Do What Mom Did

My husband and I used to have a continuing battle over how to correctly put the bottom fitted sheet on a bed. Through my sheer tenacity, he has finally given in.

It always started out okay. Put one corner of the sheet on one corner of the bed. However, he would then attempt to put the other corner of the same side of the sheet onto the corresponding corner.

“No, that’s not right,” I would (once again, with feigned patience) explain. “You MUST put the corner that is directly diagonal to the original corner onto the mattress next.”

Invariably, he would ask why. The answer: Because. That’s the way my mom did it.

I never really bothered to ask Mom why she did it that way. I always presumed that it was because the sheet would somehow fit tighter onto the mattress if done that way. Perhaps sheets weren’t made as well back then. It doesn’t matter why. I just know it was the right way to do it because my mom did it that way.

I started thinking about some of the things I do as an adult simply because my mom did it. For example, I am unable to throw away any kind of bottle of anything with a thick texture – shampoo, dishwashing soap, olive oil, hand lotion – without balancing that for-all-intents-and-purposes empty bottle onto the new bottle so as to catch every single drop of the one I’m about to toss. Yes, that has resulted in breakage. It is not unusual to hear a crash come from the kitchen when the corn syrup bottle that is balancing on top of the other succumbs to gravity and falls onto the counter or floor. Still, I continue to do the precarious balancing act every single time.

I asked my sisters if there were things they do simply because Mom did it that way. Yes, laughs one sister. Mom always properly set the table, so no matter where she and her husband eat (even if it’s off of the coffee table in front of the television), she sets the plate, carefully folds the napkin to the left, and properly places the flatware, fork to the left, knife to the right.

Of course, says the other sister. She cannot (not will not – CANNOT) throw away a little bouillon cube jar. They can, really MUST, be used for such things as leftover salad dressing, buttons, or garlic butter.

Mom’s influence goes to all of our cooking habits as well. Mom used garlic salt every time she browned ground beef. So do we. Mom took the lid off of the potatoes she was boiling to ultimately mash and let the water evaporate, which she said concentrated the flavor into the potatoes. So do we. (Well, I must admit I just learned this habit of Mom’s recently from my sister, but it is undoubtedly the way I will boil potatoes from this point forward.)

I have a friend who used to cut off a corner of her ham every time she cooked one for Easter dinner. One day, she told me, her mom was at her house for dinner. Her mother watched as she dutifully cut off the corner of the ham and tossed it aside to use in soup. “Why did you do that?” her mother asked. Surprised, my friend said, “I did it because you always did that when you made ham.” Her mother laughed, and responded, “I did that because my pan was too small to hold a whole big ham!”

I would love to hear what sorts of things others do for no other reason than that is what their mom or dad did.

Simple

Sometimes I practice what I preach, and cook simply.

It’s been kind of a tiring month, and has involved a fair amount of cooking for large numbers of people, all here in honor of my father. Usually I love to cook for crowds – the more, the merrier. This month, it has felt kind of overwhelming. I’m not quite up to par I guess.

In addition, last weekend I, along with a friend, hosted an annual gathering of women to celebrate the Christmas holiday. These are generally the kinds of situations in which I thrive. I love to make simple and delicious soups and salads, and bake homemade goodies for friends and family.

However, sometimes cooking simply means making it easy on yourself.

For example, I have talked before about how I can make these wonderful chocolate cupcakes that I fill with delicious cream filling, reminiscent of Hostess cupcakes. I have successfully made these cupcakes a dozen times. This time, however, something went terribly wrong. I’m not entirely sure what. Perhaps I forgot the baking powder. Maybe I used too much (or too little) flour. Instead of light and delicious cupcakes, I had greasy chocolate doorstops.

I briefly (about a millisecond) considered a do-over. Then I came to my senses and went to my pantry and brought forth a store-bought chocolate cake mix and a can of store-bought chocolate frosting. In a mere 20 minutes or so, I had not-quite-as-good-as-homemade chocolate cupcakes, which I filled with the homemade cream filling I had already made for the original cupcakes.

And here’s the thing – nobody noticed. Everyone was caught up in joyful conversation and holiday gladness, and not one person took a bite of the cupcakes only to spit it out with disgust. While I knew they weren’t as good as homemade, no one else cared.

The moral of the story is that cooking and eating for and with friends should not exhaust you or bring you to tears. There’s nothing wrong with taking the easy way out when that seems to be the most sensible thing to do. Just think of yourself as Sandra Lee, the star of Semi-Homemade Cooking, instead of the Barefoot Contessa. After all, both women are probably equally loved – and equally rich!

Love Letter

November was a difficult month for me. My father died.

He was placed under hospice care at the beginning of the month, and died with exceptional dignity on November 9. That he died with such grace was predictable.

I have spoken about my father often in this blog. He was a baker, just as his father was a baker. While as far as I know, he never said this out loud, I’m not sure being a baker was his first choice. I think if he could have been anything he wanted when he grew up, he would have been a professional musician. Making a living by blowing a horn.

He was, in fact, a musician when he met my mom. He was playing in my mom’s brother’s dance band when he spotted the pretty petite girl who was his band leader’s sister. He set his sights on her, and never looked back.

He knew that after they got married and began a family, a musician’s life was not practical. So he went back to my grandfather’s bakery to work, and eventually bought the bakery from him. He and my mom ran a very successful business, and he was probably the best baker in the entire Midwest.

He fully understood the feel of a dough or the way a cake batter should look. If the look or feel wasn’t right, he knew why and how to fix it. My dad would roll out yeast donut dough, and could cut the donuts and flip them onto his finger (tossing the hole aside) all in one flawless motion – faster than you can say Krispy Kreme.

He was proud of his skill, proud of his business, proud of his family. He taught my brother to be a baker, and taught all of us the importance of hard work and doing our best. After all, we couldn’t produce incomplete homework any more than he could put a shapeless loaf of bread into his showcase. Work hard for the best product.

He taught us all how to live and what is important in life. There was no use in his eyes in looking at what might have been but only in looking ahead and at the gifts he was given. And what was important to him was his family, beautiful music, and good food – and if you could have all three together, that was even better.

He died peacefully, sitting in his easy chair in his own living room. Fittingly, his three daughters had just taken a bit of time away from him to have a sandwich, and once we sat down next to him again, he took his last breath. It would have been important to him that we would have eaten something before he left us. In fact, I’m pretty sure my mom and my grandmother were in heaven telling him, “Now Honey, there’s no need for you to go anywhere until they have had a little something to eat.”

While my brother is a professional baker, I only dabble. I’m fairly successful, but fully admit that nothing about baking is intuitive to me. I follow a recipe and my baked goods generally turn out to be pretty tasty. But when my bread won’t rise or my cakes fall in the middle, I can’t tell you if there is too much humidity or the flour is old or the water used to proof the yeast was too hot or too cold. But in my dad’s memory, I will continue to bake. And also in his memory, I will try to always have a positive outlook, just as he did.

And finally, I pledge to learn to make a decent loaf of bread. But it won’t be as good as his.

Exceptional

So, last night my husband, our son, and I were out for dinner at a chain restaurant. We all ordered rib-eye steaks, and they were quite good.

About mid-meal, our waiter, who seemed to have a bit of an odd personality, asked us, “Are your meals exceptional?” Now, he’s probably been instructed to say something like that as part of a customer service effort (kind of like being welcomed enthusiastically as soon as you walk into your bank – and don’t get me started on that). We all sort of looked at each other with confusion. How do you answer that question?

I’m used to a waiter asking if everything is okay or if there’s anything we need during a meal. But exceptional? Hmmm.

So on the way home, I asked my husband, “So, was your meal exceptional?” No, he responded; pretty good, but not exceptional.

