weekend update, March 2, 2014

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, 

if one has not dined well.” 

Virginia Woolf

Think about this- if you could invent any academy, and receive from them their highest accolade, what would that prize be? Would you pull some strings and become balloon queen?

I am not making this up. This is really a thing.

Would you invent a society of reptile wranglers, and hope someday to win

The Captain James T. Cook award for
excellence in crocodilian crowd control?

Or would you invent the golden ear academy of conversational arts and hope to win 

the coveted fiesta phone?

Me, I dream of achievement in the field of achieving. That is, I'd like to win a prize for most unfinished projects actually completed in a year. And I know just what I'd wear to the awards ceremony....

but it's not quite finished yet....

Here's a thing that's missing from awards shows like the one broadcast tonight: dinner.

no, not the crazy Oscar's after party dinner.

The real dinner. The dinners that made it possible for everyone from leading actors to key grips able to do their best work. Not the chefs, the cooks. Not the superstars, the support players. Because even when dinner isn't the star of the day, it's always one of the day's main supports. Eating well at least once a day is like, well, it's sort of like

And as we all know, when you try to do good work without the occasional support of a good dinner....

things get a little messy.

That's what I was thinking this week, as we ate our way through a series of award winning recipes. Some of them turned out to be real stars- here are the nominees, and the winners:

You know those award winners that leave you wondering how bad the competition was? That's this meatloaf:

It was....okay...but chances are, if you're reading this, that you've made at least five meatloaves that were five times better. It was a puzzler, until I realized that this meatloaf, which is about one-quarter oatmeal, had won its prize from the Quaker Oats recipe contest. So, it's not a great meatloaf, it's a great way to use oatmeal. 
From there, it was on to the Caprese Cod Sandwiches:

which were also okay.

Perhaps this unexpectedly nice mix of fish and cheese would've been better served on top of salad greens. Calling it a fish sandwich invited too many comparisons to a girlhood favorite:

McDonald's filet-o-fish.
Though I don't think I'd like one now,
these childhood loves die hard.

Here are the prize worthy prize winners of the week- this unexpectedly delicious and amazingly easy tomato-basil soup with a grilled tomato and mozzarella sandwich:

20 minutes, start to finish. Easy peasy to prep in advance,
and really yummy.

And the surprise winner? Triple chocolate chili:

Okay, it may have helped that on the day temperatures in Dallas dropped 70 degrees in 24 hours there was a pot of chili simmering on the stove... No, actually, it just really tastes good. The first part of this recipe leads you through making a sauce with dried chilies, chocolate and spices- this sauce is similar to mole sauce (that's mole-ay, a sauce made from chilies, spices and cocoa, not to be confused with mole, 

a sauce made from burrowing rodents.

If you want to try the recipe, but don't want to spend all day on it, try using canned beans and a prepared mole sauce. Really, this is a great chili, thick, rich, not too spicy, not too tomatoey- a perfect dinner to see us through what we all hope is the last blast of winter.

It made a massive quantities though, so I have a feeling it'll be playing a lunch time supporting role for the next day or two at least.

Tomorrow, when the world is buzzing about who won what and who wore what, try to remember how much it matters.

Not the Oscars- the Oscars only matter because art matters.

Try to remember that the things you do 

to nurture the people you love,

your willingness to support them with the best you have,

your efforts to give them what is excellent.

that matters.

I hope this week you feel rewarded for that.

I hope your audience stands up

and applauds a job well done. 

but even if the work is not well done

or well noticed- 

It matters that you keep going. You never know- 

You might be feeding superstars.
And one of them might be you.

Menus, February 25, 2014

“To those of you who received honors, awards ,

 and distinctions, I say, well done.

 And to the C students I say, you, too,

 can be president of the United States.” 

George W. Bush

Last Sunday, the world celebrated the giving and receiving of prizes to those who were the very -est. The fastest, the slidiest, the stick and puckiest, the luckiest, the creatiest, the spinniest, the jumpiest...that's right, it was 

the taste season finale.

Wait, you thought I was talking about this?

