Food on Friday: Chopped Salad

I like vegetables. Some of them, anyway. Carrots, broccoli, green beans, zucchini, corn. Okra, if it's fried. Spinach in salads. But not all vegetables. In spite of all the different ways I've tried them, I still have never found a brussel sprout recipe I'd make again (and yes, that includes several that say "even haters love them cooked this way"). And I'm still learning to like greens. Kale is growing on me.

But I've known since I was teenager that for the most part, I'd rather eat veggies raw than cooked. In fact, other than okra and green beans, all of the veggies I said I liked in the previous paragraph I prefer raw. So when I happened to pick up a serving-sized container of "chopped salad" at a Whole Foods store a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that maybe that's the way I should eat vegetables.

Chopped salad has become a staple around here, any time I remember to stock up on the right stuff and have the time to do all the chopping. Honestly, it doesn't really take that long--I just made one and it took about twenty minutes. It isn't so much a recipe as a method, but here you go anyway.

Chopped Salad

Choose six or eight of the following:
Any firm, choppable veggie: zucchini, crookneck squash, broccoli, carrots, jicama, celery, cucumber, asparagus, bell peppers, etc.
(corn can be fresh, or drained canned, or frozen--which you don't have to thaw, just throw it in and 10 minutes later it is fine)
Greens: spinach, kale, chard, beet greens, collards, etc., and any type of lettuce or cabbage
Tomatoes, any type or color (grape, cherry, plum, regular)
Fresh fruit: apples, pears
Dried fruit: cranberries, apricots, cherries, blueberries, raisins
Beans: black, pinto, garbanzo, or black-eyed peas
Herbs: basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro
Nuts/seeds: pumpkin, sesame, pecans, walnuts, almonds, peanuts
(you can also start with a bagged chopped salad and add to it)
(also you could add cooked diced meat, cheese, hard boiled eggs, tuna--but I usually just do veggies)
(I think onions are too strong for this, but if you like raw onions, add them, too)

The key is to chop every thing somewhere between 1/4" and 1/2" in size. Broccoli and kale pretty much disappear if you chop them small enough. If you have a good sharp knife, it goes pretty fast. Dump all the chopped vegetables in a bowl, then add your favorite salad dressing (or olive oil and a splash of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar). Salt and pepper to taste.

Here is the one I made this week. It has carrots, zucchini, kale, asparagus, a bag of "southwestern chopped salad" (which included a pouch of sunflower seeds and cranberries), a can of rinsed and drained garbanzo beans, and about a dozen halved grape tomatoes that I had leftover from earlier in the week. Kinda pretty, isn't it?

(Mom brag: note chopping board MadMax made in woodshop last week!)

Food on Friday: The Cooking Grinch Strikes Again

For awhile now, we've bought a quarter cow from a local rancher, i.e., one-fourth of one of his cattle. I'm not up on cow terminology--is it a steer? a cow? I have no idea. But we get a quarter of it. Not exactly a quarter--it's not like we choose the left back quadrant or something, but he sends the ... um... whatever-you-call-it off to a small, local processing center, and they divvy it up fairly equitably so that we get some steaks, some ground beef, and some roasts. Then I go pick it up. Sometime I will tell you more about going to the processing place to pick up our meat, but that's way off topic for today, which eventually will be a recipe for sugar cookies. Ha.

So anyway. Last year we didn't get one because PellMel the vegetarian was here and we already had a backlog. We always go through the steaks (yum!) and the ground beef, but roasts? I am just not a roast person. We probably have two years of roasts stashed down in our freezer. So this winter I decided I was going to do better. Once a month I've been hauling out a roast and figuring out something to do with it.

So this morning, there I am chopping a chuck roast into large chunks for beef stew and wondering about things they say in cookbooks. After dredging the meat in seasoned flour, you're supposed to brown the meat "on all sides." I'm assuming that means more than just top and bottom, because if that's all it meant, wouldn't they say to brown the meat on both sides?

