Parent vs Madison Avenue

I haven’t had a good rant in a while and I’m due.

The issue is the talk about regulating the marketing of junk / highly processed food to children.
Here are the major issues—marketers are pushing high fat, salt and sugar food with loads of preservatives and flavor enhancing chemicals to children through electronic media, the second is that childhood obesity is linked to sedentary lifestyle.

My question is: Who is raising the kids? Madison Avenue or parents?
Don’t want to answer that, do you?

The recipe for the cure is very simple, doesn’t cost any more than the families are spending now and anyone can do it.

The ingredients: minimally processed food (families have to buy food anyway, they just need to choose better) and a parent with a spine.

Shut off the TV, computers, video games and mp3 players allow 1 TV program, and 30 minutes of video games at predetermined times each week. The kids will miss most of the brainwashing the corporate media provides. Their friends will influence them to some point, but by the time they get old enough for it to be a big issue the parents would have the kids trained to eat real food. They will whine, but no one ever said that parenting is an easy job.

The second step is to push the children outside to play.
When they come back inside give them a piece of fruit and a glass of water or a peanut butter sandwich and push them back outside. When dinner time comes the parent chooses an appropriate meal of minimally processed nutrient dense food, which the child eats because no other options are offered. If a child refuses to eat the minimally processed food, put it on the plate any way. If they don’t eat it the first second or third meals, don’t sweat it. They will eat it when they are hungry and kids get hungry pretty quickly.

This is where the spine comes in, the parents can’t bend to the child’s pleas for junk. The parents cannot have junk food in the house, except on specific occasions such as birthdays or holidays because they will eat it if it is there. (The parents might lose a few pounds too doing this!)

Repeat daily until the children are old enough to learn how to cook and then integrate Kids Cook Nights. Then the parents will get served things like borscht, squid stir fries, chicken with noodles and veggies, baked chicken with baked potatoes and a salad by their children, like I get served by my child. She is eight, she can do most things except drain boiling liquids on her own (I’ll admit that she has been in training on/near my hip since she was an infant). She is going to bake and frost my birthday cake next month, from scratch.

When it all starts to work the parents need to brag about it to all their friends, so that it becomes a standard expectation for parents and other people will follow them.

Stinky Stuff Fusion

I made millet the other day, I like to play with grains/starches. I get bored with the rice, noodle, potato routine. It is bland like all the rest and goes with just about everything. I picked it up at an Asian grocery, which I find to be much less expensive and has much better stock turnover than most health food stores. It is cooked just like rice except that it requires 3 parts water for 1 part millet.
Today’s meal was to go with the leftover millet, so I walked out to the garden, picked a bit of the red chard, washed and chopped it and then stared at it for a few moments to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up. I decided that it needed to be a sort of Indian meal, but not quite. I wanted the lime tang of Vietnamese food…so I chopped an onion, and two carrots from the garden.
The chard in the garden is about to go to seed, so I am eating as much of it as I can. I hated chard as a kid, but once I learned that vegetables can be seasoned with more than salt, pepper and a bit of butter, and don’t need to be cooked until they are unrecognizable, a whole new world opened up.

I pulled out my grandmother’s trusty cast iron skillet and heated a little oil. Into that oil I tossed asafoetida, yes, you folks who took Latin read that right, it means stinky stuff, another name for it is hing. The folks in India who have religious reasons for not using garlic or just don’t like garlic or bad breath use it instead, the scent does cling to your clothes though. I think it is great, and it really lets you know who your real friends are!

Next some black mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. When those started popping, I tossed in a little turmeric, some garam masala, and some red pepper. As soon as the red pepper hit the pan I grabbed the chopped onion and tossed it in, because I know that if it smokes I’ll be coughing while opening every window in the house. Next went in the carrots and the stems of the chard. When those were softened, I added the greens, tossed it a bit and then put on the cover and turned it to low. While that was cooking I zapped the millet. I scooped the greens into the bowl, scooped some chick peas in on top and drizzled a little lime juice with a bit of sugar over the top of it all.

Very yummy, very filling, has complete proteins, and certainly is not boring. It has no name, but today I called it lunch.

Yes, yes, I disappeared for a bit and then surprised everyone the other day by returning to my blog.

I have presented myself with a challenge, I decided to take off the pounds I accumulated while trying to get over my lower back issues. I am back to my old self, now is the time to make a new improved self.

