Questions for Icequeen

[WolFish]

I got some bad lobster from the IGA but don't have the spoons to return it. It's not food poison bad, just frozen thawed frozen mushy when I cooked it.

Is there anything I can use it for?
We left all the cats in Florida. Didn't think Canada would appreciate us bringing in a load of ferals.

[El]

Any tips on making veggies taste good, using as little sodium as possible?

['andersom']

Any tips on making veggies taste good, using as little sodium as possible?

Got one for broccoli for you.

Bring broccoli florets to the boil, (by throwing them in boiling water) for just a few minutes. Drain and let it wait till you're finished with the rest. 

Gently heat some thin sliced garlic and a thin sliced red chili in a bit of oil (olive, rapeseed, something like that). Add some (roasted) cashew-nets. Stir them through. Then add the broccoli and warm through till most of the liquid is gone.

Gives a completely different taste to the broccoli.

[WolFish]

I got some bad lobster from the IGA but don't have the spoons to return it. It's not food poison bad, just frozen thawed frozen mushy when I cooked it.

Is there anything I can use it for?
We left all the cats in Florida. Didn't think Canada would appreciate us bringing in a load of ferals.

Our refrigerator effectively dehydrates everything left open so the lobster is now firm, but since we got no response we are going to err on the side of safety and throw it away. We have to wait for garbage day because we seem to have acquired a cat that likes to spray in our garden.

Any ideas for keeping a cat away from the flowers?

[Icequeen]

Sorry, still fighting the cold/allergies from hell the last few days.

The lobster...yep, you probably could have made a dip from it...but I'm really weary of any seafood that just doesn't seem "right" texture or taste wise.  I'd rather err on the side of caution and pitch it normally.

Any tips on making veggies taste good, using as little sodium as possible?

I like most of my veggies roasted, instead of steamed...they just have more flavor that way to me.
Asparagus, broccoli, I normally melt butter and add some lemon juice to make a simple lemon-butter sauce. Potatoes I will add a little butter, onion, garlic, and some cheddar cheese and roast in foil.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-and-Spicy-Green-Beans/
Both the kid and the veggie hating SO will eat these....I use the low sodium, gluten free soy sauce.

Spaghetti Squash...cut in half lengthwise, clean out the seeds and pulp in the middle, put a little pat of butter in each half, sprinkle with garlic powder, and ground pepper...wrap each half in foil and bake at 350 cut side up, until tender (approx. and hour or so depending on the size of the squash), shred insides with fork, and sprinkle with parm cheese....this is my favorite.

Any ideas for keeping a cat away from the flowers?

They have repellants that work, but some of them like "shake away" (fox urine) smell worse than cat pee. Most (not all) don't like the scent of citrus, like orange or lemon. There is also the diversion tactic of planting catnip at the other corner of the yard, and letting them have that in hope they will stay away from the flowers.

If they spray your steps/porch, whatever you do, just don't clean it with an ammonia based cleaner (it actually seems to attract them more). Orange oil/lemon oil based spray seems to help deter them, either soap and water or bleach to clean. My former neighbor had a ton of cats and they just loved my porch. 

[WolFish]

Feel better soon.

We're going to try putting mulch down. Our ferals stopped spraying and started sleeping in the flowerbeds when I put some mulch down - it was still in the bag and they slept on it. It didn't stop Chewy from eating my portulaca, though.

[WolFish]

Is it OK to cook in a rusty pot? We have a pan on which the porcelain coating has deteriorated and it's got something on it that looks like rust. We don't put raw stuff in, we just cook in it. But it occurs to me that it might not be safe.

[Gopher Gary]

Is it OK to cook in a rusty pot?

OMG!! I hope she tells you no.

[Icequeen]

Rust will not hurt you, unless it is flaking rust. Seriously, rust is just iron oxide and is not harmful if you ingest it, unless you are eating large quantities of it or have really high iron levels.

I would worry more about ingesting any of the porcelain coating, if it's flaking, pitch it.