So there I am trying to prop these pieces of meat up on their sides. The last time I did this I actually stood there and held them up on their sides with a pair of tongs while they browned. Hell with that, I thought this time, and just did top, bottom, and then sort of lined them up in a row so they held each other up on two of the sides, then decided I was done with it. They're now browned on two-thirds of their sides and they're tucked into the crock pot with sliced onions, red wine, and various seasonings. I'm out of carrots, but I can't imagine it will make a material difference in the outcome if I throw some carrots in there later this afternoon after I've been to the grocery store. If it will, don't tell me.

I know from experience that Dean and MadMax will love this, and I will eat a half serving and remember why I am not a big fan of roasts. I could never be a vegetarian (steak! bacon! cheeseburgers!) but I could go the rest of my life without having pot roast or beef stew and I would never notice.

Here is another silly thing I read in a cookbook. I actually got the cookbook out so I could type it word for word (this is from Desperation Dinners, which in spite of its un-appealing title is one of my all-time most used cookbooks): "When you have no idea what to cook, fry an onion. I do this a lot, and without fail, family members sniff their way into the kitchen clamoring to know what's for dinner."

Whaaaaat? How in the world does that make sense? You've now got a fried onion, no dinner, and people in the kitchen demanding to know what you're going to feed them. That is, hands down, the dumbest line I've ever read in a cookbook--even though I love that cookbook.

But the real reason I broke down to type another Food on Friday post (which I'm scheduling for while we're out of town) is because after years of searching, I finally found a sugar cookie recipe that works. MadMax adores sugar cookies--they are almost the only cookie he will eat (although he has on occasion shown an unreasonable fondness for Chips Ahoy Chunky White Fudge). I've tried probably eight different sugar cookie recipes in the last few years and never found one that was worth the trouble, since the sugar cookie mix that comes in the red pouch from Betty Crocker is actually pretty good.

But he was jonesing for sugar cookies last night and I didn't have the mix, so I pulled out one of my oldest cookbooks, one I bought not long after we got married, found a recipe for sugar cookies in the index, and voila (which in our house is almost always pronounced voy-la), the best homemade sugar cookies I've ever produced. These are the big, soft kind, not the thin crisp ones. So here you go, the recipe as written and then the way I modified it.

SUGAR COOKIES
(attributed to Nancy Cheek in the 1982 edition of Chapel Hill Favorites)
3 C sifted flour
1/2 t nutmeg
1 t soda
1 C margarine
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla

Cream margarine and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla, add dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Chill at least two hours. Roll dough out, cut with cookie cutters, and bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes at 325.

Which is both a bit appalling (does anybody use margarine anymore?), not to my taste (I've never been a fan of nutmeg, which I know makes me an unsophisticated slob, but there it is), and too much work. So here's what I did last night, which turned out pretty damn fabulously if I do say so myself.

SUGAR COOKIES, TAKE TWO
2 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C whole-grain spelt flour (or barley flour, or just use 3 cups regular flour)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 C butter (1 stick), softened slightly
1/4 C shortening
1/4 C unsweetened applesauce (you could probably use 1/2 C applesauce and skip the shortening, but I haven't tried that)
scant cup of sugar (probably about 7/8 of a cup)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt

Cream butter, shortening, applesauce, and sugar for 3-4 minutes. Add the egg, salt, and vanilla, and mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients half a cup at  time. Drop the cookies onto ungreased cookie sheets, using about a quarter-cup per cookie. Flatten them into thick disks three-ish inches in diameter. Bake for 14 minutes at 325 or until just barely starting to brown. Do not overbake.

What's the dumbest line you've ever read in a cookbook?

food on friday: we gather together

Thanksgiving is next Thursday. I'm not sure how that escaped me. Until a few days ago, I thought we still had a week to go. So this is the last Friday before Thanksgiving, and it's Food on Friday, so let's talk about Thanksgiving food.

I'm among the many who could do without the turkey. I'm not a vegetarian, but turkey takes up too much room on the plate when there are so many other good things to choose from. Sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, what am I leaving out? It's all good.

For years now we've joined together with several other families in our neighborhood for Thanksgiving. It can be tricky to do a major holiday with other families, because you never know exactly how to mesh traditions. And Thanksgiving is all about food traditions. Somebody volunteers to bring the mashed potatoes and then uses instant, which would be a hanging offense at my house, but I'm told that some people can't taste the difference. Which always just makes me shake my head, because how can you not tell the difference? I've had instant that were OK, but they are definitely not the same.