I’m not following any traditional diet, I eat when my stomach growls and eat to what the Japanese call “hara hachi bu”, three quarters full, sated but not “full”. One of my main meals each day is to be vegan. One condition of this—the food must taste good, be interesting and this whole thing needs to feel like a challenge rather than a sacrifice. I am also writing down everything that I eat each day to make sure I am getting a good balance of foods and to keep myself honest, you will not be subjected to the daily details of that.

It does seem to be working.

I am stating this simply because the pattern of my recipes will change a bit, but they will still contain funky international stuff and experiments with old fashioned ingredients. I figure that a huge portion of the world population lives a near vegetarian life, not for philosophical reasons, but for economic ones, and as a result there has to be a wealth of recipes out there that taste good. I intend to find them.

My garden is bursting with greens at the moment, soon the cabbage caterpillars will win the collard battle, but until they do collards are a regular part of my days. Collards, for a Northerner, are a foreign food. So, when I realized that they are one of the most productive veggies in this climate, I decided that I needed to figure out what to do with them. I pick them, give the ones the caterpillars have won to the chickens and head inside with the rest. I strip the thick stem from the leaves, wash/soak them in a big bowl of salted water (take that, you nasty caterpillars!) while I prep everything else.

The recipe I made yesterday is in the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special cookbook, by the Moosewood Collective in Ithaca, NY. Of course, since I am incapable of following a recipe all the way through, and since I usually refuse to run to the store for a missing ingredient, it is a little different from their recipe. I have made this recipe many times over the years, Asian Beet and Tofu Salad, it has gone over very well, even with folks who I didn’t think would touch tofu. I substituted collards for the spinach and I did not have scallions on hand, so I put in onion and then added extra herbs.

Here is what I did:
1 can of beets (I’m saving the ones in the garden for oven roasting)
1 14-16 oz cake of firm tofu
A mess of collard greens, which down here is a measurement and folks are supposed to understand—just the average bundle of greens in the market would do.

Marinade
1/3 c soy sauce
½ c lemon juice
3 garlic cloves
1 T ginger root
¾ of an onion
A mixed handful of basil, cilantro and mint from the garden, chopped

Wash collard greens and chop into small pieces. Place in a skillet with barely enough water to cover, simmer for about 10-15 minutes, until the larger veins are tender. Do not over-cook. Drain.
Cut tofu into small sticks or triangles, place on a plate covered with paper towels (or sack cloth/tea towel –I have some that I use for food prep only, draining tofu, yogurt and cheese, etc.) Place a layer of toweling over the tofu and then another plate and a weight of some sort-a cast iron pan or a can or two of tomatoes. Let this sit until the rest of the ingredients are prepped.
Mince garlic and ginger, chop onion and herbs. Drain can of beets (or cook fresh beets and drain them).
Mix all marinade ingredients together and place the tofu in the bowl. Let sit for ten minutes. Make a cup of tea (not required, but this is how I do it) and check the mail. Scoop the tofu out with a slotted spoon and arrange in the center of a serving plate. Place the beets in the marinade remaining in the bowl. Let sit ten minutes. Meanwhile, c heck your e-mail and read the news headlines. Use the slotted spoon to remove the beets and arrange them around the tofu on the serving plate. Place the collards in the marinade and set the table and wash the utensils, colander and pan that you have dirtied. Scoop out the collards, and arrange them around the beets.
Serve.
For something a little different visually, use the fresh beets and put them into the marinade first and then put the tofu into the marinade. You will end up with hot pink tofu.
Tastes even better the second day, but it’s less visually appealing.

Fruit Quest Crisp

My daughter has been inquiring about berry crisp for over a week and I could see that she wouldn’t be able to contain that craving for much longer.

(Wonder where she got that from??)

We found a pick-your-own blueberry farm in the next town over (Bluebela Farms LLC ) and decided that it was time to make our late-spring (in Florida, at least) pilgrimage to the bushes.
Following the lead of a recent animated film my family has been calling our excursions to new places "adventures", and often the term is quite true.

Today, we had the excitement of having the google map directions be completely bizarre.

After fifteen minutes of the directions making absolutely no sense, the map showed a straight road and we had completed two ninety degree turns and encountered intersections with roads that weren’t featured on the map, and the road up ahead looking like it was taking us deep into Florida beef cattle country, I was all set to turn around on the next road and give it up for another day. As we started our turn, I realized that it actually was the road to the farm.

