Menus and grocery lists, September 17th, 2013

"Who is she, when she's at home?"

Australian idiom

Actually, "Who is (he,she,it) when (insert grammatically correlative pronoun) is at home" is a British idiom too, but it never plays in through my mind in the tame tones of the British Isles- my inner audio department plays it in the wildly wonderful accents of the Aussie  vernacular.  The real definition is here, but for me, its meaning shifted today like luggage in an overhead compartment as I traveled from one airport to another on my way home, wherever that is. 

I was thinking of what home means- Is it the magnetic center of your childhood memories? Then I guess the adage "you can't go home again" is one of either grief or relief,

  depending on where those memories fall  in the
 spectrum of  squishy to sharp.

Or maybe home is where you live now, or the place you most recently moved from, or the place you were born.  Judging by the number of restaurants in Dallas alone that pride themselves on home cooking, for some cooks, home is a restaurant kitchen. 

I mean,really- 

What does "homemade" on a menu even mean?
Does the salad maker guy sleep and get his mail
at this restaurant?

We've all heard the old bromide that home is where the heart is, but I'm not exactly sure what that means either. Maybe it means that like it or not, your heart's permanent address is that of your childhood home, or maybe it means that home is a rapidly moving target that travels to whatever new spaces or new faces have claimed your heart. Or maybe it's a warning: there are, after all, chilling legends of those who laid their hearts down and forgot where they put them; the misplaced hearts  scoot themselves into a dim corner, gathering sinister little dust bunnies while they await the heartless wanderer's homecoming.

Tony Bennett once famously left his heart in San Francisco-
an event so traumatic that he couldn't stop singing about it
for the next 40 years.

The whole idea was stewing itself into a rather delicious mindmuddle. As the plane descended into Dallas, I was remembering this thought-provoking and oddly moving TED talk on the subject, and thinking of all the places I've called home, and as the plane landed, I was, quite naturally, thinking about dinner. 

Since I have the infinite pleasure of feeding one of my grown-up kids this weekend and the mercury has dipped to an autumnal 90 degrees, it'll home cooking (whatever that is) for this kitchen this week.

Wednesday: Black beans and rice with molho and farofa

Black beans were a staple of the home audience's Brazilian childhood,and they became a family standard for us both. They're cheap, easy, nutritious and satisfying. The molho and farofa are not essential, but they do provide fresh veggies, and make the whole dish more fun. Manioc flour requires a trip into the import stores in the city, so I'll be substituting white cornmeal. The leftover beans will round out Friday night's salad.

Thursday: Aussie Meat pie and Green salad

If your only experience with meat pie is the chicken pot variety, give yourself a treat and try a good old fashioned ground beef pie. I'll be browning extra ground beef for tomorrow night's salad.

Friday: Taco salad

The recipe I've linked uses chicken as the protein, but we'll be using ground beef and black beans from the past two night's dinners. Why link this recipe when ground beef taco salad recipes abound? Take a peek at the two dressing options in the recipe, and the answer will become clearer than the plastic bottle of  the Catalina dressing that the beef recipes recommend.

Saturday: Slow roast lamb and Greek Salad

Lamb is relatively inexpensive at our local Costco, and though the whole family loves it, my skills at preparing it are sort of hit and miss. I'll be trying this new roasting method, and if you have a never fail way of turning lamb into melt-in-your-mouth tenderness, I'd love to hear about it. This Greek salad!!! Look! the slice of feta is panfried! Awesome! Gotta try this. The leftover lamb goes into tomorrow night's curry.

Sunday: Lamb and Cauliflower curry

With last night's leftover lamb as a start, this should come together faster than you can click your heels together and say "there's no place like home". If you're lucky enough to have international food in your local grocery, grab some naan bread or papadums (and maybe some hummus, tzatziki and chutney) and turn this one-dish dinner into an exotic, home-made buffet.

Where ever you are this week, I hope it holds your heart,

and the welcome of home.

And I hope that you in turn

are a reckless homemaker,

making your home in a thousand spaces,

though your heart must break a little 

each time you leave a piece of it behind.

(your wild and sturdy heart will withstand the breaking)

True, you'll have made yourself

 forever homesick for one place or another,

on the other hand, 

you'll never be too far from home.