But fortunately I am the least proficient cook in this group, and nobody would bring instant mashed potatoes, so we're good on that front. In fact, I'm probably the most suspect (I bet you're really suprised) because I use the rolled up pie crusts in the red box and always have. So shoot me. I usually make 5 or 6 pies every year, and who the heck wants to make that many homemade pie crusts?

I started feeling a bit guilty about it last year, though, so I decided that this year I would try making at least one homemade pie crust. I was going to practice all fall so that I would be good at it by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. You can probably guess how that went--it's less than a week until Turkey Day and I'm not even sure where my rolling pin is.

At our house, the bare essentials--the things we absolutely must have--are: real mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, grape salad, and pie. There are lots of other things we like --and come to think of it, Dean and MadMax would probably insist on turkey-- but those are the things without which we would feel cheated. Although we could probably make do in a pinch with just pie. We all have a different favorite pie, so that means I usually end up making four or five. At a minimum, apple, pumpkin, cherry, and chocolate pecan, and also usually an experimental one. A couple of years ago I tried a cranberry walnut recipe that was great but I haven't ever been able to find it again.

So of our essential items, probably grape salad is the one you don't have a recipe for, so I will give you mine. I'm just helpful like that. Grape Salad is in the same class of foods as jello salad, but slightly (ever so slightly) more sophisticated. It's one of those odd recipes that seems like nothing the first time you try it, but then the next time you think, hmmmm, this is pretty good. Then you find yourself sneaking in the day after Thanksgiving just to get another little taste of it, and after awhile, it is essential to Thanksgiving. I originally got the recipe from my younger sister.

THE Grape Salad

3 lbs seedless red grapes
1 bag fresh cranberries
3/4 C sugar
1 C whipping cream
2 T powdered sugar

The night before, wash and halve the grapes (this is a great job to give to a kid who wants to help--as long as they're old enough to be safe with a knife, of course). Rinse the cranberries well, then pulse them in a food processor until you have cranberry bits, but not so long that you have cranberry mush. Stir together the grapes, cranberries, and sugar, cover and let sit overnight. The next day, drain off most of the syrup. Whip the cream, gradually adding the powdered sugar. Gently fold the whipped cream into the grape/cranberry mixture and serve. It will hold for an hour or two, but after that, even though it still tastes great, it starts to look a little funky.

Food on Friday: one measly thing

I had the Food on Friday post halfway written in my head earlier this week, but right now at the moment when I need to actually type it out, I've lost interest. I don't want to give up on the "Food on Friday" plan when I'm only on the second week, though, so I came up with an alternative idea, which is to tell you the amazing thing I tried with natural peanut butter this week.

Oh, yeah, we are all about the reader experience here at AB3. I don't know how you stand the excitement.

I love peanut butter. Adore it. I didn't when I was a kid--couldn't stand the stuff and wouldn't touch peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, just one of many reasons my mother probably thought about selling me to the gypsies.  Now I know that it was the grape jelly I disliked, not the peanut butter, but at the time, I wasn't going to touch a pb&j.

But eventually I figured out that I like peanut butter, and then sometime when I was in high school I had some real peanut butter, the "natural" kind without hydrogenation, and I adored it. Crunchy is even better.

But we all know the problem with natural peanut butter--when you buy it, it is covered with half an inch of peanut goo that has to be stirred down in before you can eat it. And that means making a big, gloopy, oily mess, and no matter how hard you try, there is always about a half-inch of cement-hard peanut butter at the bottom that doesn't get any oil stirred into it. (There are several brands of no-stir "natural" peanut butter but they don't taste nearly as good as the real thing.)

So the last half-dozen times I've done it, I've told myself, next time I'm going to dump this in the food processor.  But then I'd have to get the food processor out, and then I'd have to clean it, yadda yadda yadda. I never quite got around to it.

Finally this week I bought a new jar and it was a day I wasn't particularly busy so I decided to try it. Dragged out the food processor, put in the steel blade, poured in the oil off the top, used a fork to get the rest of it out of the jar, whirred it around for about 30 seconds, scooped it back in the jar.

