Just what is our obsession with fast food? I see a lot of it coming from an "I really can't be bothered" attitude that prevails in our society. We're so busy all the time that we've come to resent taking the time to actually prepare and eat food that is good and good for us. We resent taking the time to figure out how to prepare actual raw ingredients and shop for them. These are just one more damn thing on the list for a lot of people, and not a very high priority item at that, especially given that so many of us have a pretty unhealthy attitude with food. It surprises me when I listen to people talk about food and eating how many people out there don't even realize that they really don't LIKE food. They don't trust it or they fear it. They have a love-hate relationship with nourishment in many cases.
Saying that Americans don't like food probably sounds pretty silly to most folks, given the national obesity problem, but then from my perspective, when you don't like food well enough to learn about it and give it an appropriate place in life, you open yourself up to consuming cheap, fast food just to get the process over with. Or eating things that tout themselves as good for you, no matter how tiny or nasty they are. You'll actually believe that little tiny cans of protein drinks are an acceptable substitute for good food that really is good for you. Which only serves to reinforce your idea that food isn't worth it.
I am surprised at the number of people who say that they don't have time to cook, but they do have time to sit in lines at drive-throughs and stand in line for a table at Applebee's. It's not logical. If you have 20 minutes to kill sitting in your car waiting to reach the window, then you got time to cook. And cook something that is a bit more satisfying than a mega-burger and fries most of the time.
A well-stocked pantry is a key to it all. Now, that doesn't mean that you need every food product known to man on hand. What you need are the basic ingredients for two or three simple things that you know you like to eat. Figure out a couple of "go to" entrees that you can round out with a tossed salad or some steamed broccoli. Me? I usually have the ingredients on hand to make a very simple Tuscan bean soup (canned chicken broth, canned white beans, canned Italian style diced tomatoes, and frozen chopped spinach), a vegetarian chili (canned chili beans, canned diced Mexican style tomatoes, shredded cheese and Boca crumbles in the freezer), and some kind of pasta that begins with dried pasta of some kind and canned or jarred marinara sauce. I keep canned tuna and salmon around for the ease of tuna or salmon salad. I keep eggs around for simple meals of scrambled eggs or an omelet. All of these things can be tossed together pretty much when I walk in the door and I can be having dinner within half an hour or so. With the eggs and the canned fish, it can be within 15 minutes. And there is nothing wrong with eating scrambled eggs and toast or a tuna salad sandwich for dinner. It need not be gourmet fare every day of your life, and a standard "test" for most aspiring professional cooks is something as simple as "can you scramble eggs?". The important thing to bear in mind is whether is suits your tastes for that day. If I really can't be bothered with cooking, eggs and toast or tuna salad are no-brainers, as is that bean soup or that chili.
I make use of prepared and convenience foods all the time, too. I've talked about my love of the rotisserie chicken, but I also like pre-cut fruits and veggies and consider them worth what I spend on them. Yes, whole watermelons are cheaper, but I'm a single person that really can't eat that much watermelon, so a quart of watermelon chunks or a couple slices of watermelon are worth it for me because I'm not paying for a whole watermelon to rot in the fridge because cutting it up is too daunting. Fine if I've got the time and the inclination, but I know myself well enough to know that washing lettuce and chopping up melons are the places I can't be bothered. The pre-washed, pre-cut fruits and veggies are where I save time that I'll devote to other things, like washing and chopping fresh parsley and other fresh herbs. It's nice to devote an afternoon to making somebody's homemade marinara sauce, but I've found that there are plenty of prepared sauces that suit my tastes and that don't require an afternoon and 5 lbs. or roma tomatoes. I'm okay with that.
I also like leftovers, so I'll make casseroles and rice and pasta salads that can be portioned out into containers to tote for lunches so that I can toss a cup of yogurt or a piece of fruit into a sack with one of the containers and call lunch a done deal without resorting to the in-store Pizza Hut every day. I like having something in the fridge so that all I have to do is make up a salad or cook a vegetable while a portion of something reheats in the microwave or the oven at the end of the day.
It's really not that hard, but I will concede that it does take practice to acquaint yourself with your own food preferences so that they become a habit and something that you don't have to think about all the time. Which makes shopping based on those preferences much easier. Which ensures that you have your ingredients close to hand for those "go to" meals when you feel rushed and can't be bothered.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Thanks for the Memories
Ah, what was my first actual food memory? Hard to say, really. Never given it a whole lot of thought until now.