“Have you ever had a meal to which you would have answered yes to that question,” I asked him. He thought a bit, and said, yes, he probably had, but he couldn’t think where. When I pressed him, he finally admitted that his most obvious “exceptional” meal was a sausage pizza at his favorite Chicago pizzaria.

I have definitely had meals, or parts of meals, that I would consider to be exceptional. I had the good luck to travel with an expense account before I retired, and I definitely had some exceptional meals at expensive restaurants in big cities throughout the nation. Most included fish. I prepare seafood and fish, but not particularly well, I don’t think. But when you have a good piece of fish prepared simply with a delicious sauce, it is often exceptional.

But if you held my feet to the fire and asked me to think of something exceptional that I have eaten in a restaurant, it would most certainly be a dessert that I ate in Paris. I know that sounds pretentious, but it is simply the truth.

It was our last night before we came home from our three-month European adventure. For three months I had been eating wonderful German, Italian and French food, but I was ready to come home and have some good ol’ American food. I can’t even remember what our meal was that night (though I vaguely recall some kind of veal and a very good salad).

We had rarely ordered dessert during our travels, preferring instead to get a gelato a bit later in the evening. But that night we threw all caution to the wind, and ordered a chocolate dessert (with a name I no longer recall).

Oh. My. Goodness.

The plate was covered with a custardy cream, and on top sat a warm piece of chocolate cake. When you cut into it with your fork, out came a soft drizzle of chocolate syrup, floating into the custard. It was, undoubtedly, the most delicious dessert I have ever had, either prior to or since that trip. It was truly exceptional.

But, being in Paris, the waiter obviously didn’t ask, “Is your dessert exceptional?” You must be kidding. In Paris? In France? On the contrary, he just knew it was.

Mom's Ribs

“What did Mom make for dinner every night when we were little,” I recently asked one of my sisters.

Our mother cooked dinner most days of the every week, except when she and our father would eat dinner out. On those occasions, my siblings and I would eat TV dinners, or canned ravioli, or perhaps Beanie Weenies, if my older sister got involved in the cooking. Don’t feel sorry for us. We considered those kinds of meals to be treats. At least I did.

But every other night she prepared a meal that included some kind of meat, some kind of starch (generally potatoes), and some kind of vegetable. She wasn’t big on fresh vegetables, so we generally ate canned peas, corn or beans. Again, don’t feel sorry for us. My mother was a fabulous cook, and we thought the canned vegetables were delicious.

But back to the question I posed to my sister.

“Fried chicken, breaded pork chops, pot roast, meat loaf, things like that,” my sister recalled.

Being so dedicated to providing my father and their four kids with a nutritious and delicious meal every night, I wonder if she ever struggled to think of what to cook for dinner the way that I do. Probably.

I thought most of the meals she made were delicious; some, probably not so much. For me, breaded pork chops – which were my father’s personal favorite – didn’t thrill me. I ate them, because my mother was not the sort who would become a short-order cook because one of her children didn’t care for a meal.

But I was surprised to learn, during this same conversation with my sister, that she wasn’t a fan of my mother’s roasted spareribs and saurkraut. “When I would come home from school and ask Mom what was for dinner, and she would tell me it was spareribs and saurkraut, I would be very disappointed,” admitted my sister.

Not me. That was one of my favorite meals. Except that at some point during my youth, Mom decided to start putting apples in the saurkraut. I never enjoyed it quite as much after that. I would try to pick out the apple, but since the meal was cooked in the oven, the softened apples pretty much became part of the saurkraut. Oh well.

Mom was not big on recipes, unfortunately. She wrote down a few of her specific dishes, such as her cole slaw dressing and her gazpacho. But as for her regular main dishes, not many recipes. Sometimes I try to recreate her meals from memory, but mostly I go on the Internet or look at my cookbooks and see what I can find.

That’s what I did recently when I developed an overwhelming desire for these baked spareribs. And I found my recipe in a somewhat surprising place – one of my Lidia Bastianich cookbooks!

I would link to her recipe on her website, but it’s not on her website, so I will simply tell you that the recipe comes from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, copyright 2002.

Spare Ribs Roasted with Vinegar and Red Pepper
6 servings
1 rack (about 3-1/2 pounds) pork spare ribs
Sea or kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled
4 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 cup (or as needed) canned chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
1 to 2 teaspoons crushed hot red pepper

Cut the rack of spare ribs between the bones into single ribs. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Pat the spare ribs dry and season them with salt and pepper. Toss them in a roasting pan into which they fit comfortably with the olive oil, garlic, and by leaves. Pour in the broth and roast, turning occasionally, until the liquid is almost completely evaporated and the ribs are golden brown, 45 minutes to an hour.

Meanwhile, stir the wine, vinegar, honey, and crushed red pepper together in a small bowl until the honey is dissolved.

Brush all sides of the ribs with some of the vinegar glaze, then pour the remaining glaze into the roasting pan. Continue baking, turning every few minutes, until the glaze is syrupy and the ribs are mahogany brown and sticky to the touch, about 30 minutes. Spoon off as much of the fat as you like before serving the ribs.

I used a rack of baby back ribs instead of pork ribs since they seem more manageable, and I was cooking only for my husband and me. It took the whole hour before the liquid came close to being evaporated. And I’m not sure my ribs were ever sticky to the touch, but they did turn a lovely golden brown.

I served the ribs with saurkraut (sans apples), mashed potatoes, and corn. I, of course, mixed all of these courses together on my plate and had one big delicious supper. The meat came off the bones easily, and the flavors went terrifically with the saurkraut.

Here’s to you, Mom!

Kitchen Essentials

I haven’t posted a blog entry for a while because we have been in Arizona, busily setting up the home we bought in Phoenix last March.

Setting up a new home has been an interesting experience for me. We have lived in our house in Denver since we were married 18 years ago. We have no intention of moving to Phoenix permanently, or even of becoming so-called snowbirds, any time soon. All but one of our children, and all but one of our grandchildren, are here, so here is where we want to be most of the time. Instead, our plan is to get out of Dodge when we see or hear about some bad weather coming. We will probably be in our Arizona house a few weeks at a time throughout the winter.

But, when we are there, we want it to feel like home. For me, that means being able to cook and eat at home. So I headed straight for the kitchen to begin my nesting.

My kitchen in Denver has everything I need. In fact, my family mocks me for some of the can’t-live-without appliances and accessories that I have purchased over the years. I don’t use the term lightly. Frankly, the mocking is often well deserved.

For example, do I really need that long, thin olive dish that I have used exactly never? What about the teeny-tiny propane torch to heat up the sugar on the top of the crème brulee that I have made once? Then there’s the food mill that I felt was a critical purchase because my beloved Lidia Bastianich uses it to make her red sauce. I used it once only to discover that it was an extreme pain in the you-know-what. Oh, and don’t forget those three crock pots which attract dust in my basement storage room.

Setting up this new kitchen, particularly since we are on a budget as we are now making a new house payment, has required that I think carefully about what sorts of things I really CAN’T live without to be a good cook as opposed to those things I THINK I can’t live without.

Here is the list of things that I have decided I can’t live without, in no particular order:

· One good chef’s knife
· A reasonably good paring knife
· One 10-12 inch cast iron skillet (to fry chicken and steaks) with lid
· One good 10-12 inch non-stick skillet (to cook everything else) with lid
· One decent sized saucepan with lid
· A Dutch oven that can be used on the stovetop and in the oven – preferably cast iron, and most preferably with enamel coating
· A coffee pot
· A toaster
· A cookie sheet
· 9 X 11 pan
· 8 X 8 pan
· Tongs
· A couple of wooden spoons
· A spatula
· Dining plates and utensils
· Steak knives
· A corkscrew
· A bottle opener
· A can opener

There’s probably more. My bigger point is that I certainly need far less than I think I do when I visit kitchen stores. After all, pioneer women probably cooked and baked using a cast iron pan and little else. This isn’t to say, however, that I have any intention of throwing away my electric waffle iron any time soon, despite the fact that I’m much more likely to breakfast at Village Inn than to fire up the waffle iron. And while I can’t currently afford to purchase a second one for my Phoenix home, you would truly have to pry my Kitchen Aid standup mixer out of my cold, dead fingers to take it from me.