I didn’t have to break it to my daughter that this evening might not be the best time for our adventure. Good.

Two minutes later we were turning up the drive. As with every good farm that sells to the public, this farm had the welcoming committee of friendly dogs lazing in the driveway and then sidling up to the car for an ear scratch or two. The greeters led us to the people who work for them, handing out buckets, making change and such. We each got our bucket, and headed for the rows of Emerald and Jewel blueberry bushes.

It was the end of a busy weekend, the wrong time to go a pick-your-own (PYO) farm, but since my daughter had been sick for most of the week this was our first opportunity to head outside. There were ripe berries on the bushes, but they were hiding amongst the leaves, the easy to see berries were long gone.

My daughter was purposely picking berries with a little bit of reddish purple because she likes the tang. Then she wanted to know why I was laughing at her, but I wasn’t, I was having déjà vu of a time when, at about the same age, I had to explain to my mother why I was picking McIntosh apples that were slightly green. The picking was a little slow going, but we picked a couple of pounds and decided to come back mid-week when fewer people would be picking and more berries would be ripe or almost ripe.

As we paid for our berries and chatted with the farm owners, we mentioned our blueberry crisp urgency and Angela requested the recipe, so here it is:

Fruit Quest Crisp

4-5 c fruit blueberries, blackberries, peaches, apples--whatever you have (slice apples or other large fruit, I often don't even peel the apples)
1 Tbs lemon juice (for apples or other fruit that discolors or needs a little something)
2/3 c flour
1 c brown sugar
2 c rolled oats (old fashioned, not quick, the texture changes)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c melted margarine (1 stick)

Preheat oven to 375º

Grease a rectangular 9X12 pan or casserole.
Place fruit in a layer, if using apples, sprinkle with lemon juice.
Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl with the melted margarine until crumbly. Sprinkle over apples and bake at 375º for 30 min.
Serve with ice cream, whipped cream or with milk.

It is supposed to be a dessert, but it tastes good for breakfast the next day warmed up with a little milk on it. It’s oatmeal, right?

Leftover Fusion

The two nights ago I prepared a full Indian meal with Saag Paneer (I substituted blanched collards for spinach, because they were on hand, the paneer was home made with goat milk), dal, rice, cucumber koshimbir and tomato koshimbir and tortillas, since I hadn’t made any bread. Since it had been quite a bit of work to put together and I was hungry, I immediately began to eat. A few minutes into the meal my husband reminded me that I should have taken a picture of my plate for the blog.

I seem to be completely incapable of making a small pot of dal, no matter what I do there always seems to be a vat when I am done, so I am in search of ways to creatively use it. I’ve made fritters much like falafel in the past, today I decided to make dal pancakes. I added two eggs, water, flour and baking powder until it looked like pancake batter.

I pulled out a relish I made a couple of weeks ago with kumquats and cranberries, that was uninspiring, and added Vietnamese chili garlic sauce and rice vinegar to turn it into a sweet chutney.
I pulled out my trusty cast iron pan, cooked up pancakes and topped them with the gloriously bright red chutney. It tastes even better than it looks, and it is good for you!

Two days before Christmas, gingerbread cookies are all frosted, the shortbread cookies are gone, the homemade marshmallows are topping coffee and hot chocolate. The real cooking frenzy is about to begin. The more savory stuff is about to come at a rapid pace.

Tomorrow, on Christmas Eve we will continue a fifty-one year tradition for my family, we will eat what my mother prepared for her first Christmas Eve as a married woman and every year since: pork chops, baked macaroni and cheese, and applesauce and family made fruitcake (We will eat no other fruitcake). I’ve asked her why she chose this meal, her response: “I really didn’t know how to cook anything else!” We usually ate pretty late, because my mom usually didn’t start wrapping presents until that day and the whole house had to be cleaned before the extended family came over on Christmas Day. Around 9:00 PM, we’d sit down to this meal, which really set it apart from the rest of the year, because we usually ate promptly at 5:30 PM.

When I lived alone thousands of miles from my family, I made this meal for myself on Christmas Eve. Visions of feetie jammies, Mario Lanza caroling, and the raw anticipation of a kid on the big night run through my mind as I prepare this meal. It wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without it. This year, my mom took pity on my family and shipped a bottle of her homemade apple sauce for us to eat. Florida can only grow two kinds of apples (I only know of one orchard) and they are ripe in the spring, so making applesauce around here just isn’t practical and the jar stuff from the supermarket leaves much to be desired. We’ll eat our meal knowing that my sisters and my mom will be eating exactly the same meal 1800 miles away.