There is a black and white snapshot somewhere at my dad's house with me in a high chair, gnawing on the bone from a t-bone steak. Apparently, this was taken in the kitchen at my parents' apartment in Cicero, Illinois when I was about a year old. Mom and Dad were a young couple with not a lot of money, and Saturday night was steak for dinner, a tradition I remember well from later in my childhood. At any rate, during my teething phase, they used to give me the steak bone to chew on. I attribute my life-long love of steak and beef to this. Although I have no deep objection to meatless meals, I do have carnivorous little taste buds, which leads me to a favorite food memory from my childhood.
Many of my food memories involve my paternal grandfather. We spent a lot of time with my dad's family when I was growing up. Usually ate diner there once a week, and my brother and I always spent at least a week with them every summer when we were out of school. We took vacations up to Alexandria Bay, New York with them, too, where we spent a week at cabins owned by Harry and Frieda Coons. We fished the St. Lawrence Seaway, sometimes venturing way out towards the shipping lanes in that little rowboat with the 5 hp motor on it. But I digress from my discussion of beef. Grandpa had a big grill with a rotisserie on it, and at least once every summer, he'd start a fire with real charcoal, using a chimney starter (no steenkin' lighter fluid allowed!), and would rub a large sirloin tip or rump roast with Lawry's seasoned salt and cook it over the coals. I loved the crusty end pieces, with all the caramelized meat juices and that seasoned salt. I liked the rare to medium rare pieces from the center, too, even as a child. We'd toast marshmallows over the coals after dinner on sticks that we'd picked from the woods behind their house.
I remember our vacations with Grandma and Grandpa. The rule if you went fishing was that you baited your own hooks and kept quiet. No whining about a trip that started shortly after six a.m. and ended around 11, so you could clean the fish and have some lunch. I learned to fish without a bobber, as our lines with their lead weights were dropped some 20-30 feet down into the St. Lawrence River. I learned to tell by the way the tip of the pole jiggled when there was a fish on the line. We mostly caught bluegill and perch, but I can't remember a year when Grandpa, Grandma or my Dad didn't reel in a northern pike that was destined to become fish chowder. I remember my grandmother patiently sitting in the kitchen picking out every little pin bone in those fish! Apart from the fact that the recipe started with rendering the fat out of diced salt pork (which became delicious little cracklings that were sprinkled over your bowl of chowder), there was nothing else classically chowder-like about the soup. After the fat was rendered and the salt pork removed, onions, celery and carrots were softened with a little salt, pepper and dried thyme. Then a copious amount of water was put in the pot and things were allowed to simmer. After a bit, diced potatoes and crushed whole tomatoes were put in and allowed to simmer for awhile. We were usually setting the table, one of those old enamel-topped things where the leaves folded out to make enough room for us all, when the fish went in. I still make this from time to time, although I've tarted it up a bit by using chicken broth.
Overnights at Grandma and Grandpa's always involved a bedtime snack. The one I remember most was root beer and those big reddish-purple grapes with the big pips in them, but small dishes of pineapple sherbet were frequent offerings. The root beer was served in those stainless steel glasses that came in a host of bright colors. The big thing was picking your favorite color. I remember being especially fond of the dark turquoise one and the dark fuchsia one.
I remember my mom getting the recipe for chicken paprikash from Mrs. Gross, who babysat me and my brother when I was in kindergarten. Mrs. Gross was an older lady of Hungarian descent. I'd had paprikash at Mrs. Gross' house for lunch and it was one of my favorite things. I have the recipe from my mom's recipe box and it's something I make when I'm feeling indulgent as there's a scary amount of sour cream involved. It's a recipe that hails from a different era, though, and once in a while, on a cold winter day, it's the kind of comfort food that nurtures your battered soul and warms your heart.
Some of my favorite memories involve the Christmas cookies. Lord, I have all the recipes, and I am amazed at how my mother did it every year, especially when my brother and I were small. The first cookies I ever made, probably when I was about 8 years old, were the pineapple drop cookies. There were also Mayme Osburn's orange drop cookies, Elizabeth Steiner's cherry cream cheese tarts, pecan bars, date-nut bars (Dad's absolute favorite, and I still make them for him every year), heath bars, thumprints, Patty Kapusinski's lemon sugar cookie Christmas tree cutouts, Carolyn Strandberg's butter rum cheese bars, lemon bars, apricot bars and a filled Christmas tea ring or some stollen. This was in the days before things like cookie exchanges, and Mom always made lots and lots of cookies to make trays to give as gifts and take into the office. Still have most of the Christmas cookie tins, either here at my house or up at Dad's. As I got older, I helped with more of the recipes, and sometime in my late twenties and early thirties, my mom and I would have the best time baking together. Our relationship hadn't always been easy, so I remember those times quite fondly. Including the time we misread the thumbprint recipe and wound up with enough thumbprint cookie dough for the 8th Army! I still make the date nut bars and the sugar cookie cutouts and some of the easier or more decorative bar cookies every year, and they always bring good memories.
