menus november 26, 2013

 Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving -

born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied

 in a new and particular way.

Thomas Merton 

Thanksgiving, which seems at first bite to be a particularly American Holiday, turns out to be a particularly human holiday, which we celebrate

in a particularly American way.

 Around the world, and across time- ever since people have been harvesting, they have made a tradition of celebrating the harvest.  National Geographic even has a travel guide to the ten best harvest festivals this planet has to offer! 

Imagine! Skipping around the globe, going from one feast of gratitude to another- 

now that's a great itinerary.
how about starting with the flower harvest in Madeira?

Our National Thanksgiving traditions started, as anyone who has attentended a primary school play knows, with our buttoned up, buckled down ancestors, the pilgrims. (Buckles on the hats, buckles on the belts, buckles on the shoes...really, our ancestors seemed to live in fear that minds or middles or feet might loosen up a little). But is was Abraham Lincoln who fixed a National Day of Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November.

This was viewed by some in the South of 1863 as yet another aggressive attempt by the Yankees to impose their Northern customs on an unwilling South.  In response, an underground movement began- a determined effort to take that forced day of thanks and turn it instead into a feast of guilt and bitterness.

this custom of the anti-thanks Thanksgiving
  survives and thrives in many families to this day.

The children of these families, determined to gather for Thanksgiving in spite of something, sometimes grow up to make really funny and/or really sad movies that skewer, stuff and roast on a spit all the things that go wrong and right with this glorious Holiday.
 Wow. I ought to have been more careful before searching  these links to lists of Thanksgiving movies-

Because now I sorta just wanna hang out watching
movies about Thanksgiving instead of getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Our own family has celebrated Thanksgiving in too many places and circumstances to have customs fixed very firmly in place- we've spent the day in Southern Hemisphere summers and Northern Hemisphere winters, on paper plates and china plates,  in hospital rooms and living rooms, with families of origin and families of friends.

Over the course of our many and varied Thanksgivings,  there are a few things that have emerged as habits particular to us,

including:

Tradition 1:
I dither and fret for hours between cornbread and white bread, pecan and pumpkin,
 eventually deciding to cook all of them, realizing at the jingle of car keys that
 we're going to be late to someone else's house,
or at the jingle of the doorbell that I forgot to clean our own.

Tradition 2:
 I end up implementing the advice of one of the most
charming hostesses I ever met:
Just do the best you can, light a candle, and smile.
(thanks Lori, that was great advice)

There are, of course, some food customs as well, and they include some of the things that we'll be eating this week:

Wednesday: Pumpkin soup and salad

Light and easy rules the day. At least light and easy rules the days not ruled by feasting. Instead of buying and cooking a butternut squash for butternut squash soup, try this land-o-lakes recipe that uses a can of pumpkin puree (which is mostly butternut squash anyway). Call it butternut squash soup, if that makes it sound more appealing. A small salad of bagged spring mix with shaved or grated parmesan and pecans will finish the meal.

Thursday: THANKSGIVING!!!!!

This is the first feast for us- a relatively simple one, with just a few of us around the table. Since we won't need that glorious golden turkey carved at the table moment, we'll go with Mom's upside down roast turkey. The bird roasts, as the recipe says, breast side down. Upside: all the juices run into the breast meat during roasting. Downside: it's not as traditionally pretty as a breast side up bird. Chipotle mashed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole and corn pudding will weigh down the table too, and as for dessert, we'll decide on that when my dessert pro daughter gets off of the plane.

Friday: Tomato basil soup and macaroni and cheese

It's not quite time for leftovers here- we've still got a feast to prepare- but we will need something quick and easy. This Alton Brown mac and cheese recipe is one of the most downloaded in food channel history, and my daughter and I are eager to try it out.

Saturday: THANKSGIVING PART TWO!!!!!!!