It’s funny that Christmas Day for us has less in the way of food traditions, growing up we would have roast beef, ham or turkey, with whatever sides we felt like having that year and with assorted pies—always including mincemeat and squash--for dessert. This year, my family will be really non-traditional, we are having chao shi (Chinese roast pork), mien tang (noodles in broth with shitake mushrooms and greens), and eggplant with garlic sauce. We will have pumpkin pie and cookies for dessert (if any are left at that point, hmmmm might need more).
Happy Holidays!

Squash Posole Pantry Scrounge

Trying to find ways to cook that involve minimal standing time in the kitchen and then minimizing cleanup time has been a challenge since many processed foods contain dairy (cow milk) products. Using the items available that do not contain dairy products, I have been able to conjure up a few interesting meals.

Last night I took some Boston butt roast (about 1.5 lbs) and popped it into the pressure cooker with tomatoes and water intending to make chili. While it was cooking, I changed my mind. Thinking of a recipe I have made a few times that uses squash, tomatoes and green beans with chipotle peppers, I started improvising. First considering the seven year old taste buds that were to eat this, the hot peppers were relegated to a condiment.

Next, I pulled out some frozen squash and defrosted it, then chopped an onion and caramelized it in olive oil. When the pork was tender I pulled it out of the tomatoes to cool, then added the squash, caramelized onions, chili powder (the, oh so chic, Sam’s Club variety), a couple of good shakes of smoked paprika, lots of black pepper and a bit of salt to the tomatoes. That cooked down a bit while I chopped the pork into bite sized pieces and then returned it to the pot. I added canned kidney and black beans (rinsed), and in a moment of inspiration tossed in a can of (drained) hominy. This was served in bowls with gas flame toasted tortillas (done right on the burner of the stove, as one of my former students who hailed from Michoacan, Mexico taught me-the best method I've found so far), a dollop of goat’s milk yogurt and red pepper for the adults. It ended up being a squash posole.

This meal dirtied a total of two pans, one cutting board, one sharp knife, one wooden spoon, four bowls, and four spoons.

It tastes even better for breakfast the next day!

Low Effort Squash Posole
Approx 6 servings
1.5 lbs Boston butt pork roast
1 can diced tomatoes, 15 oz
2 c water
1 pkg frozen cooked winter squash
1 onion, chopped
1 t cumin seed
1 T olive oil
2 t chili powder
½ t smoked paprika
1 t oregano
Black pepper to taste
Salt to taste
1 can of black beans, 15 oz, rinsed and drained
1 can of kidney beans, 15 oz, rinsed and drained
Yogurt or sour cream to garnish
Your favorite hot pepper condiment
Tortillas
Cook pork, tomatoes and water for 45 minutes in the pressure cooker (until pork is tender). Meanwhile chop the onion, and caramelized with the olive oil with the cumin seed in a skillet. Drain and rinse the beans and drain the hominy. Have a cup of tea and read a book in the extra time. When the meat is tender, remove it to cool. To the pot add the onions, squash, spices, beans, salt and hominy. Chop the meat into bite sized pieces and return to the pot. Cook about ½ hour longer to develop flavor, get back to your tea and book. Immediately before serving toast tortillas directly on the burner of the stove (it works on both electric and gas stoves) and only takes a few seconds. Place into serving bowls and garnish with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and hot pepper condiment of your choice.

The Empty Pie Plate

My mom tried to let me off the hook for promising to make her a pineapple pie for her birthday, but I wouldn’t let her. I have been craving this pie for months, but just haven’t had the right chance to make one, so we compromised, she made the crust and I did the filling and the meringue. She worked her strength and I worked mine.

This pie has a special place in my heart and taste buds. It is not only rich and creamy, it has chunks of pineapple creating a tangy contrast and neat texture and then there is the meringue, I’m a sucker for good meringue.

It is one of my grandmother’s recipes and I have tweaked it enough to make it mine now. I have taken my version to a holiday potluck only to be urged by one of my friends to rush to the dessert table to taste the pineapple pie, there was only one piece left, and she knew that it was something I would love. She knows me pretty well, I guess, since I had made it because I adore it. I did return to the dessert table later in the evening, there were heaps of chocolates, fancy layer cakes, and traditional holiday diet-destructors and in the center of it all was my empty pie plate. There is no greater compliment that anyone could pay to this pineapple pie.