Even though I never saw Ma use one on Little House on the Prairie.

Flaky Goodness

When we were in France a few years ago, we enjoyed the beautiful scenery, the exquisite wines, and the relaxed enjoy-life atmosphere we observed. But probably more than anything, we loved the food.

Who wouldn’t? It’s absolutely delicious, no question about it. The cheeses are magnificent. The bread is crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. The butter is sweet and creamy on your tongue. The pastries are awesome.

One day, we ate petit dejeuner (in the US of A, we call that continental breakfast) at a café near our hotel. Our breakfast consisted of café au lait, orange juice, and a yummy croissant. Following breakfast, we began looking at the sights of the beautiful city on foot. We seriously were a half block away, and my husband’s nose began to twitch. He smelled chocolate.

Sure enough, we came across a patisserie that had pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) fresh out of the oven. He requested one (despite the fact that we had eaten breakfast only minutes before). They carefully placed the croissant in a pretty bag and playfully twirled the corners of the bag, making a beautiful package, which my husband, of course, ripped open immediately upon leaving the shop. He doesn’t appreciate artistry when it is between him and chocolate.

To this day, he still talks about taking that first bite of the croissant, so fresh that it poofed in his mouth and crumbs fell on his shirt. His mouth filled with buttery bread and rich chocolate.

Well, I can’t compete, of course, and don’t even try. Have you ever seen a recipe for croissants? Maybe some day when I have lots of time and little to do. Not today or tomorrow, I’m afraid.

But once in a while I get a hankering for a pastry. Thankfully, I came across a recipe by, believe it or not, Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa) for easy Danish pastries. I say “believe it or not” because I think the Contessa rarely offers easy recipes, despite her constant pronouncement of “how easy was that?” I always yell back to the television, “Not that damn easy, Ina!”

Her recipe calls for frozen puff pastry, possibly the best invention of all time (well, the printing press might be better, but printed word is becoming old school technology, and puff pastry never will!). You simply thaw out the pastry (which you can do in about 20 minutes), roll it to a 10 by 10 square, cut the square in quarters, and plop on a scoop of pie filling (I like blueberry). Her recipe is for cheese Danish, which is more complicated. I like the sweetness of fruit fillings. You then fold the pastry over the fruit filling and seal, using beaten egg as your glue. Bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Come to think of it, adding cheese to the blueberry filling would make it twice as good.

Road trip!

I’m not a big fan of flying, though I admit it is the most efficient way to get where you’re going, particularly if it’s more than eight hours away. But anyone who flies in this day and age knows that flying is no piece of cake. Small containers of liquids in clear plastic bags, no water or food brought into the airport, removing shoes, belts, jewelry, cell phones, etc. from your person to go through security, with fingers crossed that you don’t set off the alarms anyway. And then, of course, my personal constant concern that the plane will plummet at any moment.

On the other hand, there is almost nothing I like better than getting from Point A to Point B via a car on a highway. While as a kid I used to hate our vacation drives from Nebraska to Colorado, now I love packing up the car with our luggage and a pile of mandatory junk food, loading a trashy audio book into the CD player, and hitting the road.

My husband and I used to do road trips on small two-lane highways, but we’re not as likely to do that anymore. But we will nearly always choose to drive to visit his mother’s house in Chicago or to our second home in Phoenix, since we can stay on an interstate highway the entire time. We split the drives into two days, and find it quite enjoyable.

Some day I would like to drive across the entire country on I-80. It starts in San Francisco, and ends somewhere in New Jersey. My experience with it, however, is only between Cheyenne and Chicago. Even so, there are opportunities to see military museums, pioneer villages, Amish-like communities, trucking museums, aviation museums, Indian villages, and on and on and on. On a recent trip to Chicago, we did, for example, stop and wander around what is purported to be (and I have no reason to disbelieve) the world’s largest truck stop. The Iowa 80 Truck Stop, located in Walcott, Iowa, just outside of Iowa City, is massive. The photo shows that the shopping area (which is just a small part of the entire complex) holds a semi-trailer truck. In fact, there are a total of three semis in the facility, with plenty of room for the rest of the essentials, such as Christian books, CDs, DVDs, car parts, naked women decals, etc.

One of the things I like best about road trips is eating the local foods. Every state has its own specialties. One of the most perplexing to me is (at the risk of offending any Iowans who happen to stumble upon this blog) the loose meat sandwich. I have given this sandwich several tries. I should like them. I simply don’t. To me, they taste as bland as, well, as loose meat sandwiches.

Ground beef, browned until it loses its red color, cooked with onions, served with mustard and pickles on a hamburger bun. No flavor. Sorry, my Iowa friends. Since, I, like Bill O’Reilly, am fair and balanced, here is a recipe so that you can try it yourself. Maid-Rite is the fast-food place where we have tried to like these local specialties.

Once you venture into Nebraska (my state of origin), you find the runza. On the road, these are primarily found at the cleverly-named Runza Hut. While I loved these as a child, my experience as of late is that they taste about the same as a loose meat sandwich. I blame it, however, on the bread.

Here is a recipe for homemade runzas that I have had since childhood:

One recipe yeast dough
½ lb. ground beef
3 c. chopped green cabbage
1 c. chopped onion
Salt and pepper

Prepare dough and let rise.

Brown ground beef for until it loses its red color; add onion and cabbage. Cover and cook until both are wilted, stirring often, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Roll dough ¼ in. thick. Cut into squares. Place some of the meat filling on each square, and pinch corners together. Place upside down on greased baking sheet and let rise for 20 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

10 servings.

My recollection is that they are quite good. I think the key is the bread.

Now then, as you near Chicago, your local eating choices are much more pronounced, and much yummier. Pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, and hot dogs (they only call them Chicago-style hot dogs when you are not in Chicago), to name but a few. There are Dunkin Donuts about every three blocks, and locally-owned pizza joints everywhere you look. And here’s a point of note: Most people think of deep-dish pizza when they think of Chicago pizza. My husband, who hails since birth from the south side of Chicago, knows only thin-crust pizza. It might be a north side/south side thing. I don’t want to get in the middle of a turf battle, but I must say that the pizza from his neighborhood joint is, without question, the best I’ve ever eaten this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

On our way to Chicago, we stopped in a small town a ways east of Council Bluffs, Iowa, to get breakfast and use the facilities. We chose Subway, as it was just off the interstate. Located just behind the Subway restaurant was a small diner, long-since out of business. It made me sad to think of the passage of locally-owned dining establishments such as this. Instead of a breakfast sandwich that tasted pretty much like a breakfast sandwich from any fast-food place, we could have enjoyed homemade biscuits and gravy. Those were the traveling days.

Crock Pot Overstock

Yesterday afternoon, my new crock pot arrived by UPS. I was very happy. That brings my total up to three. The problem is, I rarely do crock pot cooking. Sigh.

To be fair, I brought one of the crock pots into my marriage. My first marriage. That means it’s older than 1977. It still works just fine, despite its orange and brown pre-disco era appearance. That’s, of course, because I rarely use it.

Then, sometime in the last couple of years, I decided I needed to get a newer, fancier crock pot to sit unused in my pantry. That one has an automatic shut off, and a cool, stainless steel exterior. The problem is, it’s large enough to cook a meal for an entire New England township. My husband and I hardly qualify.