Another feast, this time a pot luck with some members of the extended family. More turkey, more dressing, more green bean casserole and more of whatever the dearly beloved bring.  One all-important addition: Our daughter has given fair warning that if Aunt Libby is not bringing her cornflake and pecan topped sweet potato casserole,  we might as well all eat at Subway. See? this is the doom that falls upon those who discover a truly sensational side dish. They are sentenced forever to bring that thing, even if they'd rather try something else. Sorry Libby. 

Sunday: Leftovers

If I knew what was going to be leftover, I'd tell you our plans for transformation. Since we are destined to live in culinary uncertainty until Saturday night, I've linked above to a fun site with lots of interesting ideas (turkey soup with stuffing dumplings, anyone?) and you can find other beyond-a-turkey-sandwich options here and here .

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone-

I hope the day is packed solid

 with Traditions that sustain you.

Even if the customs that you're used to give way.

even if you can't be in your customary place

with your customary people,

surrounded by your customary things,

I hope you're sustained

by a tradition of grace.

And fed by the beauty of a tradition

that calls for the sharing of a harvest,

the sharing of a home,

the sharing of the celebration 

of what it means to have enough.

weekend update, November 24th

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter
 and become a friend instead of an enemy.” 

 Henri Nouwen

If Nouwen is right, then offering a bus seat to a stranger is an act of hospitality. As is making space for a fellow commuter in traffic, or clearing the seat next to you at the lunch table. It's possible, if Nouwen's right, that a hospitable guest can make even her own host feel more at home:

Quick: who's the guest and who's the host?
Can't tell?
Neither can I. Which is why I love this photo.

In fact, if Nouwen is right, then there is in every act of true hospitality, wherever it happens, a certain fearlessness.
Because hospitality requires from one the courage to open a door

even though there may be trouble waiting on the other side.

and the courage to welcome as a friend

 those with whom you might not have much in common.
At least at first.
Actually, these ladies found out that they are all the
black sheep of their families before they'd poured the second cup.

But fatigue, as Vince Lombardi once noted, makes cowards of us all, and under the influence of stress and hunger, hospitality can flip faster than a pancake from an act of loving welcome to an irritating chore. 

That's why, as we prepare for occasions of courageous courtesy, people talk about how important it is to nourish yourself with food and rest. It's not so much that they care about food and rest,

they're only hoping to avoid another Thanksgiving
at a relative crabshack.

 So the year from here will be weeknight after busy weeknight of fast, sustaining food. Food that's more interesting than any activity that has to stop for dinner time, and cheap enough to help put a few more non-food treats under the Christmas tree.
At least that's the goal. 

And if it doesn't happen, it won't be the first missed goal on this particular playing field, now will it?

Let's see how well this week's dinners met the fast,easy,cheap and healthy measure:

First up, the Cheese soup. Easy, fast and tasty, but this is really just a thinned down version of vegetables with cheese sauce.

I'm not saying vegetables in cheese sauce like it's a bad thing.
But I could've chosen more nutritiously.

Slightly better in the health department, the chicken and dumplings:

This recipe's a keeper for two reasons. First, the addition of cream (or in this case some evaporated milk) makes for a more soothingly substantial spoonful and second, the dumpling recipe. Look at these little fluffy wonders:

Next time, I'll add a little poultry seasoning to the soup, up the vegetable count, and try the dumplings with a gluten free baking mix that Costco has kindly put on its shelves.

The best dinner of the week was, without doubt, the dinner that demonstrates the versatile glories of parchment paper. Not only can it rescue entire batches of cookies from burning, not only does it call to mind the wonderful smell of really old books, 

It's the key in the ignition of some very speedy dinners.

 This method, en papillotte,will save a multitude of dinners for us this season. Assemble a versatile array of ingredients and throw the parcels in the oven. There's dinner. With almost zero clean up. Bonus: the assembling can happen hours before the baking. In today's wonder packets, you see Salmon, green beans and slices of leftover baked potatoes (a very good idea, that. Raw potatoes would never have cooked as quickly as the salmon and beans did. Yet another good reason to bake too many potatoes.) A few minutes to preheat the oven and twenty minutes later they looked like this:

Twenty one minutes later, they looked like this:

It deserves to be reiterated:
this is the cooking dish, the serving dish
and the plate (on top of a plate) and it's disposable.
(Except for the plate plate part.)