Baked pie crust
1 1/2 c hot soy or goat’s milk
½ c sugar
½ tsp salt
2 Tbs cornstarch
3 eggs, separated
1 slightly heaped cup drained crushed pineapple
½ tsp vanilla
6 tbs sugar for meringue
¼ tsp salt for meringue



Mix sugar, ½ tsp salt and cornstarch in a double boiler (a saucepan if you are really careful and stir constantly). Add milk. Cook until thickened.

Place egg yolks in a small bowl, beat them, add a Tbs of milk mixture and beat quickly, repeat until yolks are hot and can be added to the pan without making poached scrambled eggs. Cook until mixture is thick.
Cool.
Add pineapple and vanilla.
Pour into crust.

Make meringue
Beat egg whites until they make soft peaks, add salt (if using) and sugar. Beat until stiff peaks form.

Spread on the pie and bake at 400º for 10 minutes or until the peaks are lightly browned. Thoroughly chill.

Make a pot of tea and enjoy your pie!

Stoicism and Bar Stools

It was a quiet Thanksgiving for four for us this year. Everything cooked was a tried and true recipe and nothing was left to chance. Keeping everything very simple has been the motto of my cooking lately, nothing fancy, nothing time consuming, good plain food. It is pleasant for a while, but my taste buds get bored a little too easily and it cannot last for too long. I am hoping my orthopedist and physical therapist can assist me in getting my groove back in the kitchen.

My grand achievements for this past week have been yummy chocolate cupcakes (Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook recipe) and Chocolate Continental Frosting (Fannie Farmer Baking Book) for a Gator football party (at someone else’s house), a so-so dark carrot cake (FFBB) for Kirk’s birthday. All this is done with a well placed bar stool and a little New England bred stubbornness and stoicism.

In the next 24 hours, I will create a pineapple pie (custard) with meringue, an old family recipe and one of my very favorites, for my mom’s birthday.

Potato Pie

Today's experiment was inspired by some of the old American cookbooks I've been reading lately.

Yesterday, I made a mountain of potatoes, knowing that there was absolutely no way that my family could eat all of them. I had potato pancakes made with mashed potatoes in mind. Today I mixed up the potatoes, two onions finely chopped, some flour, two eggs, a tablespoon of baking powder (the only thing I measured), milk and a pinch of salt.

They half cooked, the side closest to the center of the pan was gorgeous, brown and crispy, but the side by the edge of the pan was potato mush. I tried slowing down the cooking until it almost stopped to get some decent ones, but it would have taken all evening to cook enough for dinner at that rate. I took the rest of my batter and thickened it a bit more with flour added a bit of oil to the cast iron pan, poured in the mixture and popped it into the oven at 375 degrees. It was crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside.

There is a bit left to pop in the toaster oven for breakfast, it will be a good morning.

Got My Goat

Got My Goat
A local supermarket (SweetBay) carried goat for a while, stopped carrying it and is now carrying it again!! I almost did a little dance by the meat case, but being a bit gimpy at the moment, I refrained. I did hum to the 70’s tunes and sing along a little though.

Goat has a flavor similar to lamb, but takes a bit longer to cook. I find many people’s aversion to goat meat puzzling. Most have never tried it, they even seem to fear it, but they are willing to eat bottom feeders such as lobster and catfish. I don’t get it. The “mutton” that the Brits ate in India was almost all goat meat. They just couldn’t call it by its proper name, somewhere along the way goats unjustly started getting lots of disrespect. They are smart animals unlike their vacuous sheep cousins; maybe their craftiness is their downfall. I believe that long ago the folks who kept Western civilization moving along were shepherds and fought the goat herders for land, water, power, religion (all the usual stuff) and then vilified the poor goat along the way, they even gave the greatest villain of all goat horns and a beard.