So, I got on Amazon the other day and ordered a three-and-a-half quart crock pot – the perfect size to cook a meal for my husband and me. Which, of course, I won’t. At least not very often.

Perhaps part of the problem is I like getting deliveries. Remember the movie The Music Man? "Oh ho the Wells Fargo wagon is a'comin' down the street, oh please let it be for me!"

I think crock pots are wonderful. That’s why I own three of them. I especially think they are an excellent tool for working families. Coming home from work and having dinner mostly ready is awesome. Throw some biscuits in the oven, and you’re good to go.

And what can I say about those wonderful slow cooker liners that they now sell? Now you don’t even have to spend a lot of time scrubbing out that crock pot. They should have thought of that a long time ago.

I must confess that I didn’t use the crock pot(s) much even when I was working. The reason? My husband, who works from a home office, didn’t like the smell of a pot roast cooking all day long. By the time I got home, he was so sick of the smell that he didn’t even want to eat the crock pot’s contents. I can see his point. Coming home to the smell of a pot roast tender enough to cut with a fork nestled amidst carrots, celery and potatoes is one thing. Smelling it all day is another.

Now, however, I take my granddaughter to piano lessons every Thursday from 5 to 5:45 p.m. Since I don’t get home until almost 6:30, the crock pot is coming in handy. Since I am home most of the day, I can turn it on in the afternoon on high, and my husband doesn’t have to smell cooking meat all day long – only for a few hours. So I can come home after delivering my granddaughter to her mother and father and not have to worry about fixing dinner. And the size is simply perfect for the two of us.

I wonder if they make them smaller. Perhaps I should check Amazon…….

Recipe Madness

Every week when I make my grocery list, I give a passing glance at all of my cookbooks, and then proceed to plan on making the same things that I make every week. I really think I’m the least creative cook on the planet.

The thing is, I have nearly 75 cookbooks on the two bookshelves I have in my kitchen. In addition to my cookbooks, I subscribe to a monthly cooking magazine, all copies of which I keep on a bookshelf in my bedroom rather than throwing them away. As if this isn’t enough, I have electronic recipe boxes on allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com, both which are full of recipes. And whenever a new and interesting cookbook is published, I get it from the library. I think I’ve got a mental illness!

I love cookbooks. I can sit literally for hours and peruse a cookbook. I was positively giddy with happiness when my mother-in-law offered me her old Joy of Cooking last time we visited her. Joy of Cooking tells you how to do EVERYTHING. In addition to telling you how to clean a fish and cut up a chicken, it explains how to prepare wildfowl, from plucking it of its feathers to hanging it up to tenderize. Here is an actual excerpt from Joy of Cooking:

…(P)roper care immediately after shooting determines the ultimate excellence of flavor in wild birds. While the bird is still warm the neck is split and the carcass bled. To keep the blood for use in sauces, see 339. Check the neck for any undigested food and remove it.

Some birds ….. are cooked with the trail still inside, see 440. Although quail and a few other smaller birds should be plucked, drawn and cooked within 24 hours of killing, it is important in general not to pluck or draw any wildfowl until you are ready to cook it, since the added surface exposure of the carcass to air will induce spoilage….. .

To tenderize and improve flavor, it is advisable to hang many wild birds…. . How long to hang depends first on age….. A second consideration is the weather. In muggy periods, ripening is accelerated…..However long birds are to be hung, suspend them, undrawn, by the feet in a cool, dry, airy place.

I doubled-checked our homeowners’ association guidelines, and found nothing that prohibits me from cutting and hanging wild game from the patio overhang in my backyard. That’s good to know in case my husband suddenly decides he wants to serve wild turkey for Thanksgiving this year.

But I digress. My point is, with so many cookbooks, so many recipes, so many options to make interesting and imaginative things, shame on me for serving baked chicken thighs with olive oil and lemon juice almost weekly.

So I have made a resolution. Starting immediately, I will serve at least one meal from one of my recipe sources each week. I will choose a different source each time.

Last night I prepared Shrimp and Chorizo Stew from the Food Network Magazine, and it was absolutely scrumptious. I cut the recipe in half, and cooked it in my little 2-1/2 quart cast iron Dutch oven that I bought at IKEA last time we were in Phoenix.

My husband, (who, whenever I ask him what he would like to have for dinner, will always request some sort of a sandwich – ugh) seemed to enjoy every bite.

I will not, however, dress a deer in my back yard, no matter what.

The Pear Necessities

Awhile back, I committed to using the produce that my backyard is yielding. I seem, unfortunately, to have lost control of it. My pear tree in particular seems to be producing more pears just as quickly as I pick the existing pears.

Perhaps that’s just my imagination. I spent one full afternoon a week-and-a-half ago picking all the pears that were within my reach. I had one of those long pickers that is supposed to enable me to reach the pears at the very top of the tree. No such luck. I was able to get most of the pears that were ready to be picked on about the bottom three-fourths of the tree. There, looming at the very top, are pears practically sticking their tongues out at me that I will never be able to reach. A feast for the squirrels, though, as I noted, they seem to take one bite and commence to throw them onto the ground beneath the tree. Little devils.

Oh well. Considering that I have lived in this house for 18 years and have never harvested one single pear, I should be happy with the ones I picked.

At any rate, I did as the websites instructed. I placed them in two boxes and put them in my cool basement to ripen, and promptly forgot about them. However, this morning I bolted up in bed and cried, “Eureka!” Well, I didn’t actually do that, as it would probably have given my husband a heart attack, but I did remember that there were two boxes of pears sitting in my basement.

I went downstairs and carefully peeked into the box. Just as I had been promised, the pears had ripened. Well, most had ripened. A few had totally rotted, and a few hadn’t done much of anything. But most were a golden color with specks of brown, and just gave a bit to my touch.

So this afternoon I spent several hours making Caramel Spice Pear Butter using a recipe that I found in my home canning magazine. You core seven pounds of pears, dice them into pieces, add water and cook the bejesus out of them. In the meantime, you magically turn sugar into caramel.

Seriously, it does seem sort of magical. As I stirred and stirred, before my very eyes, a cup-and-a-half of plain white sugar turned into deep, rich caramel. Yum.

Using my food processor (what did I ever do without it?), I pulverized the cooked pears, and then added the caramel to them, along with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. I let the mixture cook until it was a thick, gooey pot of deliciousness, and then I filled eight jelly jars with the pear butter, and set them in some boiling water to process.

Keeping with the pear’s history of apparently reproducing right before my very eyes, it almost appeared that I hadn’t made a dent in the pot. There was still so much pear butter remaining. So I filled up two more jars and a plastic container. Those I didn’t process, so I will have to share the excess with my friends, family, and neighbors.

The taste? Well, just imagine the sweetness of pears coupled with the rich creaminess of caramel, and add a touch of spiciness from the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Sheer yumminess that will grace my toast tomorrow (and many tomorrows after that.

Next up -- the apples!

Friday Night Bites

When I was working full time, Friday nights were the night that my husband and I inevitably went out to dinner. Even if I cooked every other meal at home during the week, we looked forward to celebrating the end of the work week by eating dinner someplace where I didn’t have to cook and he didn’t have to wash dishes.

I don’t think this is particularly uncommon. I think many families – especially families where both adults work outside the home – dine out on Friday night. I can tell by the number of often-naughty children that are present at our neighborhood Italian restaurant on Friday nights. The parents, fortified by a glass of red wine or a cold bottle of beer, frantically attempt to keep their little peanuts busy until the pizza and garlic knots blessedly appear at the table.

Growing up, my family didn’t go out for dinner on Friday night. There were probably a variety of reasons for this, but being Catholic was not the least among the reasons. Until the mid-1960s (upon the conclusion of the second Vatican Council) American Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. Even after 1965, you couldn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. And what was the point of going out to dinner if you couldn’t eat a steak or fried chicken? Or so my father thought.

