Sesmark makes at least two different Sesame Rice Crackers, and I like the flavor of them both. But, a short time ago, I found some Black Sesame Rice Crackers at Whole Foods in Raleigh, and bought a bag of them. They had an even more distinct flavor that went really well with the Wegman’s Intense Brie. The Capricho de Cabra and the Bucheron Goat Cheeses are semi-soft and mildly tart and these would go well with either of these rice crackers. They also go well with raspberry jam.
Now I like liver, liver pudding/mush, liver pate, beef/calf liver, chicken livers, all types of liver. I especially like the flavor of Nueske’s Smoked Liver Pate. This will go good with the rice crackers also.
Oneida Golden Julliard FlatwareOneida Stafford Satin FlatwareHampton Forge Zephyr Mirror FlatwareEgg with cheeses, liver pudding & polenta.
This is a satisfying breakfast that is easy to prepare. Use a small skillet on the stove-top and put some bacon grease & some other oil (grapeseed, olive, avocado) in the pan. Slice the casing and remove it from the mush and press the mush down onto the skillet. If desired, slice some onion and put it in the pan with the liver mush. Depending upon how hot the pan is, the mush may begin to form a fine burnt (not to taste) skin that sticks to the skillet but can be scraped up. *Freddy’s hamburgers have a similar skin around the edge of their burgers.
Paint some oil on the surfaces of a waffle iron, and put a couple of slices of polenta on the hot iron surface and close the lid, and press it down and leave it to heat through. **Without the oil, the polenta may stick to some of the waffle iron surface when you try to remove them.
Prepare an egg (maybe two) in a bowl, with S&P, and various spices (marjoram, celery seed, dulse, garlic powder). Put a little oil & water in the egg mixture and beat with a spoon. Put a little oil in the microwave onion cooker, to keep the egg from sticking to the bottom of the plastic container. Cook the egg for perhaps 30 seconds and then add shredded cheese(s), and then finish cooking the egg. A minute or a minute & a half is usually sufficient to melt the cheese and cook the egg thoroughly.
When the egg is cooked, you can just flip the container upside down and slap it on a plate. The oils should cause the egg to release without a problem. ***Without the oil, some of the egg may stick to the bottom of the plastic egg cooker. You now have a perfectly formed & cooked egg, in a round flat shape that you could also put on an English muffin. Add some sliced deli ham and you have an Egg McGibson.
Without an English muffin, open the waffle iron and using a fork, remove the two polenta waffle cakes to your plate. ****You choose whether you want polenta or other bread with this breakfast.
Scrape the liver pudding & onion from the pan making sure to get the burnt bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet.
Add some small grape tomatoes. Slicing the tomatoes will allow you to add salt to the halves/quarters.
[NOTE 02/08/24]: I’ve mentioned cooking this breakfast elsewhere but I’m not sure I’ve ever stated the brand of “liver pudding”. This is “Pender’s Pudding” and I originally bought some at Pate’s Farmers Market (across town, in Fayetteville). But, I have since realized that there are other grocers that sell this. I think I bought some in the Carlie C’s and here is the simple process I used to figure it out.
20240122_111200.JPGGoogle Timeline for January 22, 2024
Note that the file name of the image of the Pender’s Pudding was showing as January 22, 2024 at 11:12 am. I went to my Google Timeline and pulled up that date. Timeline wasn’t sure of where I was visiting at that specific time, but the outlined path made it clear, to me, that I was in the Carlie C’s IGA at that shopping center. *Not sure if I just saw it there, or actually bought it there, but I know the last time I bought it, I didn’t drive across town to Pate’s.
You may also notice that the Pender’s Pudding is vacuum packed, but once the seal is broken you don’t have an endless shelf life in your refrigerator. I know from experience that some has gone bad and had to be thrown out, or almost gone bad (beginning to get a slimy texture to the casing). So, this last time, after I sliced the plastic package open, I cut a slice of liver pudding for breakfast, but I cut the remaining into breakfast portions and put each in an individual re-sealable sandwich wrapper and put these in my freezer. I figure I can take one out a day or so in advance to thaw and hopefully won’t waste the rest.
The problem with this or any meat is that you don’t want to eat it every morning until it is all gone. And, when you rotate through waffles & bacon, oatmeal, eggs & bacon, fried apples & bacon, etc., you might not finish off the liver pudding before almost three weeks (too long, unless you freeze some of it). I do eat a lot of bacon, but it is packaged in 12 oz. sealed packages, and when I open one of these, I slice the bacon in half and then put all of it in a plastic container for my fridge. *I use the re-usable plastic containers that I have bought deli meats from Hillshire Farms in. They have clear plastic bottoms and a red see-through top. The Hillshire Farms advertising is meant to be easily removed from the red plastic top. It is a flat cardboard sheet that is attached to the red plastic top by a few daps of sticky glue. Just pull off the cardboard sheet, and roll the glue up into a ball & throw away. Depending upon where & how much you pay for the Hillshire Farms Deli Meat, it may or may not be cost effective to get these re-usable plastic tubs.