Luckily, some folks appreciate a little goat meat once in a while and enough of them live close enough to Sweetbay and complain enough (like me) to make them carry it again. I bought some to support the cause, and pulled it out of my freezer yesterday, uncertain what I was going to do with it this time. I wasn’t in the mood for Scotch broth or a curry, so I pulled out my Middle Eastern recipes and looked through the lamb recipes and then spotted a chicken recipe that I had made quite a few times and had forgotten over the years. Out came my trusty pressure cooker, into it went a can of beef broth, the goat meat, some additional water, about 1.5 cups of tomatoes, a couple cinnamon sticks, a good amount of coriander, black pepper, and turmeric, then a pinch of each cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg (I measured by sight, not spoons). I didn’t have orange or lemon peel to toss in, so I used tangerine zest (I sent the peeled tangerine in Jillian’s lunch today). I pressure cooked it for about 45 minutes and then dumped it into the crock pot, because I wanted to soak and cook some chick peas quickly in the pressure cooker. The cooked chick peas were dressed with lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and a bit of salt. I served the goat and chick peas with creamed spinach and rice.

Jillian had creamed spinach for the first time last night, she didn’t want to try it, but we used our best parental “persuasion”, then she did try it. A moment later she said she wasn’t sure if she liked it. We encouraged her to take another taste and didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem to be going over well, so I scraped the last of it on to my plate and ate it. Moments later she asked if there was more spinach left, hers was gone and she was a convert.
The meal must have been pretty good because Kirk thanked me for the nice dinner, twice. He seems to have missed my cooking (the gimpy state gets in the way of standing in the kitchen; I started dinner at 2:30 and took numerous breaks to serve dinner at 6:15). The parrot snatched up the tidbit of goat in her bowl at dinnertime, and clutched it tightly, not dropping a crumb, very unusual for a very messy parrot.

Dip Success

Headed to a friend’s house for dinner last evening before the kids headed out for trick or treating, I decided that the menu was skewed toward the kids and the adults needed a little something interesting to go with it. So, I thought that I would bring hummus, but there wasn’t enough time to soak and cook the chick peas and my canned goods pantry didn’t help me out.

I puzzled over something quick to toss together, but interesting. So, I mixed mayonnaise and Miracle Whip, apricot preserves, Vietnamese chili garlic sauce, and lime juice to make a dip. I was thinking that it would go with the Sun Chips that the hostess had mentioned on the phone, but the other guests were waaaaaaaaaay more creative than me. One suggested that we put it on the hot dogs (worked well), another guest drizzled some on sliced apples (worked well, again) and then another started dipping pretzels in it. One suggested to use it on a salad, but we weren’t having salad, so that experiment will have to wait. I guess I’ll have to name the dip now, but inspiration hasn’t hit me, yet.

Yesterday for lunch we had corn chowder, it has been a while since I have made it and I needed to use up some goat milk before it spoiled. I only needed to stand in the kitchen while stirring the bits of salt pork and onions, the rest of the ingredients cream style corn, corn, potatoes, black pepper and milk didn’t require much attention at the stove. There are leftovers, so it will be lunch again today!!

Pie for Breakfast

Trying to get into the Halloween spirit with the air conditioner running is a bit of a challenge…but there is always a solution. Since apples are $1.49 lb, making applesauce doesn’t seem to be a viable option. There were a few less expensive apples in the market but they looked as if someone had been playing tennis with them.

I bought a jar of applesauce, not too exciting, texture wasn’t quite right…so to use of the rest of the jar before it got fuzzy in the back of the fridge I decided to make a Marlborough pie this morning, it’s just the thing for breakfast with tea or coffee. It’s an old fashioned recipe that hangs around in many cookbooks, but I’ve never seen anyone else make one. I made it once a few weeks ago and did it again this morning. It is extremely easy and uses mostly pantry staples. It is clearly a comfort food.

Here is my version (I am completely incapable of following a recipe all the way through.)

Marlborough Pie
1 single pie crust
2 c applesauce
½ c sugar
2 eggs
½ stick margarine, melted
2 Tbsp lemon juice
½ c goat milk (you can use cow or soy milk, I’m sure both will work, the original recipe called for evaporated milk)
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
Pinch of cardamom
Pinch of cloves
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Place foil covered pie crust in oven for 6 minutes, remove foil and bake 4 more minutes. (Since the pie goes into the oven for 45 minutes this might be unnecessary, but I haven’t tried that, yet. If a step can be cut I’m all for it!)
Mix remaining ingredients in a mixing bowl and then pour into the pie crust. Bake 15 minutes at 450 degrees, then reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for 30 minutes.
Cool for at least a few minutes, so it will firm up a bit. Serve with tea, coffee, or with the variety of milk of your choice.