It worked perfectly. The whole thing took less than five minutes, maybe six minutes if you include rinsing off the blade and bowl and throwing them in the dishwasher. Well worth it. And it's way more smooth and creamy than it is when you do it by hand. It's been in the fridge for four days now and it still hasn't separated out.

So there you go. Food on Friday. Oh, and by the way, the pumpkin bars are much better with brown sugar, so I'll go back and fix that. Apologies if it pops back up on your feed.

Have a great weekend.

Food on Friday: Pumpkin Bars

You know how most people have typing errors that they tend to make over and over again? One of mine is typing "pumpking" for pumpkin. I must have done it eight times while typing this. Just so you know. In case I missed one of them.

I love to bake. I used to bake cookies and brownies and cakes all the time when I was younger. That was how I made friends in college- I'd hang out in the dorm kitchen and bake cookies. People tend to stop by. Unfortunately, though, Dean and MadMax don't really have a sweet tooth, and lord knows I don't need the calories, so I mostly stopped baking years ago. 

But recently I decided to start again. I love to do it, so why shouldn't I? Usually I only bake if I have somewhere I can take the results so I don't end up eating half a pan of brownies by myself. Or sometimes I freeze the extras in individual portions, so I can ration them out and not have to rely on my notoriously poor self-control.  

At the moment I am obsessed with pumpkin bars.  Almost all the pumpkin bar recipes online are about the same--here is a good one, for example, and Paula Deen's recipe over on the food network is pretty much exactly the same (although I confess I didn't compare them line-by-line to be certain). I made that version last week and took them to the fall bazaar at our church. I used a heaping tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice in place of the cinnamon and added a tablespoon of vanilla, but other than that I made it exactly as written. Also you will note that there are FOUR EGGS in the recipe, and we all know that I am always looking for ways to use up eggs. (oh, and um, *shrugs sheepishly* I might have used cream cheese frosting from a can.)

But I thought since pumpkin is a pretty dang nutrient-rich food, with a little tweaking pumpkin bars could be a not-too-sinful treat. So I tried again. The version below is practically identical in taste but at least slightly better for you. Even though I cut the amount of sugar almost by half, these are still plenty sweet. 

Except we must address the cream cheese frosting issue. Cream cheese frosting is one of Dean's few weaknesses, but I can take it or leave it. Since Dean isn't going to eat these anyway, I omitted the frosting in favor of a streusel topping to cut a few calories, but I have to admit that the tang in the cream cheese offsets the sweetness of the bars a bit. So choose your topping as you will. Feel free to put the cream cheese frosting back on (the recipe is in the link above)(and I promise I won't tell if you use a can).

The streusel recipe is just a standard doorstop-cookbook recipe for oatmeal streusel topping, and it makes about twice as much as you need. It takes about five minutes to make but it does require pulling out the food processor, so it's worth making a double batch. I freeze half, making it simple to make another pan of these or muffins or something else later on, but you could just make half as much streusel to begin with, I suppose. Or you could dump the whole thing on there for extra streusel, but we were going for slightly healthier, you know.

Slightly Healthier than Usual Pumpkin Bars

4 eggs

1 C brown sugar

1/2 C canola oil

1/2 C unsweetened applesauce

15 oz can pumpkin
(Note that this is pure pumpkin, NOT pumpkin pie filling)

1 T vanilla

2 C flour, any type (I used one cup unbleached all-purpose and one cup whole grain spelt)

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1 t salt

1 heaping T pumpkin pie spice

Combine the first six ingredients and mix at medium speed for about two minutes. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until smooth. Spread the batter into a 15 x 10 jelly roll pan which you have sprayed with Bakers Joy or whatever you have on hand for greasing pans. If using the streusel, sprinkle on about half of the recipe below. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Streusel topping (you will only need half of this amount): 1 1/4 C quick-cooking or old-fashioned oatmeal (not instant), 1/3 C brown sugar, 1 t cinnamon, 1 T flour, 6 T cold butter cut into chunks. Put all ingredients in a bowl and cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two knives (or be lazy like me and pulse in a food processor--takes about a dozen 2-second pulses).

point and counter-point

As you know, we live in an out-of-the-way corner of an underpopulated state.  When we moved here, there were three small bookstores, and I visited them often, but they were small.  So when Amazon started (I just googled, it was 1994), I was in heaven.  I could browse to my heart's content at any hour of the day or night, and they had every obscure book that I could dream of. I adored Amazon.  I've subsequently learned a few things about their business practices that disturb me, but there will always be a little corner of my book-loving heart that belongs to Amazon.