A good week, dinner wise, with a few quick and easies that will serve us well in the busy days ahead. 

And they will be fiercely busy days.

And though life can cut you deep

and freeze your bones,

there's still room for hope

that this week,

no matter where you are,

the world you embrace

will know that it

is safe here,

safe now,

safe with you, always.

And room for hope that once or twice this week,

This strange world
will offer you that same safe space.

Menus and grocery lists, November 20, 2013

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

George Herbert

It was a great good fortune to come of party-hosting age when and where I did. I was in my twenties, and Martha Stewart was a model turned caterer who had published little book that was as visible to me as the ghost writer who penned it :

Yep, that long ago.

This cultural icon-to-be had just landed on the bookstore shelves when we loaded up the kids and moved to a beautiful land where the perfect hostess was any woman who could open the front door and smile at the same time:

And yes, once or twice we did invite
a kangaroo over for dinner.
They are very tasty. 

When, after a few formative years we returned to the Great State of Texas, the first stanza of George Herbert's lovely poem on love was painted (by yours truly, determined to never outgrow the scribbling on stuff phase)  in blue script at the entrance of our kitchen.

 And so it was that as I passed a hundred times a day by these words of grace and welcome, George Herbert (who hadn't partied since 1633) was silently mentoring me in the art hospitality, even though these:

were the only chargers I'd ever heard of.

Through various embarrassments, I have since learned that a charger is the big plate on the bottom that does what a placemat used to do and that you are not supposed to put food on, that it's a good idea to disable  smoke detectors before cooking a big meal (hey wait. Did I able those back on after last Thanksgiving?)  and like this clever hostess,

I've learned that if things start going awkward,
it's best to paste on a smile, and offer a colorful beverage.

Thanksgiving arrives on a silver platter in 9 short days. That's 216 hours, for those of you who have learned how to live without sleep. 

Since these sorts of occasions ladle a full helping of insecurity gravy right on top of my personal mash of excitement and enthusiasm, I decided (in a moment of crazy) to ask the internet how to be a perfect Thanksgiving hostess. News flash: this did not help. Corollary news flash: the modern American perfect hostess turns out to be someone I think I cannot be, and maybe don't even want to be around.

So, if the person the modern world calls a perfect hostess is a woman not many of us could happily feast with, what's a bad hostess? I asked the internet that too, and found out that a whole lot of people

Are really mad at Hostess
 for trashing their favorite snack food.

 In the end, George Herbert's four hundred year old lesson in hospitality came again to the rescue.

G.H.: "Take THAT, you meaningless measures of  societal perfection!
Me:"Oh George! My Hero! Come inside, you look like you could use a cookie."

The bottom line (after perusing a webful of horrible/hilarious  bad host/bad guest stories) seems to be this: a good hostess cares about whether or not her guests feel cared for, while the maybe not-so-good hostess gets crabby if she feels like her guests aren't taking good enough care of her.

Which means, I suppose, that in the busy 200 or so hours before a big day, it's a worthy goal for the host (and guest, I guess) to try to sleep well, work well and dine well, crushing some of those crabby feelings before they hatch.  And dining well in a busy week means finding food that is quick and easy to make and nourishing and comforting to eat. 

Maybe like this:

Wednesday:  Bacon and egg potatoes with spinach

There are a few pounds of potatoes in the pantry that would love their turn at the dinner table, so I asked the internet to tell me how to turn them into more than a side dish. I've linked you to the best result, a list of 10 fun potatoes-for-dinner ideas. This one sounded easy and yummy. I'll saute a bag of spinach for a quick vegetable side, and cooking one or two extra potatoes to speed up tomorrow's salmon. Save yourself some time by frying up a little zip bag of bacon for Friday night. 