Kirk and Jillian are carving pumpkins, one will last through the photo shoot that follows and then become the victim of my giant vegetable cleaver to become pumpkin puree. Pumpkin cinnamon rolls come to mind...hmmmmmmmm

The Never-Ending Chuck Roast Parts 3 & 4

The never-ending chuck roast lives on…last night it was tossed with sesame-ginger noodles and veggies and tonight the last of it will make its appearance as shepherd’s pie. I’ve tried to mix up the flavors so it didn’t feel as though we were eating leftovers. It is 83 degrees and humid, not quite shepherd pie weather, but it will travel better than soup would in lunches.

The Never-Ending Chuck Roast

Last night trying to find an easy low-prep meal I found a use for the nearly five pound chuck roast hanging around, which had been threatening the toes of anyone who dared open the freezer door. I defrosted it in the microwave to the point where I could break it into smaller pieces and dropped it right into the pressure cooker (How did I cook so many years without one??); within the hour there was lots of tender beef ready to take on the flavors that I had prepared. I simply placed about a quarter of the meat in a serving bowl and placed it on the table. Next to the serving bowl I placed a small dish filled with lime juice, an insane amount of garlic and a bit of kosher salt, mojo! The beef was dressed by each of us to our taste at the table. I served it with microwave “baked” sweet potatoes, and the one thing I labored on for this dinner, stuffed okra a la Madhur Jaffrey . The okra was filled with cumin, coriander, a tiny amount of red pepper and amchoor powder (green mango powder), which gave it a tangy, spiced, but not spicy flavor. It was sautéed with onions and then to finish the cover was placed on to steam it. It has never turned out gummy and is a favorite of my family. I have taken this okra to potluck dinners several times and have always come home with a completely empty casserole dish.

Tonight, trying to find something that I could throw together without too much time standing in the kitchen resulted with burritos filled with some of the leftover beef, refried beans, tomatoes, onions, spinach and Seminole squash (a native American squash that can deal with this wet, mildew-y climate). The squash was started in the microwave and then transferred to a 450 degree oven for about 25 minutes. We had multi-grain tortillas toasted over the open gas burner. I poured leftover mojo sauce on my burrito and sprinkled it with hot banana pepper rings.


Now that we have consumed about half of the meat, I need to figure out before dinner time tomorrow two more ways that it can be reincarnated (or is that re-in-carne-d) without everyone becoming tired of it. The variables include a head a broccoli, a head of cabbage, a little spinach, a pound of carrots, a little leftover squash and a multitude of beans to work with, hmmmmmmmm…beef and barley vegetable soup maybe, or beef tossed with sesame-ginger noodles and veggies, or shepherd’s pie or make gravy and serve it over Yorkshire pudding…

Back into the Kitchen

In my forced leisure I have been reading vintage (pre-canned soup era) cookbooks. I tried to dump my preconceptions of older cooking as too rich and bland and came out with some interesting conclusions. #1 Servings sizes were much smaller. #2 Sure, most vegetables were done with a little white sauce, but a little is the key, it seems just enough to form a thin coat on it. #3 Recipes containing cheese only include 1/4 to 1/3 cup of the cheese, a sprinkle, versus our 1-2 cup shredded cheese wonders. #4 They ate a lot of bean soup. #5 There is more variety than I had anticipated. #6 The folks back then must be the reason there are so few oysters left, there is a recipe for oysters with virtually everything, except dessert.

My return to cooking has begun, this week we did take out a couple of times and I resorted to tomato sauce from a jar, but I could not do that for long. I was up to tossing blanched broccoli rabe with tons of garlic and caramelized onions, Italian tuna in oil, cannellini beans and lemon juice, no leftovers. The balance came out just right, Jillian, who is not fond of many greens scarfed it down thinking that the broccoli rabe was broccoli. I did something similar a couple nights later with the rest of the broccoli rabe with fresh tuna that was sold in chunks for half the price of the tuna steaks, only I added roasted red peppers and capers.

This morning, after the first cold night of the season, our somewhat insulated Florida home needed a little warming, so I decided to try a recipe that I found on another blog, German Apple Pancake
(http://tortatebukura.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/german-apple-pancake/ ). It is apples sautéed in butter (margarine for me), brown sugar, and cinnamon, and then a thin sweet pop-over type batter (made with four mini eggs from our bantam Cochin chickens) poured over the top and then placed in a hot oven. Very yummy. This recipe may become a “regular” in our house. Jillian offered to peel the apples tomorrow, so that I can make it again. Since she leaves for school at 7:15 AM, she will change her mind when I awaken her at 5:30 AM to do it.