A big part of the appeal for me was the customer reviews.  In 2013, you never know if it's a "real" review or one that someone has been paid to write, but for a long time after Amazon started, there was a real community of opinionated booklovers who passed reviews and recommendations back and forth at a furious rate.

And surprisingly, Amazon allowed negative reviews.  I'm pretty sure they were the first major retailer to do that--now it's common enough, but back in the day, it was a courageous statement of commitment to their customers' experience.  Here they are trying to sell stuff, and yet they let users write terrible reviews of their products and they leave them up where anyone can read them.   I loved it. 

I wrote quite a few reviews early on, but once I started a blog I stopped-- now I post my reviews here.  I've deleted most of the ones I had on Amazon.  But occasionally, when I feel that I have something to add that I wish someone had told me before I bought a book, I'll still post something.

About a year and a half ago, I posted a review of a cookbook called The Breakfast Book. It had nearly all glowing five-star reviews.  But I thought it was about the most boring cookbook I'd ever seen--it had recipes for biscuits from scratch and scones from scratch and several different ways to cook eggs, but it was all basic stuff that I already had in my big fat Fannie Farmer cookbook.  What I wanted was inspiration, some new ideas for things we could eat for breakfast on a typical chaotic day; what this cookbook gave me was just a bunch of basic recipes that would only have worked for us on a leisurely Saturday morning (if we ever had a leisurely Saturday morning), not a busy weekday.  

So I posted a review to prevent another cook like me from making the same $16 mistake, giving it three stars out of five (you can skip down to the next paragraph if you're pressed for time, this is just here for the sake of completeness):

I ordered this purely based on the glowing reviews it receives here. Once I received it, it took me awhile to figure out why everyone loves it so much, because it didn't seem that great to me. I think to appreciate this cookbook, you have to love to cook. I don't hate cooking, but I don't love it the way some do-- I would never, for example, choose to make my own cheese when you can get perfectly good cheese at the grocery and even better at the gourmet foods store. But [the author] provides a recipe for cheese, because "this is exactly the cheese I've always wanted to make at home." If you read that and think, "Great! I've always wanted to try making cheese!" then this is the cookbook for you-- there are some great recipes here (and not just for cheese, of course, there are all kinds of buns and muffins and egg dishes, etc.). But if you're like me and see that recipe and think, "Why the heck would anyone want to bother making their own cheese?" then you probably want to look for another cookbook. I just wanted more ideas for quick breakfasts for my morning-challenged family, and although there are a few of those here, not enough to make it worth the purchase price. 

I hadn't thought about that review in months, but a couple of days ago I got an e-mail that another user had left a comment on it.  I didn't ask her for permission to post the comment here, but it would be really complicated to tell you how to get to it at Amazon, and she did post it in a very public place, so I'm reproducing it here anyway:

That's the problem with people today, most people just want to go to the grocery store and buy things that they need as opposed to spending some time learning how to make healthy foods. Of course you can simply go to the grocery store and buy some random pack of cheese, but do you have any idea of what you're actually paying for? I am one of those people who have read labels, done research, and have learned what is really in store-bought foods and I love the idea of making my own foods at home. Homemade trumps store-bought any day and I don't understand why you would write such a negative review about the recipe for homemade cheese. Our society is full of lazy people who would rather make a food company rich as opposed to learning new skills regarding making homemade food.