Thursday: Salmon, potatoes and green beans en papillote

Hard to pronounce, easy to make and fun to eat. The portions of salmon available (by which I mean affordable) at our local grocery are pretty small. So small that they would overcook before the potatoes in this recipe were done. Solution? Cubes or slices of last night's baked potatoes. Asparagus is nearly as expensive per pound this month as salmon, so I'll be using green beans instead. Here's a thing to love about cooking in parchment- you can put these little parcels together in whatever random 20 minutes you can carve out during the day, and they'll be ready and waiting to be thrown in the oven about 20 minutes before dinner time. And at dinner time? They make dinner feel like opening a present.

Friday: Cheddar cheese soup with bacon and tomatoes

Another quick and easy dinner for a cool Autumn night- I wondered and wondered what nice veg would be nice with this soup, and then noticed the tomato and bacon in the picture. Hey presto, soup with tomatoes and bacon on the side. Any last bits of leftover potato can jump in to the soup bowl too.

Saturday: Chicken with sweet potatoes and greens

Two nutritional superfoods on one plate, and for protein a (gasp) store bought rotisserie chicken. I realize that there are some people out there who hold a strong antipathy toward rotisserie chicken, and it has not escaped my notice that these people are rarely the ones responsible for preparing an alternative. Those of us who hope to bake a batch of cookies, make some candle holders, find the candles, buy some candles when we can't find the candles, hang a garland or two and tidy the house this afternoon love these store-roasted birds nearly as much as home delivery pizza.

Sunday: Chicken and Dumplings

ok. See all that complicated chicken and vegetable prep in this recipe? If you have the time and wish to do that, it looks mighty delicious, so go ahead. But I'll be using the leftover rotisserie chicken and a bag of frozen soup vegetables. So why, you may well ask, have I linked to a recipe that I don't plan on using? Because of the dumplings. Just look at that dumpling recipe! It looks perfect! Besides, I always forget whether to leave the dumplings covered or uncovered while they cook, and this recipe spells that out clearly.

and in the next week or so, as you prepare to guest, or host, or both,

 I think it's important for you to know

That picture perfect only exists inside a camera

and is gone before the shutter closes.

That the way you love the world around you

is the end and the beginning of the feast.

And it's important for you to know

that somehow-

not in spite of,

not because of,

but right in the middle of

all your beautiful imperfections,

you are welcomed.
and you are not alone.

Weekend update, November 17, 2013

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Ralph Ellison

I take back any interior amusement I have ever felt about the aged and their fascination with the weather. I take it back, and from henceforth  instead about the way that, as one gets older, one becomes more in tune with  the earth and its temperamental moods.

 This universal apology is offered in part because

I am myself becoming the beloved and venerable
aged one to a younger generation,

 and in part because after 7 days of mercurial threats and forebodings about oncoming winter it is, this afternoon in Texas, 82 degrees. Every single one of them more humid than the degree before. It embarrasses me to admit it, but this is fascinating.

And not just because soup was planned at least once a day, every day last week.

Fascinating also because today, I wonder whether I really ought to be joining that part of the world that's getting some yardwork done when just 72 hour ago, I was wondering whether I really ought to be joining that part of the world that's in hibernation. 

You yourself would be bored straight into a 16 week long nap were I to tell you all the interesting things I learned this week about true hibernation.  There are, as it turns out, humans that hibernate. But we don't call them hibernating humans. We call them recluses, or hermits, and we describe them as either

weird and wonderful,

or weird and scary,

or if they're hermit crabs, they're weird and kinda cute.

Of course, although we, and other animals with a steady food supply, don't actually do the hibernation thing, although we face no winter scarcity of resources, when the weather chills most of us still crave the warm, calorie-rich, fat-laden sort of food that will see us safely through a winter. Health conscious as we have become, our traditions still dictate that for winter's biggest big guy, we leave an offering of buttery delicious carbs:

I can find exactly zero pictures of
Santa eating a salad.