Nowadays eating seafood is a pleasure. Salmon on a cedar plank, or grilled tilapia with lime juice, or steamed mussels are a yummy treat. But in Nebraska in the 50s, there was no fresh salmon or mussels, and who had ever heard of tilapia? Instead, my mother made salmon loaf out of saltines and canned salmon, or opened up a package of frozen fish sticks, or made the predictable tuna noodle casserole every Friday night.

But here’s the kicker: On Friday nights, near midnight, my mom would heat up her best cast-iron skillet and make my dad a fried t-bone steak. Nearly every Saturday morning at about 12:02, my dad was munching on a sizzling hot steak covered in A-1. Even the Pope couldn’t point any fingers.

Now that I’m retired, I no longer have a desire to eat dinner out on Friday nights. Restaurants are too busy and noisy. Instead, nearly every Friday I get out my best cast-iron skillet and fry my husband and I a yummy steak, ala mama-in-the-50s. Maybe not a t-bone, but more likely a New York strip or a boneless rib-eye. While I like to gnaw on a bone, I think boneless works better in a fry pan. There is something about a steak that is heavily seasoned with salt and pepper and then fried at a very high temperature until it’s crusty on the outside and pink on the inside. I serve it with a salad covered in homemade bleu cheese dressing and vinaigrette, pour a glass of red wine, and call it a feast.

Sonofagun, we'll have big fun

This past weekend, my sister and I threw a grand party for our sons, both of whom turned 30 within a month of each other. A monumental birthday for the both of them.

And speaking of 30, there were 30-some people in my backyard, enjoying beautiful weather and each other’s company. And, of course, they were all waiting to be fed.

When my sister and I began discussing the party, and most importantly, what to feed 30-40 people, we considered Italian, we considered Mexican, and we considered good old-fashioned hamburgers and hot dogs. Suddenly, voila! I knew exactly what to make to celebrate this momentous stepping stone birthday most appropriately. A Cajun shrimp boil!

Eight years ago, my husband and I had a similar feast to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, and it was tons of fun. Moreover, it is a relatively easy (though not inexpensive) way to feed lots of people. And it gets everyone involved. After all, what’s more fun than eating with your fingers?

I elected to only include shrimp in my seafood feast, though many seafood boils include crab and/or crawfish. I wanted to keep it relatively simple. And, though I love most all seafood, and shellfish in particular, I am not a big fan of crawfish. They look too much like scorpions to me.

My husband and our middle son did the cooking, which involves boiling layers of food in an appropriate order according to cooking time. Our feast included little red potatoes, kielbasa, corn on the cob, and, of course, shrimp. To spice things up, we cooked with onions, garlic, and Cajun spices. The spices gave excellent flavor and a wonderful kick to all of the tasty ingredients.

In all, it takes about a half hour to cook everything. We had a table waiting, covered in butcher paper. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite as delightful as looking on as all of the ingredients are literally dumped on top of the table in a crazy mixed-up jumble of spicy goodness.

No eating utensils need be used, though we offered forks for those not wanting to pick up the hot potatoes and sausage with their hands. Most ignored the utensils and dug in with their fingers. Everyone ate standing up – enhancing the shrimp with cocktail sauce and Old Bay seasoning, or drizzling hot sauce on top of the already-spicy kielbasa. Nice, ice-cold beer and pop to wash it all down.

Even the grandkids got into the thick of things, eagerly ripping the tails off the shrimp and gulping them down, followed by lemonade. How can you not love kielbasa and shrimp?

Our sons had a grand celebration as they enter this next decade of their lives.

Round Table Discussion

I love to eat. I love eating my cooking. I love eating others’ cooking. I love eating at fancy restaurants where you might get a small piece of Arctic char on a plate drizzled with avocado mousse. I love eating at diners in small towns where you might get a huge piece of meatloaf sitting on top of a mound of mashed potatoes. I love eating Mexican food. I love eating Italian food. I love southern cooking. I love hot dogs, hamburgers, gyros, pizza, fried chicken, barbecue spareribs, fish sandwiches, salmon on a cedar plank, tandoori chicken, and falafel. I could go on and on. You get the point.

Well, you get part of the point anyway. For me, cooking and eating are partly about putting food in tummies -- providing nourishment and primal satisfaction. But even more important, at least to me, is the connection that can be made around a dinner table or a picnic table or a card table.

Yesterday we had lunch with my father and stepmother, my sister and one of my adult nephews. The meal was very good, but largely uncomplicated. We cooked hamburgers on the grill. We served them with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, some of my homemade pickles, and yellow sweet corn. We sipped on beer and iced tea, and sipped coffee while we ate a yummy cinnamon crumb cake made by my stepmother.

But while the meal itself was fairly forgettable (though very good), the camaraderie was not. We sat around that table for probably two hours after all of the food was gone, and yakked. We didn’t solve world problems. We didn’t come upon a cure for cancer or the common cold. But we talked about things that were important to us. We told our father about our trip back home, and how highly regarded he was with people he rarely thinks about but never forgets. My sister told us funny stories about the interesting people with whom she deals regularly, reminding ourselves that all people are unique, but often very familiar. We talked about existing and upcoming grandchildren. We talked about hobbies. We laughed. We gossiped. We praised God for food and family and good health.

Food unites us as a human family. It nourishes our bodies, but it also nourishes us emotionally. It is the thread that weaves us all together. You can roast a turkey most any day of the week, but Thanksgiving dinner is about the people who are sitting around you at the dinner table.

So, cooking really should be, and largely is, very simple. Enjoy the preparation, the serving, the eating, and the sharing with family and friends.

Oh, and have cinnamon crumb cake as often as possible.

The Perfect Pie

A number of years ago, my husband and I were in Miami, where I attended a business conference. Following the conference, we took the opportunity to visit the Florida keys. We spent time primarily in Key West, but drove around much of southern Florida. We enjoyed lots of seafood and lots of citrusy, fruity drinks, and basked in the beautiful Florida sunshine.

We did have, however, one primary goal. Was it to find out how we can help save the sea turtles? Was it to catch a giant tuna during a deep sea fishing expedition? Was it to snorkel in the continental United States’ only living-coral barrier reef?

No, I’m afraid it was none of those things. Our mission, my friends, was to find the quintessential key lime pie.

Our research strategy was quite simple. We ate out every meal, and at the end of each of these many meals (including breakfast), we ordered a piece of key lime pie. In the period of three or four days during which we conducted our research, we had some really good key lime pie and some not so good key lime pie. We ate some key lime fluff, some pie with filling the color of the green crayon in a box of Crayola Crayons, some pie that had the misfortune of being key lime custard sitting atop lime Jello. We had graham cracker crusts. We had pastry crusts. We even had chocolate cookie crusts.

Finally, towards the end or our trip, in a restaurant in the town of Islamorada, we took a bite of the piece of key lime pie we had ordered. We chewed, swallowed, and looked at each other with smiles on our faces. No question about it. This was the one.

After finishing our pie, down to the last graham cracker crumb, and with great trepidation, I beckoned to the server. She came over to our table and asked if everything was alright. I assured her it was. I then told her about the research we had been conducting. I informed her that, after a great deal of study, we had determined that this very restaurant offered the best key lime pie we had tasted in our visit throughout the keys.

She smiled modestly, and seemed pleased. I cleared my throat, and in a very serious tone, I asked her if there was any chance that the restaurant would give me the recipe. No doubt there were secrets they would be reluctant to share. A special orchard that raised organic key limes. Goat’s milk from animals raised without hormones or antibiotics. Ground-up seeds from the wiki wiki plant found only in the jungles of the Dominican Republic. Eggs gathered from chickens that had free range of a little-known Caribbean island and lived off of key lime seeds. And no doubt the pie took hours to make as the sous chef squeezed hundreds and hundreds of the aforementioned tiny key limes.