A Screeching Halt

My cooking has come to a screeching halt. I have been told by my doctor not to do anything that hurts, and since my issue involves muscles that are used to support the body when standing, sitting, rolling over, squatting and kneeling, that doesn’t mean much in the way of movement or comfortable positions. So, I have been torturing myself by reading all sorts of cookbooks and gardening books, being unable to do either.

One benefit is that I have had the excuse to eat other people’s food for a bit. My husband and I sampled some Indian vegetarian food from a local shop. It was very good, and very filling. We started with vegetable samosas (mostly potato), rather spicy with the tamarind sauce that sealed the whole deal. Sweet and sour dal soup, with one flavor that I just cannot figure out that rounded out everything, I now have a mission to seek out all the sweet and sour soup recipes to see if the secret ingredient reveals itself. It had toasted black mustard and cumin, bits of tomato, red lentils, turmeric, and definitely something else that gave a smooth, almost creamy, mid-note, but since it was vegan so it was not cream or butter.

Dinner was naan, basmati rice, and okra masala for me and spinach and potatoes for my husband. The okra was spicy and did not have any of the gluey tendencies that okra can have. The spinach and potatoes was comforting with its smooth texture and flavor.

The best part of the whole meal was the mysterious dal. Now I have a project that I can complete to keep me from going nuts from inactivity.

Chinese Roast Pork Rolls-Cha Shi Bao

Cha shu bao or Cha shi bao (the cookbook says one thing, the class I took in Mandarin a couple of years ago said another).

I had to repeatedly shoo my daughter away from the roast pork only to discover her hovering over it with telltale greasy fingers. I find the roast pork in Chinese restaurants to be rather dry and nasty most of the time and try to avoid it, but this stuff… divine. Filling bread dough with it is pretty easy, if the vultures don’t eat it all while your back is turned. The bread is on the sweet side and the meat is coated with a salty-sweet sauce and the combination has been enough to make me take the commuter rail into Boston to get it.

Of course, now that I am 1200 miles from Boston that is not going to be happening again anytime soon. For the second time in two years I decided to throw some together. The recipe for the bread part is from a website that I did not record two years ago, I think it was a discussion group. The meat recipe comes from An Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking by Wonona Chang. I think I achieved better results the last time I made them, this batch seems dry. The bread doesn’t seem to have quite the right texture , but I swear that I used the same recipe. I must have used the Roast Pork II recipe last time. The pork is great on its own but it is not quite right for these particular rolls. This is a do-over. The result is good, but not quite what I had in mind. I would not ride 45 miles on the commuter rail for these.

Cha shu bao and spinach pies

Both are in the works today, the first reminds me of Chinatown in Boston and the second reminds me of bakeries in Providence and Cranston, RI. Results later.

The Mother of All Spice Racks

I have basket upon basket of zip bags filled with smaller bags of herbs and spices that I have picked up at ethnic grocers. I had to buy another spice rack with jars; my collection was getting out of control. I spotted a rack at a yard sale and thought that it would be just the thing that I need, but when I got home I realized that the quantity of bagged spices that I own far exceeds the number of little jars and the volume of many of my zip bags is far beyond the size of those bitty jars. So, I have filled many of the jars with things that I do not use very often, so it doesn’t help as much as I had hoped. I have found that jelly and pickle jars to be about the right size, unfortunately I have never seen a spice rack with jelly sized jars.

The miniscule jars all had labels on them for things like rosemary flakes and thyme flakes (flakes??). I wonder how it was decided to include some herbs or spices and not others. There is a jar labeled pickling spice, not exactly something that there is much call for these days. I’ll be making new labels, because not one of the labels says panch phoran (Bengali spice mix), garum masala, fenugreek, star anise, Sichuan pepper, smoked paprika, cardamom, cumin, turmeric, or coriander.

I think it is time to design my own spice rack, it would have a row or two for small jars, and then four or five for jelly sized jars and two rows for pickle sized jars. The rack would be about three feet wide and four feet high and the depth of a large pickle jar deep, about five inches. Each shelf would have a very small lip to keep jars from sliding off. Maybe a large CD/DVD shelf without the slots would do it.