 I think that's wonderful.
Not just because I love cookies.
But because there's a whole lot of stuff that needs doing over the next few months, and keeping pace with all those frantic activities requires spurts of frenzied inactivity and plenty of good food.  Besides- the soups and stews and roasted everythings of winter are warming wonders, and there are plenty of ways to make them the food of a healthy not-quite-hibernation.
Case in point:
The red sauce that formed the basis for three of this weeks meals.
(Ok, so the recipe contains butter. It also contains a barrel and a half of licopene-rich tomatoes.)
Doing the all day simmer in a slow cooker, however, did not provide the hoped for results:

I think I do not know how to use a crockpot.

Five hours in the slow cooker and no visible thickening or reduction. The onions weren't even cooked. A salamander could've have crawled up an oozing bank, spent a generation or a thousand evolving hair (or not, as you prefer), and over the course of eons grown into a bear that curled up for a three month hibernation and this sauce STILL would not have been ready for dinner. So, it was tipped into a pot and refrigerated and the next day subjected to the regular stovetop simmer-down.

Three hours on the stove top. done.
I really do not know how to use a crockpot.

a quick spin with twenty of the smartest dollars ever spent in this kitchen, aka our immersion blender:

Things are getting pretty saucy now, aren't they.

And there's three zip bags of sauce. One in the freezer, one for minestrone, and one for tomato basil soup.

Since we happened to have 2% milk, evaporated milk and half and half in the fridge all at one time, I indulged in a little experiment with that tomato basil:

Half and half. 

evaporated milk

two percent.

See all those little grainy bits in the two percent sample? That happens when the acid in the tomatoes hits the dairy stuff and causes it to curdle. The lower the dairy's fat content, the more curdles. That's why so many tomato-basil soups include heavy cream. If you want to cut out those creamy calories, the evaporated milk did the best job of holding its stuff together.

 I hope that this week and this winter,

 your stuff holds together too-because

A thing and it's opposite sometimes lie close together;

as winter approaches, they snuggle up tight.

solitude and society

rest and action

leaving and landing

darkness and light.

This is the time of love and paradox.

So it's a big wish, and yet I hope for you

that this week, and maybe all winter long

all the season's opposing forces

will be held for you

in  beautiful and fearless balance.

Menus and Grocery Lists, November 13, 2013

“November comes

And November goes,

With the last red berries

And the first white snows.

The fires burn

And the kettles sing,

And earth sinks to rest

Until next spring.” 

Clyde Watson

It's not just the crust of the earth that sinks under the covers for a long winter's nap, it's most everything that rides upon it.  Hibernation. Some birds do it,  bees do it , mammals, reptiles and trees do it. 

(though squirrels may do it cutest.
But that's only because pikas don't hibernate.)

Even here in Texas, the breeze has stopped singing and the wind has started howling. Coats have come out of closets, grass has stopped growing, and the ravens convocate in nearly bare branches.  Even here, in a neighborhood where nature has been rigorously domesticated, the world outside is curling up for a long cozy rest. Against all Nature then, as the metabolism of the earth slows,  we Northern Hemispherian humans have begun our dash through the 8 busiest  weeks of the year. The Holidays are sparkly and charming a hundred different kinds of beautiful.  Yet it blips across the interior irony screen that just when schedules and personal inclination and all nature would dictate otherwise, it's time to start planning the most elaborate meals of the year.

This is not necessarily an only bad thing.
After all, the only thing better than pretty food 
is lots more pretty food.

And just when putting on the flannel jammies at the stroke of dark and cozying up to a simple bowl of soup starts sounding like the perfect evening, we start planning meals that are meant not only to nourish and nurture, but must be decorative and downright impressive. This guy, for instance, when asked to bring the ham,

Brought  an impressively dapper ham.

Unfortunately, this poor partygoer's hostess forgot to tell her
 that bringing an impressive salad dressing
was not the same as dressing like an impressive salad.