“Sure,” the server said without a moment’s hesitation. “You can find it on the back of a bottle of Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice. It’s in every grocery store in the country.”

Sure enough, I went into the first grocery store I saw and found Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice, and there was the pie recipe. What’s more, the recipe consists of a grand total of four ingredients, including the pie crust.

And she was right. I am able to find Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice at any grocery store I have ever visited in every state in the union (to be honest, I haven’t tried Wyoming).

I am serving dinner to a friend and her two-year-old twins tonight, and I am making a key lime pie for dessert. Should she ask for the recipe, I think I will simply wave my hand and tell her it is way too complicated to make when you are the busy mother of twin toddlers.

Here is the recipe, exactly as found on the lime juice bottle:

Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Pie

One – 9” graham cracker pie shell
One – 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
3 – egg yolks (whites not used)
½ cup - Nellie & Joe’s Key West Lime Juice
Combine milk, egg yolks and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Pour filling into pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Allow to stand 10 minutes before refrigerating. Just before serving, top with freshly whipped cream and garnish with lime slices.

Now if you don’t want to feel too guilty, you can make your pie crust from scratch and actually use fresh whipped cream. I, however, buy the pie crust and use frozen whipped topping. I do let my husband top the pie with whipped topping and call him my sous chef.

Viva la Mexico

I have mentioned before that I was born in a fairly small town (10,000 folks) in the farm region of central Nebraska. I lived there from my birth in the early 1950s until I left for college in the early 70s – a span of about 20 years. It was a clean and safe community, and I had a fairly idyllic childhood.

Of note, however, is the fact that during the years I spent in that community there were absolutely no people of color. Not a single, solitary African American. Zero people of Asian descent. Zippo Latino residents. There was a multitude of white people of Polish, German, and Czech descent, with an occasional Irish family having made its way from O’Neil, northwest of my town. It was somewhat scandalous when my mother (of Polish descent) married my father (of Swiss descent). Such were the ethnic concerns of small-town Nebraska in the 40s and 50s.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the lack of cultural diversity I experienced as a child. It just was a fact of life. Now, I’m happy to report, there is much more cultural diversity. The meat packing plants in the nearby towns and the industrial jobs available in my old hometown have brought many immigrants to the community.

Because of this lack of cultural diversity, I had never eaten one bite – not one single bite – of Mexican food until my late ‘teens, when Taco John moved into town. I won’t say a word.

In the mid-70s, my mother and father moved to Colorado, to a town called Leadville, which, if I’m not mistaken, purports to be the highest incorporated town in the United States. It sits at somewhere around 10,000 feet above sea level. Very thin air. And, because of a rich mining community, at least up until the 80s, a significant portion of the population was of Hispanic descent – primarily Mexican.

And this impacted me how? I tasted real Mexican food for the first time. I’m dead serious: It was love at first bite.

Now, when asked the inevitable question about food on a desert island, it doesn’t take me a nanosecond to say I could never live without Mexican food – the hotter, the better. Seriously, if my nose doesn’t begin running while eating my burrito, I ask for the hot sauce. In fact, when we spent three months living in Italy a couple of years ago, despite the fact that I was surrounded by the most wonderful food imaginable, I yearned for a cheese and onion enchilada with spicy red sauce.

Now, despite the fact that I’m a reasonably good cook, and despite the fact that I have a serious love affair with Mexican grub, I rarely cook Mexican food. There are several reasons. The first is that in Denver, and throughout the U.S. southwest, you can find delicious Mexican food every other block – and generally very reasonably priced. The second reason is that one of my sisters has taken on the role of the family’s Mexican food cook. She does a wonderful job. Her green chili is amazing. Whenever we have family visiting, we request what we all call a fiesta! Viva la fiesta!

Her Mexican cooking abilities have made me lazy, and as I said, I have a dearth of Mexican meals in my repertoire. One exception is my stacked chicken enchiladas.

I made this enchilada casserole (which I’m sure REAL Mexicans would not call REAL Mexican food) last night, and my husband and I ate nearly the whole thing. Big pigs.

Here’s my recipe:

Stacked Chicken Enchiladas

1 onion, cut in chunks
2 jalapenos, stems removed
12 tomatillos, with skins removed
Vinegar
One bunch cilantro
2 limes
Roasted chicken from the grocery store
1 pint of your favorite green chili
2 c. shredded cheese (cheddar or Monterey Jack, or cheese of choice)
Corn tortillas – a dozen or so

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pull the skin off of the roasted chicken and discard (or secretly eat behind your spouse’s back, as I do). Pull the meat off the bones and add the chicken to the green chili sauce, Set aside.

Salsa verde: Place onion, jalapenos, and tomatillos in a saucepan, cover with water. Add a splash of vinegar. Bring to a boil, and cook for 10 minutes, until tomatillos are soft. Drain, and put vegetables in a blender. Add a handful of cilantro, and the juice of two limes. Blend until reasonably smooth.

Place a small amount of the salsa verde in the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan to prevent the tortillas from sticking. Cover bottom of pan with four to six corn tortillas. (They can overlap, or you can cut them in two if overlapping offends your very sensibilities and you need them to look pretty.) Put some of the green chili/chicken mixture over the tortillas, followed by some of the salsa verde. Sprinkle some of the cheese over the mixture. Repeat. Finish with tortillas and cheese, with any remaining salsa verde on the top. (You notice I am not using measurements, because you can have as many stacks as you want, and as your ingredients allow.)

Bake for 30 minutes. Let it sit for a few minutes after removing it from the oven.

If you are really industrious, you can make your own green chili and roast your own chicken. I’m not that industrious (though I have been known to make my own green chili; I let the grocery store roast the chicken). Also, you can cut the recipe in half, which is what I generally do. I then use half a roasted chicken (setting the rest aside for some other use), and use a 9 x 9 inch pan.

I don’t think I will be asked to be a chef at a Mexican restaurant.

Adios.

Everything's Peachy

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a neighbor who was hawking Palisade peaches as part of a fundraiser for the Optimists Club. I like optimists, being one myself. I don’t know what their club does, but I love peaches. So I said I’d take a box.

I especially love peaches grown in the orchards of Palisade, a community on Colorado’s Western Slope. I know that Georgia boasts of being the “peach state,” and far be it from me to dispute that, having never eaten a Georgia peach fresh off the tree. But the peaches from Colorado’s Western Slope, when the weather cooperates fully in the spring as the blossoms are popping open, are sweet, juicy, and absolutely delicious. Given Colorado’s unpredictable springtime weather, even on the warmer western side of the mountains, good weather is never a certainty.

The box of peaches was delivered to me on Saturday. I have been looking at the unopened box since, afraid to look inside, knowing that those peaches were ready to eat. I knew that there was a minimum of 20 peaches in there. While my husband and I love peaches, eating 20 before they become soft and mushy, and the little gnats start flying around, was going to be tough.

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I made a pie crust (actually enough pie crust for two double-crust pies) and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight. This morning, armed and ready to make pies, I got up early, made a pot of coffee, and tentatively opened the box.

Well, there were actually 24 beautiful, gigantic peaches, each in their own little individual plastic resting place. I can’t say they were glistening, as the fuzzy skin prevents that from happening. They were, however, perfectly and completely ripe. Not too ripe. Perfectly ripe.

I filled a large Dutch oven with water and brought it to a boil. I filled my largest bowl with cold water, and added ice to it to ensure that it was very cold. I then carefully placed several peaches into the boiling water and let them sit for 45 seconds or so, and then took them out with a slotted spoon and placed them in the ice bath. After a minute or so, I rubbed off the skin. Easy as can be.