Whoa!!  Really?  I don't think I've ever been grouped in with the people who are "the problem today."  The more I thought about this, the more dumbfounded I was.  The number of conclusions she jumped to just because I don't want to make all of my own food from scratch astounded me.  I'm lazy because I don't love to cook!  (what if I just have other things I'd rather do?)  Since I'm willing to buy cheese at the grocery store, I never read labels and have no idea what's in the foods I buy!  (I'm actually a pretty dedicated reader of labels, and I do my best to buy food with a minimum of additives.)  Any food made at home is better than any food that you can buy!  (seriously? anything a mediocre cook (me) makes at home is necessarily going to be better than a food made by someone who knows what they're doing?) (not all foods that you buy at a store are made by huge corporations, by the way.)

So I replied and told her that.  But I'm still a bit offended and a lot amused at her strident tone.

So, that's all.  I just thought you might be interested in the exciting life I lead.

another cooking post: EGGS and MORE EGGS

So here is the (obvious) problem with me committing to daily blog posts:  I forget.  Honestly.  Monday, I remembered at 11 p.m. that I was supposed to post, which is why there's that badly written post that I dashed off Monday night.  Last night, I remembered at 12:07 a.m.--i.e., it was already too late to post on Tuesday.  Oops.

Now it's Wednesday, and it's only 10:20, but I don't want to write the posts I have in my head, so I'm chickening out (smirk) and giving you my favorite egg recipes (so far), which someone asked for a couple of months ago.  Julie reminded me today about custard, which I've never even tried to make before, so I will do that soon and let you know what happens.

And by the way, the yogurt is merrily souring or whatever yogurt does right this very minute in its little jars in the machine on the counter.  The directions sounded simple, but it turned out to be a little trickier than expected, so I'm not sure if it's going to work or not.  Full report later.

Spinach Casserole - Every time I make this I am surprised at how good it is, because I am not the world's biggest spinach fan unless it's raw in a salad.

1 lb bag frozen chopped spinach (or two 10 oz boxes)
6 eggs
16 oz cottage cheese (Low-fat OK but not non-fat)
1/4 C flour (I haven't tried gluten-free flour but it seems like it would work, or just omit the flour)
2 C shredded cheese, divided (sharp cheddar or a mix)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 2 qt casserole with cooking spray.
1. Microwave spinach until thawed (about 4 minutes in my microwave).  Transfer to a colander in the sink to drain.
2. Break eggs into a large bowl and beat lightly.
3. Stir in cottage cheese, then 1 1/2 C shredded cheese
4. Press spinach lightly to remove excess liquid, then add to egg mixture.  Stir with a fork until evenly distributed.
5. Turn into prepared casserole and top with remaining cheese.  Bake for about 50 min, or until the top is browned and the whole thing is bubbly. 

Chile Relleno Casserole
This was ubiquitous in the community cookbooks of my childhood.  I didn't even know that it wasn't "real" chile relleno until I was in college.  This is sort of a work in progress because our eggs aren't uniform in size so it's hard to predict how it will turn out.  But it always gets eaten up.

1 12-oz can evaporated milk
6 eggs
1/2 C corn meal
1 t Worcestershire sauce
1/2 t salt
1 7 oz can diced green chilies
2 C grated cheddar or Mexican blend cheese
Serve with salsa, sour cream, guacamole (optional, but the salsa is highly recommended)

Stir together the evaporated milk and eggs.  Then stir in the cornmeal, Worcestershire, and salt.  Fold in the chilies and 1 1/2 C of the cheese.  Transfer to a baking dish sprayed with Pam and top with the rest of the cheese.  Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes until just set in the middle. Do not overbake. 

Potatoes and Eggs  This isn't really a recipe, but it's MadMax's favorite way to eat eggs so I'm including it.  Peel and dice 3-4 potatoes.  Steam or boil them for 4-5 minutes until just tender.  Heat about a tablespoon each of butter and canola oil for about 5 minutes in a large skillet.  Add the potatoes and distribute them so that they evenly cover the bottom of the skillet.  Let them cook without stirring for about 8-10 minutes, until the ones on the bottom are starting to brown.  Then stir them with a wooden spoon.  Pour in 8 eggs beaten with a little milk.  Allow to cook without stirring for a couple of minutes, then stir the eggs and potatoes together until the eggs are done.  Top with salt and pepper and serve.  You can also add cheese, but MadMax likes it better without.