Here's a funny thing about prizes- they always go to the something-est. Even if the something-est is impossible to measure. There are prizes for the most beautiful dog:

This is Huckleberry, winner of the fourth annual Beautiful Bulldog
competition. Because some people do not consider
 beautiful and bulldog to be oxymoronic.

and prizes for the cutest dog:

this is Boo, who scored a super sonic score
on the awwww meter to win his place in
cute dog history

and even prizes for the ugliest dog:

my personal favorite, and my nominee for
most interesting and funniest.

but there are no prizes for most average, normalest dog. 

For the most brilliant humans among us, there are Nobels and Pulitzers; for the most weirdly brilliant, the Ig Nobel awards, and for the very least brilliant, there are

 the Darwin awards, rewarding those who serve
mankind by  taking themselves out
of the evolutionary gene pool. 

But there are no award for ordinary, or normal, or average. Probably because as soon as we tried to award a prize for most normal, someone would protest and say-

"Wait! She's the weird one! I'm the normal one!"

This Sunday, the movie-going world watches again as awards are given to more of at least some kinds of     est. Not just the movie going world- even those of us who have seen only 11% of the movies up for best picture will probably tune in (that's one movie out of nine, for those of you who have just reached for your calculators. I saw Philomena.). Whether or not I see them in the cinema or at home I love being told a good story by a good movie, and stories about food? Well, they're often good enough to eat.
That's why this week's dinners are prize winning recipes that may also be reminders of the best food movies and food moments in movies that I can remember- and there's hardly anything that would be more fun that hearing about your own favorite food and movie combos. Here's how I'm hoping things reel out around here:

Wednesday: Tomato Basil Soup and Grilled Mozzarella Sandwiches

Last week, the great food movie Big Night got a replay, so all things Italian are sounding wonderful. Today I'll wander into Costco and pick up a favorite treat:

Marinated mozzarella balls

We'll be using them twice this week- first tonight, in grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Don't even think about pouring the oil of this marinade down the sink, unless you're planning on a sink salad- this stuff and a little balsamic vinegar will make the fastest, tastiest salad dressing you've ever had. The soup is, well, super easy. Start it before you gather the ingredients for the sandwiches, and by the time the sandwiches are done, the soup probably will be too.

Thursday: Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes and Salad

Here's a prize winning meatloaf from Quaker Oats, and to serve alongside it, some prize winning mashed potatoes. You can sculpt whatever you want to with the potatoes, I'll be recreating the mashed potato mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Just to say there were greens on the plate, I'll be tossing something dark green and leafy with some cherry tomatoes, a little of the mozzarella marinade, and balsamic vinegar.
Don't worry about leftovers- both the meatloaf and potatoes get a replay on Sunday.



Friday: Caprese Cod Sandwiches

Guess what the internet answered when asked for "award winning fish recipes"? This terrific looking sandwich!
 If you're trying to stay away from gluten, serve this as a salad or blow a movie-star style budget on a gluten free bun. Everything you need for an easy, nutritious dinner is here, but if a sandwich on its own just doesn't feel like dinner, try some oven fries or some kale chips for a kick of crunchy salty goodness.



Saturday: Triple Chocolate Beef and Bean Chili

Remember the movie Chocolat? Me too. So I went hunting for ways to use chocolate for dinner, and found this gem in a recipe pile that is a wealth of savory chocolatey goodness. We're a little too beef centric this week, so I'm considering substituting additional vegetables or chicken for the beef in this recipe. If that doesn't happen, we may get the necessary veg with this prize winning coleslaw.



Sunday: Leftover Meatloaf Shepherd's Pie

Look! A thing to do with leftover meatloaf that is not a sandwich! This great one dish meal looks like it'll go together in a snap, and that's a good thing,because I'd hate to be in the kitchen when people start giving out awards for movies I haven't seen...yet.

Whether you watch movies, or award shows about movies
or both, or neither-
This week I want you to know that I know.
I know that there are days when 
you deserve a medal 
for managing somehow to not hurt anyone
with your mouth or your hands or your car.
I know there are days when you deserve an Oscar
for acting like everything is going to be okay.
But I hope that this week 
you'll  find that the rewards you want most
 lay just within your reach
and I hope  this week
surrounds you with so much love and happiness
that you know just what it feels like

to have won first prize.

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 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.