My mom was a good cook, which was a surprise to her family as my maternal grandmother wasn't known for her cooking (a fact which she freely admitted in her later years!), and was always trying new stuff. Some of it was good old stick to your ribs Midwestern casseroles gleaned from the ladies at church, but Mom used to get these recipe cards from Reader's Digest to make things like Quiche Lorraine and fondue. Since these are the recipes I remember, it must be my Swiss forebears shining through. They weren't really common dishes, though, in the Midwest during the sixties, so I'm sure I was eating things that sounded terribly exotic to my grade school classmates. I even remember Mom trying steak tartare, although my father insisted that it needed a good grilling and a bun!
Eating out was something we did most Friday nights. Usually, we wound up at Tonyo's, which later morphed into the Parasson's restaurant chain in the Akron area. But in my day, it was one narrow little restaurant with about 10 booths and a few tables. Nothing fancy, by any stretch of the imagination. Spaghetti and meatballs and pizza were the order of the day, along with salads that consisted of iceberg lettuce, a wan looking wedge of tomato, a few slices of pepperoni, a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella and a lone pepperoncini tossed with the house Italian dressing. I'm pretty sure the four of us were fed for about ten bucks. I forget the name of the place, but we'd also go have Chinese food at a place in downtown Akron, not far from where my dad worked at Cascade Plaza. For me in those days, it was wonton soup, shrimp chips and sweet and sour pork with fried rice. My taste buds have sure moved on, but I can't see sweet and sour pork on a menu without remembering it was one of my first forays into exotic cuisine, along with moo goo gai pan and shrimp with lobster sauce. The Brown Derby in Montrose was for birthday dinners. I can also remember what seemed like pilgrimages to Smithville Inn all the way out towards Wooster for family style chicken dinner in the Amish style. We also frequented all of the chicken dinner places in Barberton, but our favorite was Milich's, because it was right down the street from home. There used to be five chicken joints in Barberton, but now there are only four, and they still do a land office business on Sundays after church.
I remember we used to have a big Memorial Day picnic at our house with my mom's family every year. The Indy 500 would be on the radio in the background, and everyone brought a covered dish. I think it was mostly hot dogs and hamburgers, but one of my favorite things, even as a young child, was the bean salad my Aunt Rosie brought. My mom's youngest sister in a family of seven, Aunt Rosie had married my Uncle Tom right out of high school. Uncle Tom is Armenian, and the bean salad was one Aunt Rosie learned to make from his family. It was nothing more than cooked navy beans, some chopped tomatoes, a little diced onion and lots of chopped fresh parsley, dressed with lemon juice. It was an odd thing for a child to like as I recall, but I looked forward to it every year. I made it and took it to a reunion of mom's family (this was after she'd died) out at Lake Dorothy Park a few years back, and I think my uncle was touched. Aside from the fact that the man is scrupulous about a no-fat diet, having had two heart surgeries, and the dish being tailor-made for someone with his dietary restrictions, I think it meant something to him that I'd remember that one dish out of all the ones that had been served at those picnics all those years ago.
I remember eating both sardines and pickled pig's feet as a child, although I can't imagine it now. Oh, I'll have the occasional sardine, but I pick them over something fierce, quite unlike the way I ate them when I was little. I also clearly remember my paternal grandmother feeding me raw chicken hearts. It was like a little treat! Of course, that was also in the days before every living chicken carried salmonella and when you knew from where the meat and poultry came because you had a butcher with a little shop that knew you and your kith and kin. I also remember eating black bread and Limburger cheese at my grandparents. You can't find that black bread. It was a black Russian rye bread. And I do mean it was black. I've seen some pretty dark rye breads, and this was darker still. I'd still eat the Limburger, though. With the darkest rye I could find.
Well, enough memories for one post. I'm sure there will be others. Goodnight.
There is a black and white snapshot somewhere at my dad's house with me in a high chair, gnawing on the bone from a t-bone steak. Apparently, this was taken in the kitchen at my parents' apartment in Cicero, Illinois when I was about a year old. Mom and Dad were a young couple with not a lot of money, and Saturday night was steak for dinner, a tradition I remember well from later in my childhood. At any rate, during my teething phase, they used to give me the steak bone to chew on. I attribute my life-long love of steak and beef to this. Although I have no deep objection to meatless meals, I do have carnivorous little taste buds, which leads me to a favorite food memory from my childhood.