Maybe I will wait and do desserts in another post after I've tried making custard.  I'm intrigued.

The Cooking Grich, part 2

When last we visited this topic, I was griping about the current trend toward making everything from scratch, and how much I wish I was that kind of cook, but I'm just not.  I can't stand spending hours in the kitchen.  What I neglected to mention is that the prompt for that post was reading The Homemade Pantry, which is a truly interesting cookbook by Alana Chernila, who runs the blog Eating from the Ground Up.  She is amazing, and I am jealous.  (Caveat:  I have yet to try a single recipe in this cookbook, I just read it.)

I read lots of cookbooks.  I love to read cookbooks.  I've never been one for following recipes exactly, but I read cookbooks to get ideas.  When I read through a cookbook, I'm looking for simple.  The half dozen recipes out of one hundred that are from-scratch, but only take 30 minutes to make.  Or 15.

What I need to dump is the guilt.  When I read through Alana's book, I can't help but think about how lucky her kids are that they have all this homemade, from-scratch food, and how healthy they probably are.  I use that to beat myself up because I don't even begin to want to cook as much as she does.  I'd rather chew nails, and my poor kids have to eat what they can get at our house.

I'm learning to trust that I have other virtues as a mother.  I don't know what they are, but there must be some, because my kids are doing fine, and they love me and I love them, and we are pretty healthy in spite of our lack of elaborate homemade food.  I have to keep reminding myself of that. And I keep reading the from-scratch blogs and cookbooks, because occasionally among all the more elaborate recipes I get great ideas for from-scratch foods that are actually quick and easy-- like hummus, or guacamole.

Another thing I do: a couple of times a year, I go to the grocery store at a time when it isn't crowded, and I wander through the aisles and read labels.  It is amazing the things that you learn that way.  There are tremendous differences sometimes between brands and different types of food.  There is a brand of ketchup that doesn't use high fructose corn syrup.  There is a brand of frozen hash browns with this list of ingredients:  "Potatoes."  There is a brand of tomato paste that has this list of ingredients:  "Tomatoes."  I try to buy "convenience" foods that have ingredients that are pretty much the same that they would be if I cooked them at home.

As I read through Alana's cookbook, I realized something kind of odd.  I don't mind the idea of making something complicated from scratch if it is something that would only need to be made a couple of times a year or for a special occasion.  What depresses me is the idea of having to make the stuff that we eat all the time.  The idea of being chained to the kitchen for something that we eat several times a week makes me want to run screaming for the hills.

For example.  We are not big mayonnaise eaters.  I buy a small jar of mayo and it lasts for a year. I might put a tablespoon or two in with some tuna.  (Or maybe not, I have a terrific recipe for tuna salad from Nigella Lawson that doesn't use any mayo at all.)  Occasionally I will make a sandwich with leftover chicken and that seems to me to call out for a smear of mayo.  Those are the only two times I can think of that I've used mayo in the last six months.  So the idea of making mayonnaise from scratch sounds kind of intriguing.  Hmmmmm, that might be kind of fun to try.

But we eat lots of mustard.  I buy 3-4 different kinds of mustard, and every 2-3 months, I have to buy more.  Except MadMax, we all love mustard.  So the thought of having to keep us supplied with homemade mustard (which is one of the recipes in The Homemade Pantry) just depresses me.  It would be a never-ending battle.  You'd just get one batch of it made up and you'd have to make another one.  Blecch.

Which makes no sense.  It would save money, and keep all those preservatives from going into our bodies, and keep the mustard containers out of the landfill, and apparently it tastes better.  It would make much more sense to make homemade mustard, and have far more effect on us than making homemade mayonnaise.  But I'm not gonna do it, so there's no point in trying to make sense out of it.  
So it was with great surprise a couple of weeks ago that I realized that I was going to start making homemade yogurt.  Because as much mustard as we go through, it pales in comparison to our yogurt consumption.  I bought a 32 oz container of our favorite yogurt Saturday night and it will be gone after breakfast tomorrow (Tuesday morning)--and Nell is still out of town.  Last weekend I bought a dozen single-serving containers of Greek yogurt and they were all gone by Thursday.