Now, this is what I do any time I prepare peaches to make a pie, or to can or freeze for the winter, or to prepare them for ice cream. Same technique every time. But let me tell you that it hardly ever works the way it’s supposed to. Even when the peaches are supposedly ripe, the skin rarely comes off the way it does for Alton Brown or other cooking gurus who demonstrate the technique on television. The problem, I think, is that even when the peaches feel ripe because they are soft, they often aren’t. I don’t know this for a fact, not being a horticulturist, but my guess is that once peaches are picked, they no longer ripen. They might get softer but they don’t get riper. Therefore, they hang on to their skin no matter what.

But these peaches, as I said earlier, are ripe. Perfectly ripe. Therefore, the skins came off with a simple rub of my hand over the peach. I’m embarrassed to tell you just how happy that made me. The peaches are without flaw.

So, now I had 24 skinless peaches (actually 18 because I set aside six for us to eat), cut into slices, covered with Fruit Fresh to prevent them from discoloring, awaiting further action.

Normally I use seven peaches to make a pie. I recognized, however, that these were really large peaches, so I set aside the slices of 12 of them to be used for my two pies. I prepared them using my mother’s peach pie recipe:

Fresh Peach Pie

5 c. sliced peaches (about 7 medium)
1 t. lemon juice
1 c. sugar
¼ c. flour or 2-1/2 T. tapioca
¼ t. cinnamon
2 T butter

Mix peaches and lemon juice. Stir together sugar, flour or tapioca, and cinnamon. Mix with peaches. Turn into pastry-lined pie pan, dot with the butter. Top with pastry. Make slits in the top of the pie. Brush pie top with water or egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 425 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes.

Except that I didn’t bake the pies. I took the recipe as far as putting the top crust over the peaches, and then I put them in the freezer.

Since the peaches were so big, I actually only used eight of them for my two pies. This left me with 10 peaches to either freeze or can. I filled up six pint jars with peaches and light syrup, and still had a pile of cut-up peaches. (I think they were multiplying.) I put the mason jars in the water to boil, and called in reinforcements – my husband.

“I need to do something with this pile of peaches, and I need to do it quickly. You have that food saver that you couldn’t resist buying sitting downstairs,” I reminded him, using a loving voice without a touch of sarcasm. So the two of us spooned the remainder of the peaches, along with the syrup, into four quart bags. We placed them in the freezer. Tomorrow, when they are fully frozen, we will commence sucking the air out of the bags and sealing them. Finally. A use for the food saver.

It was a lot of work – two-and-a-half hours worth, in fact, but well worth it. Sometime this winter, when I am lamenting the cold weather, I will pull out a pie and bake it, and enjoy a bit of “summer” in the snow.

Mess

I’ve been putting off this particular blog entry because I’m ashamed. But today, it was just too much. Just as a drug addict or an alcoholic must face their limitation and speak about it honestly, so must I.

I, my friends, am a messy cook.

Not messy in the same way that you see Bobby Flay or Tyler Florence or Giada DiLaurentis after they have cooked an entire meal, including appetizers and pomegranate appletinis (in which they used freshly pressed apple juice and real pomegranates). You might see them take a spotlessly clean cloth and wipe down a counter and toss out a few lemon or apple peelings, all the while smiling at the camera and proudly showing off their cleavage (well, at least Giada, and I’m not bitter).

I’m talking about flour spilling, eggs breaking on the counter, tea towels getting used to wipe up any multitude of messes. I’m talking cupboard doors remaining open, drawers sticking out for me to bump my knee into (which I invariably do), the garbage can filling up to nearly overflowing. I’m messy in the way that should draw health inspectors to my home when they learn that I am making dessert.

I’m afraid this photo doesn’t even show the extent of my problem. Perhaps it will be more meaningful if I admit that the only thing I made at the time this photo was taken was a simple pie crust. A pie crust. Not even the whole pie. Just the crust.

I think it’s important to talk about my problem because those of us who watch Food Network compulsively (and I must admit I do) often have unreal expectations. Like not spilling sugar on the floor. And not cussing.

I come from a family of good cooks. As I have mentioned, my mother was a very good cook who, from what I recall, neither showed cleavage nor made a dreadful mess. Both of my sisters and my brother are wonderful cooks, and I can say the same for them. I don’t really know why I’m the one who can’t move a cup of flour from the canister to a bowl without spilling it along the way.

Still, it’s the result that counts, and as long as I am willing to clean up my own mess, I guess I shouldn’t get too shook up about it all.

By the way, you should see my kitchen following Thanksgiving dinner!

Going Home

One of my sisters and I went back to our roots this past weekend.

We have both lived in Colorado for over 30 years, but we still think of the town in Nebraska in which we grew up as “going back home.” As we drove around the town, which has doubled in size since we lived there – from around 10,000 people to now over 20,000 – we both recalled memories around the things we saw. We remembered people, events, sadness, fears, and joy. I learned about things my sister did as a child I had known nothing about, and she learned the same kinds of things from me. She was naughtier than I.

Many of our memories revolve around food. As we drove by the house in which we grew up, we noted how much smaller it is than we recalled. We wondered how our mother would cook meals for our family of six in such a small kitchen. We pondered about where she might have gotten the wonderful produce we ate every summer. We couldn’t remember her ever going to a farmer’s market, and yet each summer we munched on homegrown green beans and golden yellow sweet corn. It’s a farm community, as are most towns in central and eastern Nebraska, so she probably got the produce directly from the farmers who would come into our family bakery every Saturday to stock up on bread and pastries for the week.

We listened to family stories told by some of our cousins who still live in that area. One cousin talked about how talented a baker my father was. “The donuts were so light you almost had to tie a string around them or they would float away!” she said. I recall that they sold for 65 cents a dozen – remarkable when you think that you couldn’t buy a single donut today for that price.

My sister and I ate dinner, not once, but twice, at the steak house where we celebrated most of our birthdays. When we walked in, we noted that not that much has changed in the 30 years since we moved west. Red leather chairs, tables with wood veneer, and the waitresses (for that’s what they are – not servers, not waiters, not wait staff) still bring out the food on a push cart. We each ate beef the first night, and fried chicken (well, actually it’s broasted) the second night. Our side dish was a little bowl of spaghetti that tasted exactly as it had when we were children.

This particular restaurant always had the most delicious Italian dressing I’ve ever tasted. I was so happy to learn that the dressing has not changed one iota. I bought some to bring home, and asked the waitress if she could find out the recipe for me, as it is something I have wondered about my whole adult life. (That, by the way, is not hyperbole. I have looked on the Internet on a number of occasions to see if I could find their recipe.) She came back shortly and said, “oil, cider vinegar, onion, and garlic.” Really? No special herbs? No cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil? No Dijon mustard? Now my goal is to try and recreate it.

It was a wonderful weekend in which we learned more about our mother, who died when she was only 68. Seeing where she grew up and becoming acquainted with her childhood helps us understand ourselves better.

It was good to go home.

Back Yard Produce

We live in a house on a pretty big lot. The bulk of our yard is in the back, which is the way I like it.

As I mentioned before, I’m not a gardener. However, I do have a plethora of fruit trees and shrubs growing in my yard, the bulk of which were there when we moved in. Every year, I watch the trees and shrubs flower, bear fruit, and go dormant. I also watch the fruit die a slow death on the vines or get eaten by the birds.

I have three apple trees – one Granny Smith and two Jonathans. I have a pear tree that faithfully produces fruit annually. I have a big raspberry bush and grape vines growing along my back fence. So much homegrown produce that has always gone to waste. This year, I’m determined to harvest my fruit, and pack it away in some form for the winter months.