Many of my food memories involve my paternal grandfather. We spent a lot of time with my dad's family when I was growing up. Usually ate diner there once a week, and my brother and I always spent at least a week with them every summer when we were out of school. We took vacations up to Alexandria Bay, New York with them, too, where we spent a week at cabins owned by Harry and Frieda Coons. We fished the St. Lawrence Seaway, sometimes venturing way out towards the shipping lanes in that little rowboat with the 5 hp motor on it. But I digress from my discussion of beef. Grandpa had a big grill with a rotisserie on it, and at least once every summer, he'd start a fire with real charcoal, using a chimney starter (no steenkin' lighter fluid allowed!), and would rub a large sirloin tip or rump roast with Lawry's seasoned salt and cook it over the coals. I loved the crusty end pieces, with all the caramelized meat juices and that seasoned salt. I liked the rare to medium rare pieces from the center, too, even as a child. We'd toast marshmallows over the coals after dinner on sticks that we'd picked from the woods behind their house.
I remember our vacations with Grandma and Grandpa. The rule if you went fishing was that you baited your own hooks and kept quiet. No whining about a trip that started shortly after six a.m. and ended around 11, so you could clean the fish and have some lunch. I learned to fish without a bobber, as our lines with their lead weights were dropped some 20-30 feet down into the St. Lawrence River. I learned to tell by the way the tip of the pole jiggled when there was a fish on the line. We mostly caught bluegill and perch, but I can't remember a year when Grandpa, Grandma or my Dad didn't reel in a northern pike that was destined to become fish chowder. I remember my grandmother patiently sitting in the kitchen picking out every little pin bone in those fish! Apart from the fact that the recipe started with rendering the fat out of diced salt pork (which became delicious little cracklings that were sprinkled over your bowl of chowder), there was nothing else classically chowder-like about the soup. After the fat was rendered and the salt pork removed, onions, celery and carrots were softened with a little salt, pepper and dried thyme. Then a copious amount of water was put in the pot and things were allowed to simmer. After a bit, diced potatoes and crushed whole tomatoes were put in and allowed to simmer for awhile. We were usually setting the table, one of those old enamel-topped things where the leaves folded out to make enough room for us all, when the fish went in. I still make this from time to time, although I've tarted it up a bit by using chicken broth.
Overnights at Grandma and Grandpa's always involved a bedtime snack. The one I remember most was root beer and those big reddish-purple grapes with the big pips in them, but small dishes of pineapple sherbet were frequent offerings. The root beer was served in those stainless steel glasses that came in a host of bright colors. The big thing was picking your favorite color. I remember being especially fond of the dark turquoise one and the dark fuchsia one.
I remember my mom getting the recipe for chicken paprikash from Mrs. Gross, who babysat me and my brother when I was in kindergarten. Mrs. Gross was an older lady of Hungarian descent. I'd had paprikash at Mrs. Gross' house for lunch and it was one of my favorite things. I have the recipe from my mom's recipe box and it's something I make when I'm feeling indulgent as there's a scary amount of sour cream involved. It's a recipe that hails from a different era, though, and once in a while, on a cold winter day, it's the kind of comfort food that nurtures your battered soul and warms your heart.
Some of my favorite memories involve the Christmas cookies. Lord, I have all the recipes, and I am amazed at how my mother did it every year, especially when my brother and I were small. The first cookies I ever made, probably when I was about 8 years old, were the pineapple drop cookies. There were also Mayme Osburn's orange drop cookies, Elizabeth Steiner's cherry cream cheese tarts, pecan bars, date-nut bars (Dad's absolute favorite, and I still make them for him every year), heath bars, thumprints, Patty Kapusinski's lemon sugar cookie Christmas tree cutouts, Carolyn Strandberg's butter rum cheese bars, lemon bars, apricot bars and a filled Christmas tea ring or some stollen. This was in the days before things like cookie exchanges, and Mom always made lots and lots of cookies to make trays to give as gifts and take into the office. Still have most of the Christmas cookie tins, either here at my house or up at Dad's. As I got older, I helped with more of the recipes, and sometime in my late twenties and early thirties, my mom and I would have the best time baking together. Our relationship hadn't always been easy, so I remember those times quite fondly. Including the time we misread the thumbprint recipe and wound up with enough thumbprint cookie dough for the 8th Army! I still make the date nut bars and the sugar cookie cutouts and some of the easier or more decorative bar cookies every year, and they always bring good memories.