The idea sort of snuck up on me.  The problem is all the little plastic containers.  We can't recycle them here, our recycling people only take #1 and #2 plastic, and yogurt containers are #5.  For years, I've been throwing away dozens of yogurt containers a month, and the guilt finally got to me.  So I started poking around.  Debbie has a great post about making yogurt completely from scratch, without even owning a machine.  I read through it with interest, but decided there was no way I would ever do that more than once, it is way too complicated.

So I broke down and ordered a machine, and it came on Friday.  I think tomorrow is the big day to try it out.  I'll let you know what happens.

The Cooking Grinch, part one

There are certain public opinions that become so strongly held at some particular time that they seem supremely self-evident, and those who disagree are automatically wrong.  For example (granted, a goofy one):  If you get a bunch of guys together and ask them if they wear boxers or briefs, all it takes is one person mentioning "tighty whities," and the discussion is ended.  No one is going to say that they prefer briefs once the "tighty whities" card has been played.  No matter that there are perfectly legitimate reasons to prefer briefs over boxers (boxers get all bunched up around your thighs, MadMax told me the first time he tried them)(although he wears them now).  The simple invocation of that phrase ends the discussion.

I feel a bit like that when I read the blogs about cooks who seem to spend their life in the kitchen these days making everything from scratch.  It has become the gold standard to bake your own bread, grow your own herbs, roll your own pasta.  In certain circles, if you say you'd just as soon buy Ronzoni, it is immediately assumed that encourage your children to eat chemicals and pesticides for after school snack, and for fun you probably pump pure carbon dioxide and methane into the air in your backyard, because that's what shipping your pasta from one side of the country to the other does.

I don't mean to disparage the whole foods movement, I think it's a great idea.  I'm even on board with it to a certain extent.  I don't mean to argue about the buy local phenomenon-- it's terrific.  (But I think you better pick where you live before you commit to eating only food that's produced within 100 miles of your home, because where I live, that means you wouldn't be able to eat anything fresh for eight (nine?) months out of the year.)

But here's my problem with the whole thing:  I don't want to spend that much time in the kitchen.  I am not one of those people who enjoys spending all afternoon cutting and chopping and simmering.  If I spent all afternoon in the kitchen, you'd have to peel me off the ceiling.  I don't hate to cook, but I don't love it either.  My spouse doesn't have time to cook, so we're stuck with me.

I'm good for 30-45 minutes in the kitchen before I get so bored I want to pull my hair out.  Which means that I am not going to make my own cheese.  I am not going to make my own vinegar.  I have absolutely no interest in churning my own butter, rolling out my own tortillas, or canning my own produce (tried it--three years in a row--and it is definitely not for me). I know these things are better when they're made from scratch.  You don't have to argue with me about that, I've tasted it with my very own mouth.  But at our house, we have to choose between food that can be made quickly, and mom going to the loony bin.  I choose sanity.

I keep wondering to myself, isn't that why we're in the 21st century?  So we don't have to spend our lives slaving away at all the little things that make life seem like pure drudgery?  Why would I want to chain myself to a stove?

But then I have to remind myself that there are (obviously) people who do get a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction out of spending hours in the kitchen.  And they probably felt guilty about it back in the 80s when everything was about "freedom from the kitchen," i.e., convenience food and twenty-minute meals and semi-homemade.  Just the way I feel guilty now because I really don't care if we occasionally have pizza delivered, or if I start my spaghetti sauce with a jar of pre-made marinara, or if I pull out a pan of Rhodes frozen cinnamon rolls when MadMax has a friend spend the night. (my lord, have you tasted those things? who cares that they're not from scratch?) 

But here are my exceptions to the 45 minute limit:  holidays, and cooking with friends and/or family.  And since those two often go together, I'm good this week.  Nell and I are making pies (2 apple, 2 pumpkin, pecan, chocolate pecan, cherry, strawberry rhubarb), grape salad, appetizers, and butternut squash (Nell's specialty, and she really is one of those who enjoys chopping and simmering) for our multi-family Thanksgiving on Thursday.  Have a great holiday.

One man's toxic sludge is another man's potpourri. 

 --Jim Carrey as the Grinch