***I haven’t bought deli meat (honey turkey, honey ham, black forest ham, pastrami, corned beef) in quite a while. Actually since I started paying attention to my weight & Bgl, I realized that I didn’t need a deli meat sliced, to go on a bunch of bread. Now, I might buy some pastrami with the intention of making my Pastrami Rachels at home, but this would be an intentional act, knowing I was going to use more bread, buttered & toasted with melted Swiss cheese than usual. A “splurge” eating event. As might be going up to Greensboro to “Sticks n Stones” for their Margarita Pizza (jalapenos extra). Or perhaps going across town to Pharaoh’s Legacy to have their Lamb Gyro, with a Greek Salad. And this reminds me that I haven’t been up to Maguro’s for their lunch special (all the rice, I like but don’t need) in quite a while. At one time I was going weekly up to Southern Pines to eat at Maguro’s.
Also, the one “fast food” place that I had continued, Post-COVID to visit, Taco Bell, I haven’t been to in maybe a month now. I ate there every week, buying a Beef Burrito Supreme, a Bean Burrito & a Crunchy Taco, but sometimes leaving either the bean burrito or the crunchy taco out. I think the last time I stopped at Taco Bell, I only bought one item and don’t recall if it was the Burrito Supreme or the Crunchy Taco. You see, I can and do make/choose other items at home to go with this Mexican Meal. Homemade salsa, with roasted poblano & jalapeno peppers, some cumin & cayenne & Agave Nectar. Some chopped sweet onion, or maybe an avocado cut up. And some sour cream.
I’ve got an opened bag (probably gone stale by now) of Tortilla Chips on my dining table that may have been there a couple of months. I ate a few with some homemade salsa, and then they just haven’t fit into my current eating pattern since. You have a certain amount of calories in a day, but you also have to get all the nutritional value in that same day, so you can’t eat a whole bag of Tortilla Chips and then eat all the other stuff you need nutritionally for that day. **I tried 1 tortilla chip tonight, and they were still crisp & edible.
My Fitness Pal has helped me schedule and plan ahead the foods/meals that I am going to eat. The total calorie intake might not be exact for a certain day, but with a certain margin of error, they are close enough. So, I am eating with two main goals in mind. #1 is to keep my Blood Glucose Level down, and the 2nd is to cut calories to bring my weight down. I know that my Bgl will become more maintainable as my weight decreases.
I haven’t been able to decrease my weight (after having lost a little more than 10 lbs. in couple months period) below 250 lbs. and today was 252.6. I’ve also had a problem with keeping my Bgl down because I wasn’t able to get my Trulicity refilled when needed and eventually switched (maybe just for 30 days) to Rybelsus. But during those couple of weeks what had been averaging around 135 resting Bgl, had kicked back up above 150 Bgl. I’m still not happy with it, and after reading some of the side effects of Rybelsus, I want to return to Trulicity, if possible.
[end NOTE]
I’ve said there are two versions of the Sesmark Rice Thin Crackers and one of the packages is about twice the size of the other, and for about the same price. I know I can get the single channel package at Harris Teeter, where I first bought them. I don’t recall the other store where I bought the four (or 3) channel package, but will be looking because I didn’t notice too much difference between the two crackers.
I remove the liver pudding casing, add some bacon grease to the pan and press the liver pate down onto the cooking surface (relatively low heat). Maybe a couple of minutes to heat through.
I slice a couple of polenta rounds, thinly so that I can put them in the heated waffle iron and press them down. I’ve already brushed some cooking oil (now normally Avocado Oil because of high smoke point) on the two sections of the iron that I plan to use. This will take a couple of minutes to heat up the polenta cakes.
I break one egg into a bowl (one of my black bowls that has a rough texture inside the bowl) add a little Half-n-Half, some S&P, cayenne, and garlic powder and whisk with a fork. I can’t scramble an egg normally… in a pan, on the stove top. It just doesn’t come out like at a cafe. But, I can put this egg mixture in my onion cooker that I bought at the Agri Supply Store, put it in the microwave and it is done in about 1 minute (sometimes just a little longer to get all the runny stuff, but 2 minutes would make the egg hard). *As I’ve probably said elsewhere, this microwave onion cooker can cook a varied assortment of foods: baked potato, sweet potato, onion (medium or pearl), and eggs.
I was over at Pate’s a week or so ago, and walked past the liver pudding. It looked good, but as I came back to it, I couldn’t see a price. There was a butcher nearby stocking an opposite shelf and I asked him the price. He came over to the counter and pointed the price tag (very small & white above the products). If you know where to look, the price tag was obvious. I think it was about $3.66 or so.