My mom was a good cook, which was a surprise to her family as my maternal grandmother wasn't known for her cooking (a fact which she freely admitted in her later years!), and was always trying new stuff. Some of it was good old stick to your ribs Midwestern casseroles gleaned from the ladies at church, but Mom used to get these recipe cards from Reader's Digest to make things like Quiche Lorraine and fondue. Since these are the recipes I remember, it must be my Swiss forebears shining through. They weren't really common dishes, though, in the Midwest during the sixties, so I'm sure I was eating things that sounded terribly exotic to my grade school classmates. I even remember Mom trying steak tartare, although my father insisted that it needed a good grilling and a bun!
Eating out was something we did most Friday nights. Usually, we wound up at Tonyo's, which later morphed into the Parasson's restaurant chain in the Akron area. But in my day, it was one narrow little restaurant with about 10 booths and a few tables. Nothing fancy, by any stretch of the imagination. Spaghetti and meatballs and pizza were the order of the day, along with salads that consisted of iceberg lettuce, a wan looking wedge of tomato, a few slices of pepperoni, a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella and a lone pepperoncini tossed with the house Italian dressing. I'm pretty sure the four of us were fed for about ten bucks. I forget the name of the place, but we'd also go have Chinese food at a place in downtown Akron, not far from where my dad worked at Cascade Plaza. For me in those days, it was wonton soup, shrimp chips and sweet and sour pork with fried rice. My taste buds have sure moved on, but I can't see sweet and sour pork on a menu without remembering it was one of my first forays into exotic cuisine, along with moo goo gai pan and shrimp with lobster sauce. The Brown Derby in Montrose was for birthday dinners. I can also remember what seemed like pilgrimages to Smithville Inn all the way out towards Wooster for family style chicken dinner in the Amish style. We also frequented all of the chicken dinner places in Barberton, but our favorite was Milich's, because it was right down the street from home. There used to be five chicken joints in Barberton, but now there are only four, and they still do a land office business on Sundays after church.
I remember we used to have a big Memorial Day picnic at our house with my mom's family every year. The Indy 500 would be on the radio in the background, and everyone brought a covered dish. I think it was mostly hot dogs and hamburgers, but one of my favorite things, even as a young child, was the bean salad my Aunt Rosie brought. My mom's youngest sister in a family of seven, Aunt Rosie had married my Uncle Tom right out of high school. Uncle Tom is Armenian, and the bean salad was one Aunt Rosie learned to make from his family. It was nothing more than cooked navy beans, some chopped tomatoes, a little diced onion and lots of chopped fresh parsley, dressed with lemon juice. It was an odd thing for a child to like as I recall, but I looked forward to it every year. I made it and took it to a reunion of mom's family (this was after she'd died) out at Lake Dorothy Park a few years back, and I think my uncle was touched. Aside from the fact that the man is scrupulous about a no-fat diet, having had two heart surgeries, and the dish being tailor-made for someone with his dietary restrictions, I think it meant something to him that I'd remember that one dish out of all the ones that had been served at those picnics all those years ago.
I remember eating both sardines and pickled pig's feet as a child, although I can't imagine it now. Oh, I'll have the occasional sardine, but I pick them over something fierce, quite unlike the way I ate them when I was little. I also clearly remember my paternal grandmother feeding me raw chicken hearts. It was like a little treat! Of course, that was also in the days before every living chicken carried salmonella and when you knew from where the meat and poultry came because you had a butcher with a little shop that knew you and your kith and kin. I also remember eating black bread and Limburger cheese at my grandparents. You can't find that black bread. It was a black Russian rye bread. And I do mean it was black. I've seen some pretty dark rye breads, and this was darker still. I'd still eat the Limburger, though. With the darkest rye I could find.
Well, enough memories for one post. I'm sure there will be others. Goodnight.
About Me
"Table for One" is a cooking blog. It's about my experiences in the kitchen as a single woman that likes to cook but who is less than fond of entertaining. It's intended to be a whole lot about how to feed yourself, although I am sure to come up with ideas for stuff you can easily make and take to the work potluck and the family reunion. You don't have to be relegated to bringing the chips or the paper plates just because you're a solo act. And even though I don't generally throw parties, I got ideas that shouldn't be too hard to pull off, so there may be the occasional entertaining post. Of course, you should bear in mind that I am definitely an "intraverted" personality on the Myers-Briggs scale, so you might wait a very long time for party food at my blog. No doubt, there will be various and sundry musings about all things food related. Rants, too, from time to time, I expect.