I won't even go into the horrors of Teflon, I gave all mine away and only kept one because the SO pouts if I bust the yolk on his fried eggs.

http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/24786/eating-food-from-a-slightly-rusting-cast-iron-dutch-oven-is-it-safe

My favorite skillet is a vintage cast iron one, sometimes I'm not as careful as I could be with it, sometimes it rusts, but I scrub it, re-oil it, and it's as good as new.

['andersom']

Is it OK to cook in a rusty pot? We have a pan on which the porcelain coating has deteriorated and it's got something on it that looks like rust. We don't put raw stuff in, we just cook in it. But it occurs to me that it might not be safe.

If you cook acidic stuff in it, you may get a higher intake of iron. The advise for people with too high iron levels is not to cook in pans that have food get into contact with iron.

So, maybe your pot is just what an anaemic person needs.

There is also this: Lucky-iron-fish.
They tell not to worry about rust, just brush it off.

[WolFish]

We've tried everything and the rust won't come off. It doesn't seem to be flaking, maybe it just got so think that the rust came through. I pitched it earlier today. Pyraxis might not do well with extra iron.

The problem is that it's an odd size that I have come to love. It fits perfectly in a toaster over but holds a lot of chicken. It's 9x12 if I remember correctly. Haven't been able to find anything like it anywhere.

I cook in cast iron too - I have a griddle, a pan and a dutch oven. The dutch oven is made for cooking outdoors. Two of the utensils are lodge and I don't remember what the third is. I have an omelet pan but that is at my mother's house. I had a two burner griddle but never used it so I put it in the donation box. The round griddle covers just about anything I make.

Since leaving FL I have begun to cook again. BBQ chicken last night and other things like Pad Thai, sweet & sour beef, fried rice and fried chicken. Working my way up to things like pancit and desserts. We did have a sort of apple pie, but even those things are different here.

The speckled pan was a favorite for making chicken. I got it at a thrift shop in FL. Montreal sucks for thrift stores so far.

[Icequeen]

We've tried everything and the rust won't come off. It doesn't seem to be flaking, maybe it just got so think that the rust came through. I pitched it earlier today. Pyraxis might not do well with extra iron.

The problem is that it's an odd size that I have come to love. It fits perfectly in a toaster over but holds a lot of chicken. It's 9x12 if I remember correctly. Haven't been able to find anything like it anywhere.

I cook in cast iron too - I have a griddle, a pan and a dutch oven. The dutch oven is made for cooking outdoors. Two of the utensils are lodge and I don't remember what the third is. I have an omelet pan but that is at my mother's house. I had a two burner griddle but never used it so I put it in the donation box. The round griddle covers just about anything I make.

Since leaving FL I have begun to cook again. BBQ chicken last night and other things like Pad Thai, sweet & sour beef, fried rice and fried chicken. Working my way up to things like pancit and desserts. We did have a sort of apple pie, but even those things are different here.

The speckled pan was a favorite for making chicken. I got it at a thrift shop in FL. Montreal sucks for thrift stores so far.

Pad Thai....

Sounds like the graniteware pan I have sitting in the cabinet. I think mine has a wire rack for the bottom...not sure where I picked it up at. I think it was in a box of junk the neighbor gave me.  It's a weird size.

[WolFish]

Mine came without a rack. I was trying to remember graniteware - that's what mine was too.

I learned to make Pad Thai from some guys running a Thai restaurant in Amherst, MA. The Thai food in Montreal is from a chain store - Thai Express. It's pretty bad but I will eat it when I don't want to cook. The noodles get soggy after one day. Cooking is so much like chemistry it's hard not to love it.

[WolFish]

So the movers stole some of Pyraxis meds from when she had a root canal. We're hoping it made those jerks pretty sick. They were pretty old. So what happens when drugs get old? Do they make you sick or are they just ineffective? They were from maybe 2007 or 2008. We have some morphine that I could take as an experiment, but I think she would rather I did not.

I found out recently that I have a paradoxical reaction to opiates. They make me agitated, which explains why Dilaudid was so awful. I have a lot left from when I had some broken bones in my back and from when I broke my sternum.

[MLA]

Not much.  Especially if kept dry and dark.