I didn’t try this, but I’ve been thinking of making some spinach rice. I just bought some brown rice yesterday, and I have several packages of frozen spinach. I think I’ve used white rice when making this previously. I don’t need a lot of rice in my diet. Through the years I’ve loved all types of rice, but in the last several years the rice I cook seems to take on a grainy texture (not pleasant to me). I don’t know if the rice is old, because I don’t cook rice very often any more, or if it is the method I use to cook the rice. *For most of my life, I cooked rice by measuring out just a little more water to cover the uncooked rice, and hoping most of the water would cook off by the time the rice was ready. But a few years ago I saw a cooking show and they suggested a different method. Put way more water in the pot than you think you might need, and add the rice. Bring to a boil and cook for exactly 9 minutes, pour off the excess water, and viola, perfect rice. And, it did seem to work. It was only later that I would note the graininess of the cooked rice. I still enjoy the Sushi Rice I get at a restaurant. It is moist and a little chewy.
NOTE [05/30/24]:
I entered the following comment on a web site that had a posting regarding liver pudding/mush:
“On the coast of North Carolina, where I grew up, this was called “liver pudding.” In the western part of our state, and in South Carolina, it is called “liver mush.” Either way, I love it, with some sauteed onions. I’ve bought it in “block” form, where you slice off some to cook. Lately, I’ve been buying it in a casing, like link sausage. I have a box cutter near the stove, and I slice the casing and peel it off before I start cooking the liver pudding. I like a scrambled egg with cheese with my liver mush breakfast. I have a microwave “onion cooker” and I beat the egg, and cook briefly to get a firm base for the egg. I then add some shredded cheese to the partially cooked egg and finish cooking. What this process does is allow the cheese to melt in the middle of an egg patty. The rounded egg/cheese patty would fit perfectly on an English Muffin, so you could just add Canadian Bacon for a McMuffin-like sandwich. Or forget the muffin and enjoy the liver pudding & sauteed onions.”
No, I don’t see where anyone has listed a liver pudding soup online. I had bought some liver pudding this afternoon, just because it looked good, and was in link form. I think it cost $3.99 plus.
I bought some Red Swiss Chard at Fresh Market for about $2.99 a bunch. For some reason this Chard looks good there, and seems to be very reasonably priced, although I think most of their other pricing on both vegetables & meats are a little high. It may be the dark green leaves with the bright red ribs that set it off to me.
I had bought Red Chard there previously, and had combined that with Borlotti (Cranberry) Beans and some seasoning meat, and that had turned out really good. Sort of a unique, earthy flavor not already in my repertoire. Uncooked the beans have burgundy streaks on a brownish gray bean, but once cooked they lose the streaking and just become a plain brownish bean (but flavorful). *I have written about the Borlotti beans elsewhere, and recall that it was on an episode of one of Jamie Oliver’s cooking shows (of which he has had many) that he brought these beans to my attention. Since then I have seen & bought them dried, but also seen them cooked & canned (15oz.) at Walmart. I think they are called Roman Beans in those cans, but I have seen them advertised as Cranberry Beans, and they are also Borlottis.
So, I wanted to use the liver pudding as the meat flavored base for this soup. I started with some bacon grease and sliced onions in a pot on the stove-top. I then added chicken stock to the pot, cut some of the Red Chard, first de-veining the leaves and then chopping the red ribs up into smaller cubes, while choosing to chiffonade the leaves into little ribbons. Now, I had a Roma tomato close at hand and diced just one of these. But, the really odd thing that I chose to add, and this was mainly because I had a medium Avocado which was about to “go to waste” as they often do in my house. *With my increased attention to the meals & foods that I am eating, and am scheduling to eat, I know when there is no room for extra food items. And even with this soup, I don’t actually have it scheduled in any of my upcoming meals yet. However, I have already tasted it a few times, and it has a good flavor.
Surprisingly, the avocado didn’t break down immediately, so there were good sized chunks of it floating with the dark green Chard and a few of the diced tomato still intact. The liver pudding has long since dissolved into a browning base for the soup. And, I just tried another few tastes, and “Yes, this is good soup!” The beans probably have another 30 minutes to an hour to cook thoroughly, but they are edible even now. The rest of the ingredients are cooked well.
NOTE [ 12/27/23 ]: I’m not going to eat a lot of this soup, but it was a test. Much more successful than the three bean test I did a few years back, where none of the 3 actually made a better soup. I had about a cup full of this soup for lunch. It wasn’t bad, and I had it with some sweet onion. The liver pudding isn’t distinctive enough to carry the meat flavoring portion of the soup. The Red Swiss Chard and Borlotti beans provide an “earthy” flavored base. I think the Borlotti beans do have a distinctive flavor, not necessarily a distinctive look after cooking. They go from brown with burgundy striations to just a plain brown cooked bean. Both times I have cooked the Borlotti beans and Red Swiss Chard, the result is a thick soup. This would be a good side dish, but would try to find something “lighter,” like a salad or steamed asparagus/cabbage.
[ NOTE ]: I had substituted this soup for baked beans in my eating plan, but at the last decided to substitute something else. This says to me, whether I want to be honest with myself or not, that I don’t really like the taste… or I would be eating it.
Bill Gibson, II 