I like food, therefore I like to cook. There, I said it. I like food. I've worked long and hard to develop a relationship with food that is relatively healthy, and it hasn't always been that way. Lest anyone fear they are in for "The Brown Rice and Granola Chronicles," put your fears to rest. I do not have a macrobiotic palate. I believe that it is quite possible to make and eat healthy, nutritious food to be sure, but I also live in a world that includes on a somewhat regular basis chicken wings, beer, potato chips, dessert and Chinese buffets. Occasionally in overly indulgent quantities. All at the same time. I don't feel guilty about it either. I'm a realist that way.
I suppose I could be called a reluctant foodie. Reluctant because the term "foodie" carries overly unpleasant connotations in my mind having to do with people who are always on the lookout for the latest and greatest just because it is the latest and greatest, and not because it actually looks good, smells good or tastes good, or in any way nurtures their souls. Nevermind that I have just about every spice and herb known to man and somewhere in the vicinity of eight kinds of mustard lurking in my refrigerator. The latter I attribute to a hereditary predisposition acquired from my father, who is a sucker for any kind of sweet-hot or spicy mustard. I will happily own up to having a fascination with the world of condiments, although I have thus far managed to avoid wasabi mayonnaise, having yet to figure out what I'd do with it if I had it. I took a wine class a few years back, not because I expected to dazzle friends, family and business connections with my knowledge of fine wines, but mainly because I wanted to be able to pick up a bottle of wine in the under twenty dollar range (and, for the record, the ten to fifteen dollar range is preferable) at my local World Market or Trader Joe's that wasn't fit to make vinegar out of.
My tastes are whimsical at best. I'd like to shop every day just because my taste inclinations can change that frequently. Right now, I am crazy for fruits and vegetables, and probably have more than I know what to do with in my refrigerator at this exact moment. I've got the makings of Thai beef salad and Vietnamese chicken salad, watermelon, strawberries, asparagus, cole slaw mix and arugula. I am hoping my taste buds will cooperate with me long enough to dispose of most of this in the next week or so. Because next week, I could just as easily decide that tuna noodle casserole and Krispy Kreme donuts are good ideas. It happens like that with me.
I am not anti-convenience food. I am not anti-comfort food. I think the rotisserie chicken right there at the deli in my local grocery store is one of the greatest food inventions of modern history. I love the darn things because they're convenient and I can do about a million things with them. I like bagged spinach, lettuce and lettuce mixes in spite of recent e-coli incidents. I like meatloaf, mashed potatoes (my sister-in-law's are worth a two hour drive on any holiday you can name), mac and cheese, and fried chicken. I say walk on the wild side and have street food and fair food because you only go around once, and whatever doesn't kill you only makes your gut stronger. I do draw the line at innards and insects, though. You will never put enough chocolate on a fried grasshopper to make me forget that it is a fried GRASSHOPPER. I almost always have a couple of those little frozen entrees from Stouffer's, Healthy Choice, Michelina or Marie Callendar in my freezer for those days when I don't have something quick and portable at the ready for my lunch or when I'm running late or when I'm too tired. I like those 99% fat-free cream soups, and the Kroger versions are just fine for my needs. With the exception of diet sodas, Hellman's light mayo and light sour cream (and the afore-mentioned canned cream soups), I got no use for "light" or "diet" much of anything. A little less of the real deal is more satisfying in my book, and I have done with trying to convince myself that some dry little rice cakes or artificially sweetened chocolate are good things. Ick.
At family gatherings, the things I am asked to bring are strawberry jello dessert (it's my paternal grandma's recipe and I have to bring this to pretty much any family gathering. After my mom died, the first Christmas dinner without her at my brother's house, my brother asked me to bring this. Mark doesn't generally go in for any kind of sweet things, so I figured it must mean something to him if he specifically asked me to bring it, and I've made it ever since. It's actually a rather light, refreshing bit of sweet after a big holiday meal with all the trimmings if you can't face pumpkin pie and red velvet cake), salami rolls (store bought hard salami rolled around a filling of cream cheese, chopped green olives, chopped green onions, prepared horseradish and a dash of Texas Pete), Butterfinger cake (taken right out of "Taste of Home" magazine and a staple at family cookouts and graduation parties. You'd have thought I invented the wheel the first time I brought it, and everyone swears I make it better than they do somehow), and my friend Elaine's sweet potato casserole (Elaine was my college roomie and close friend. She died about ten years ago and she herself admitted that she was no great shakes in the kitchen, but this recipe was one of her standouts, and every time I make it, I think of her and am proud to share the dish and the recipe. My niece-in-law, Jamie, loves this dish and asks for it every Thanksgiving).
