminders on how to stay sane. This post is a perfect example: Top 10 Ways to Escape Reality and Relax. My current faves: reading, writing and cooking.

Year of Gratitude - Day 169 - Parchment Paper

Parchment paper is great and so are these recipes. I have used it for plenty of messy cooking adventures and clean up is always easy. Get you some parchment paper.

Year of Gratitude - Day 112 - Tips for a Non-Stinky Kitchen

Year of Gratitude - Day 29 - Garlic Roller

One day while shopping with a bud in Traverse City, MI, we came across a culinary store with all sorts of cooking knickknacks. At this story, I found the garlic roller, which produces perfectly minced garlic without stinking up your hands. It's the best and I am grateful that I can add garlic to a lot more stuff with no hassle.

Year of Gratitude - Day 28 - First Piece of Cooking Advice

OK, so I realize that this is a very first world piece of advice that cannot be applied all over. However, at the time I heard it, I was at a place and point in my life that I needed to stop fearing failure. It was the first time someone told me, "If you mess up, just throw it away and start again." While that was the piece of cooking advice that would launch me into trying new recipes and foods without fear, it was also the start of me understanding that messing up is okay. Obviously if you make a habit of messing up, that's not, but it's okay to venture into the unknown, get schooled and live to learn another day.

Since that day, sometime in 2006, I haven't tossed too many dishes, but when I did, I did not feel guilt. Those experiences just added notches on the learning wall.

Year of Gratitude - Day 26 - Allrecipes.com

Cooking is one of my favorite things to do. I wish I could spend more time on meal planning and trying new things, but that's just not where I'm at. However, Allrecipes.com is easy to use and many of the recipes I've tried are either great as they are or leave wiggle room for creativity. The app for iPhone is pretty great as well, since that's usually what I'm looking at in the kitchen. 

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 11 - Cookbooks & Recipes

Cookbooks have been around for quite a while, true. For some painful examples, check out Awful Library Books' "You Ate What?" category. I'm not one to whom cooking comes naturally. I have to have look stuff up, measure it carefully, time everything. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but I love the ability to go to a library and figure stuff out.

My staple and what got me through my first year of cooking for myself was definitely Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook. This has a whole slew of simple recipes, staples, tips, an illustrated glossary, easy to use charts and a fine index. I'd recommend this (particularly the binder version, if they still have those) to any first time cook.

Another book that tells you incredible amounts of information about food is Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Goodness. It's the best. I don't normally buy books, but this is one that every cooking household should have on hand. It tells you how to tell if an egg is still good or not. How hot meat should be. It explains why certain things happen to certain foods at certain temperatures. This blathering paragraph gives this book absolutely no justice. Check it out for yourself and discover a huge world of food science. McGee was the first to put it all together and his book still reigns. I also recommend this NPR interview with Howard McGee. I'd love to hang out with this guy.

I've been trying to track cookbooks that I like on the ole Great Cookbooks Pinterest board.

I am grateful for not only cookbooks, but excellent recipe websites, like Epicurious, Foodnetwork.com, Taste of Home and Allrecipes.com. Plus, there are some great food blogs out there, like 365 Days of Slow Cooking, e is for eat and Get Dinner on the Table. It's great to have so many resources for so many different types of food.