Like it or not, the Holidays are upon us my friends, and we shall accomplish the Holidays as we accomplish so many other things:

by dealing with one potential disaster at a time.

This week, that's going to mean saving any of my meager kitchen superpowers for the impending Meals when superpowers are needed most, and making the meals between those Meals dinners that are familiar, reliable, energizing, comforting, and above all, fast.

Here's what that may look like this week:

Wednesday: Brined Baked Chicken breast and salad

Not so long ago, three boneless skinless chicken breasts were sitting in the fridge, and I decided to throw them in the oven with just a sprinkling of salt and pepper. That would've been fine, if I'd never known how much more wonderful those dry, flavorless bits of protein would've been brined. This is not a thing to stress about- sometime about 2 hours or so before dinner, or even earlier, dissolve about 1/4 of salt in water, stir in about 1/4 cup of honey, add enough water to cover the chicken, then add the chicken. Now go get distracted with the hundred other things you have to get done and forget about dinner.  About 30 minutes before you want to eat, cook that chicken however you want to. Bake it at about 350 for about 30 or 40 minutes, pan fry it, grill it, george foreman it, cut it up and saute it- really, whatever you want. I want some sliced chicken later in the week, so I'll be baking the breasts whole. Now open a bag of salad. Dinner's done. I'll be cooking enough of these to contribute to two more dinners.


Thursday: Spaghetti with red sauce and sauteed vegetables

The biggest batch of red sauce that I can fit in a pot or crock pot will be bubbling away all day, and will have a part in three of this week's meals. This is one of the most amazing and versatile recipes in my arsenal: canned tomatoes simmer with a halved tomato and some butter until the tomatoes have fallen apart and the sauce is thick. That's all. The rich and uncomplicated flavor of this sauce means that it can be transformed easily into everything from lasagna to salad dressing. The only hard part is giving it the time it needs to thicken. A crockpot with a spatter screen as a lid, or the real lid, tilted just enough to let out some steam should allow it to simmer down safely whether or not I can be around the house all afternoon.

There's a link to your left to an Epicurious recipe, but you don't need it. You just need some of last night's red sauce, a drained can of kidney beans, some frozen or fresh veggies (green beans, carrots, celery, zuchinni) some chicken or beef broth and a pasta (any pasta that makes you smile is perfect. I'll be using tortellini). Boil the pasta separately while everything else gets to know each other in the soup pot, spoon a little pasta in a bowl and ladle the soup on top of the pasta. Need some meat? Throw in some good quality frozen meatballs or slices of smoked sausage.  And I'll just bet some of you will find a way to warm up a loaf of garlic bread.

Saturday: Chicken Panini and Tomato Basil soup

The leftover chicken will be sliced thin and tender and grilled together with some cheese and dressing. That fabulous red sauce? Put some of it in a pot, add enough cream, half and half or evaporated milk to make it soupy, add some fresh basil and heat. Try not to let it boil, ok? that'll make the milk go all grainy looking.  

Sunday: White chicken chili 

The last of the chicken becomes a delicious white bean chili. This super simple recipe was the best chicken chili recipe I found last winter; if you're wishing for some cornbread, try this recent discovery. It uses browned butter, and that one change from the usual gives this recipe an enormous flavor boost.  I found a bag of gluten free flour at Costco last week and I may see if that works in this recipe. 

One never knows, with a week of speedy recipes, it's possible that there'll be time to make a few of those Pinterest candle holders, or a wreath made of leaves and Christmas lights, or a batch of gingerbread cookies, or little turkeys made from chocolate, or mailing a package, or a load of laundry or maybe even a nice hour long hibernation with a hot cup of coffee and a warm book. 

I hope you find a moment this week

for a mild hibernation.

I hope you find a way

to make a quiet space in the midst 

of all kinds of crazy.

I hope you find a way to breathe in rest

and breathe out peace.

And I hope that all of those who come into

your world in these next weeks

are those with whom you can gladly

share your repose.