I love to collect recipes and I read cookbooks the way other people read the latest best sellers. I think I could make a new recipe from my recipe boxes everyday for the rest of my life and not get to them all at this point. Although, in truth, I rarely actually follow recipes. Recipes are just suggestions about what ingredients go together for me. I constantly improvise. I've got cookbooks for just about every ethnicity out there, and what I don't have, I check out from the library if I get a burr under my saddle to cook something say Norwegian or Burmese or Ethiopian. Betty Crocker, Better Homes & Gardens (the red checkerbook one that is an updated version of my mom's) and Reader's Digest "Creative Cooking" are standard "reference" books for me. I love my copies of "Please to the Table" (Russia and all the former Soviet republics), "The Splendid Table" (Italian, Emalia-Romangna), "Everyday Italian", "Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking" and "A Wok for All Seasons". I love recipezaar.com because if you can't find a recipe for whatever it is you want to make, then it don't exist. I also subscribe to about.com's newsletters for Indian, Chinese and Korean cooking. Food Network is almost always on in the background when I am to home, too, even though I think I've seen just about every show they have. "The Next Food Network Star" is to me what "American Idol" is to the rest of the nation.
Things I can't live without in my kitchen are onions, garlic, chicken broth, rice, butter, olive oil, kosher salt and sherry vinegar. I love my Calphalon stir-fry pan, my microplane grater, my pepper mill, my big cast iron skillet and my big ol' chef's knife.
I can't quite wrap my head around cooking radishes, cucumbers (I know. I eat pickles and they are technically cooked cucumbers, but I am talking about the suggestions I've read from time to time that involve sauteeing the damn things in some oil or butter and serving them hot), and iceberg lettuce. Not sure why that last one gets me, as I happily and merrily eat bok choy and napa cabbage when I am in the mood for Chinese food! I have no use whatsoever for Minute Rice or instant tea. The average five year old in most underdeveloped nations of the world knows how to make REAL rice and REAL tea, so I'll confess to being a bit snotty on this point about these products. It's not that hard to do the real thing. I do not order iced tea north of the Mason-Dixon line most of the time because of the Yankee fascination with powdered Nestea. Ick again.
Well, I think that's enough of an introduction at this point. After all, it's a blog, and I can make lots and lots of posts whenever the mood strikes me. If you've read this far, thanks for your perseverance. Hope you find something that is at least entertaining, if not useful from time to time.
I like food, therefore I like to cook. There, I said it. I like food. I've worked long and hard to develop a relationship with food that is relatively healthy, and it hasn't always been that way. Lest anyone fear they are in for "The Brown Rice and Granola Chronicles," put your fears to rest. I do not have a macrobiotic palate. I believe that it is quite possible to make and eat healthy, nutritious food to be sure, but I also live in a world that includes on a somewhat regular basis chicken wings, beer, potato chips, dessert and Chinese buffets. Occasionally in overly indulgent quantities. All at the same time. I don't feel guilty about it either. I'm a realist that way.
I suppose I could be called a reluctant foodie. Reluctant because the term "foodie" carries overly unpleasant connotations in my mind having to do with people who are always on the lookout for the latest and greatest just because it is the latest and greatest, and not because it actually looks good, smells good or tastes good, or in any way nurtures their souls. Nevermind that I have just about every spice and herb known to man and somewhere in the vicinity of eight kinds of mustard lurking in my refrigerator. The latter I attribute to a hereditary predisposition acquired from my father, who is a sucker for any kind of sweet-hot or spicy mustard. I will happily own up to having a fascination with the world of condiments, although I have thus far managed to avoid wasabi mayonnaise, having yet to figure out what I'd do with it if I had it. I took a wine class a few years back, not because I expected to dazzle friends, family and business connections with my knowledge of fine wines, but mainly because I wanted to be able to pick up a bottle of wine in the under twenty dollar range (and, for the record, the ten to fifteen dollar range is preferable) at my local World Market or Trader Joe's that wasn't fit to make vinegar out of.
My tastes are whimsical at best. I'd like to shop every day just because my taste inclinations can change that frequently. Right now, I am crazy for fruits and vegetables, and probably have more than I know what to do with in my refrigerator at this exact moment. I've got the makings of Thai beef salad and Vietnamese chicken salad, watermelon, strawberries, asparagus, cole slaw mix and arugula. I am hoping my taste buds will cooperate with me long enough to dispose of most of this in the next week or so. Because next week, I could just as easily decide that tuna noodle casserole and Krispy Kreme donuts are good ideas. It happens like that with me.
I am not anti-convenience food. I am not anti-comfort food. I think the rotisserie chicken right there at the deli in my local grocery store is one of the greatest food inventions of modern history. I love the darn things because they're convenient and I can do about a million things with them. I like bagged spinach, lettuce and lettuce mixes in spite of recent e-coli incidents. I like meatloaf, mashed potatoes (my sister-in-law's are worth a two hour drive on any holiday you can name), mac and cheese, and fried chicken. I say walk on the wild side and have street food and fair food because you only go around once, and whatever doesn't kill you only makes your gut stronger. I do draw the line at innards and insects, though. You will never put enough chocolate on a fried grasshopper to make me forget that it is a fried GRASSHOPPER. I almost always have a couple of those little frozen entrees from Stouffer's, Healthy Choice, Michelina or Marie Callendar in my freezer for those days when I don't have something quick and portable at the ready for my lunch or when I'm running late or when I'm too tired. I like those 99% fat-free cream soups, and the Kroger versions are just fine for my needs. With the exception of diet sodas, Hellman's light mayo and light sour cream (and the afore-mentioned canned cream soups), I got no use for "light" or "diet" much of anything. A little less of the real deal is more satisfying in my book, and I have done with trying to convince myself that some dry little rice cakes or artificially sweetened chocolate are good things. Ick.
At family gatherings, the things I am asked to bring are strawberry jello dessert (it's my paternal grandma's recipe and I have to bring this to pretty much any family gathering. After my mom died, the first Christmas dinner without her at my brother's house, my brother asked me to bring this. Mark doesn't generally go in for any kind of sweet things, so I figured it must mean something to him if he specifically asked me to bring it, and I've made it ever since. It's actually a rather light, refreshing bit of sweet after a big holiday meal with all the trimmings if you can't face pumpkin pie and red velvet cake), salami rolls (store bought hard salami rolled around a filling of cream cheese, chopped green olives, chopped green onions, prepared horseradish and a dash of Texas Pete), Butterfinger cake (taken right out of "Taste of Home" magazine and a staple at family cookouts and graduation parties. You'd have thought I invented the wheel the first time I brought it, and everyone swears I make it better than they do somehow), and my friend Elaine's sweet potato casserole (Elaine was my college roomie and close friend. She died about ten years ago and she herself admitted that she was no great shakes in the kitchen, but this recipe was one of her standouts, and every time I make it, I think of her and am proud to share the dish and the recipe. My niece-in-law, Jamie, loves this dish and asks for it every Thanksgiving).
I love to collect recipes and I read cookbooks the way other people read the latest best sellers. I think I could make a new recipe from my recipe boxes everyday for the rest of my life and not get to them all at this point. Although, in truth, I rarely actually follow recipes. Recipes are just suggestions about what ingredients go together for me. I constantly improvise. I've got cookbooks for just about every ethnicity out there, and what I don't have, I check out from the library if I get a burr under my saddle to cook something say Norwegian or Burmese or Ethiopian. Betty Crocker, Better Homes & Gardens (the red checkerbook one that is an updated version of my mom's) and Reader's Digest "Creative Cooking" are standard "reference" books for me. I love my copies of "Please to the Table" (Russia and all the former Soviet republics), "The Splendid Table" (Italian, Emalia-Romangna), "Everyday Italian", "Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking" and "A Wok for All Seasons". I love recipezaar.com because if you can't find a recipe for whatever it is you want to make, then it don't exist. I also subscribe to about.com's newsletters for Indian, Chinese and Korean cooking. Food Network is almost always on in the background when I am to home, too, even though I think I've seen just about every show they have. "The Next Food Network Star" is to me what "American Idol" is to the rest of the nation.
Things I can't live without in my kitchen are onions, garlic, chicken broth, rice, butter, olive oil, kosher salt and sherry vinegar. I love my Calphalon stir-fry pan, my microplane grater, my pepper mill, my big cast iron skillet and my big ol' chef's knife.
I can't quite wrap my head around cooking radishes, cucumbers (I know. I eat pickles and they are technically cooked cucumbers, but I am talking about the suggestions I've read from time to time that involve sauteeing the damn things in some oil or butter and serving them hot), and iceberg lettuce. Not sure why that last one gets me, as I happily and merrily eat bok choy and napa cabbage when I am in the mood for Chinese food! I have no use whatsoever for Minute Rice or instant tea. The average five year old in most underdeveloped nations of the world knows how to make REAL rice and REAL tea, so I'll confess to being a bit snotty on this point about these products. It's not that hard to do the real thing. I do not order iced tea north of the Mason-Dixon line most of the time because of the Yankee fascination with powdered Nestea. Ick again.
Well, I think that's enough of an introduction at this point. After all, it's a blog, and I can make lots and lots of posts whenever the mood strikes me. If you've read this far, thanks for your perseverance. Hope you find something that is at least entertaining, if not useful from time to time.
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