I searched online and found out how and when to harvest my pears. Up until now, I always thought they would ripen on the tree, but as I waited for that to happen, the squirrels always got to them first. These annoying little animals take one bite out of the fruit and drop it on the ground where it gets sour and begins to smell. Instead, what I’m told to do is to pick them once they change from green to gold. Then I need to store them in a cool environment (probably my basement) and let them ripen there. I think this needs to happen soon.

My plan then is to make pear butter (which will be wonderful Christmas presents), make and freeze some pear tarts, and can the remaining pears for use during the rest of the year.

The raspberries have caused me great angst. I planted the bush when we moved into this house 17 years ago, and the bush has never produced great amounts of raspberries. My suspicion is that it doesn’t get enough water. So it has always produced some tiny berries, which mostly were eaten by the birds. This year, however, it produced a pretty good crop. I picked them and made them into raspberry jam.

The grape vines, I noticed recently, are heavy with green grapes, which will eventually turn purple. I’m not ambitious enough to make wine, but I think I will try to pick them this year and make grape jelly. Making grape jelly is not the easiest thing in the world to do. You have to first cook the grapes, and then strain the juice to separate it from the grape skins. The jelly comes from the grape juice. It’s much easier, frankly, to go to the grocery store and buy organic grape juice from which to make jelly. But, as I said, I’m determined this year to make full use of my fruit.

Finally, the apples. Sigh. So, so many apples. I try to talk my grandkids into picking them up from the ground, where they fall and eventually sour. The grandkids are not particularly interested, though this year I may try to bribe them with cold, hard cash.

I will make applesauce, apple crisp, apple pies, and beg people to take bags of apples to do the same. Have you ever tried to give away homegrown apples? It’s worse than zucchini! The worms, don’t ya know.

Anyway, I have good intentions. We’ll see how far those intentions get me this year.

The Hostess with the Mostest

When my husband was a boy back in Chicago, he lived close enough to his school to walk there and home again (five miles in the blowing snow, uphill both ways, according to him). His route took him past a small grocery store. He tells me he would stop every day on his way home from school and buy a Pepsi and a package of Hostess Cupcakes for his afternoon snack.

I also walked to school (not uphill either way!), but I didn’t pass a grocery store. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have purchased a package of Hostess Cupcakes anyway. (And my soda pop choice in those days would have been strawberry Nehi.)

As the daughter of a professional baker, I never, ever ate Hostess anything. No Cupcakes. No Twinkies. No Snoballs. No Little Debbies. No Moonpies. If I wanted anything sweet, I ate one of my dad’s glazed donuts or filled bismarks.

With one exception: When our family went on our driving vacation to Colorado (which we did every summer), my dad would naturally stop for gasoline along the way. My brother and sisters and I could go into the gas station (really no little stores at most gas stations back then as there is now), and if we were lucky enough that they had a few sweet treats, we could get a package of Hostess Cupcakes or Twinkies.

I always got Hostess Twinkies, and I thought those pieces of sponge cake filled with what was likely nothing more than sweetened lard (no one worried about transfats or any other kinds of fats in those days) were the most delicious thing I would ever taste. Who knows how old they were at the point that I finally took my first delicious bite? What did it matter? The shelf life, then as now, was nearly limitless. And when that sweet filling touched my tongue, oh, it was pure heaven!

Now, as an adult, I can eat Hostess treats anytime I want. I will admit to being most tempted to bite into a Hostess Twinkie when we take a road trip. Perhaps it’s nothing more than habit. However, with all due respect to Hostess, every time I give in to temptation and eat a Hostess treat, I am disappointed. The cake is stale and the cream has a flat, metallic taste. My husband, I will tell you, still thinks they’re quite good. He, however, has never met a sweet treat he doesn’t like.

But I still dream about that sweet filling meeting the tip of my tongue when I bite into a piece of cake. Nowadays, however, I make my own filled cupcakes. No preservatives. They would be moldy in three days or so. But they will likely be gone by then.

Tonight I host my book club. We serve wine and dessert (what else do we need?). Because I am the only one in my book club that doesn’t work outside the home (I retired a few years back), I feel compelled to make my dessert from scratch. The book club members honestly do not expect me to do that. I put the pressure on myself.

Tonight they are eating Chocolate Coffee cupcakes filled with a coffee-liqueur-flavored cream and frosted in a chocolate buttercream. Grown-up Hostess Cupcakes.

Farm Store

Today my husband and I were driving from Fort Collins back to our home in Denver, with a quick stop to visit my father and stepmother in Loveland. Rather than take the interstate, we elected to drive a more scenic route, at least between Fort Collins and Loveland.

The day was pretty. The sky was still blue, since the inevitable late summer afternoon rainclouds hadn’t yet moved in. The mountains were purple against the blue sky. As we drove along the two-lane road, I spotted a hand-painted sign that said Something from the Farm in black letters accented by rather amateur-looking flowers and flourishes.

“A farm store!” I cried. My very patient husband immediately slowed down the car, knowing full well that we were going to visit the market. He’s learned a few things about me in our 18 years of marriage.

We pull into the narrow gravel driveway, and I see several absolutely beautiful vegetable and flower gardens, colorful and full of plenty. At the end of the driveway was a little wooden structure – the farm store.

We walked in and were greeted by a friendly woman of probably 65 or so, apparently the gardener. She was surrounded by lovely red tomatoes; green and yellow squash; several varieties of onions; bags and bags of bright green beans; red, yellow and green peppers; jars of honey; and stacks of freshed-bake bread and rolls.

Several years ago, my husband and I had the immense privilege of spending three months in Europe, two of those months in what may be my favorite place on earth – Italy. One of the things I love most about Italy is the beautiful fresh produce grown by the Italian people and sold in small markets throughout the country. The Italian gardens are lovely. In the smaller towns and villages, the people will have a little plot of ground right outside their door on which they will grow a variety of vegetables. I used to love to see how their tomatoes grew – supported by three sticks they looped together to make a teepee of sorts.

Even in the bigger cities, such as Rome or Naples, people will have baskets of basil and oregano, tiny lemon trees, and buckets of cherry tomatoes growing right on their balconies or doorsteps.

I was reminded of Italy today in the farmer’s market. It made me very happy.

I looked around, however, and couldn’t see hide nor hair of the one thing I particularly wanted – sweet corn. The peaches and cream sweet corn produced by the Colorado farmers about this time of year is scrumptious, but nowhere to be seen in this store. So I asked the woman if she had any sweet corn. She walked over to a large table that had wet towels thrown over a pile of something I couldn’t see. She lifted up the wet towels to show me piles of delicious corn.

“I keep them damp so that they retain the best flavor,” she explained. Well, of course you do.

So I bought a half dozen ears of corn, a bag of green beans that I’m going to cook with a ham hock and some small red potatoes tomorrow for dinner, and a loaf of still warm-to-the-touch Swedish rye bread. Tonight we feast.

By the way, you would think that since I so love fresh produce that I would garden myself. Here’s the rub: Gardening is one of those things that I want to like to do, but simply do not. My knees hurt if I kneel too long on the ground. I hate pulling weeds. I heartily dislike any kind of garden pest. So after several years of struggling with a garden, I gave it up.

I’ll support my local farmer’s markets, and let them slap the mosquitos. I’ll enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Let's Make a Dill

Today I prepared and processed six pints of dill pickles. I make at least one batch of pickles each summer about this time.

I love to make pickles. In fact, I love to can anything. I’m not sure why. My mother never canned, nor did my grandmother – at least not to my knowledge. I’ve been convinced for some time that I lived as a pioneer woman in a former life. In fact, I used to think that I would love to live out in the country on a farm. But then I started thinking about how I hate bugs (particularly grasshoppers), run to the grocery store about three times a day, and love living near my grandchildren. Good sense prevailed.

Last weekend I went to the farmers’ market after church and bought several pounds of pickling-sized cucumbers. I spent half a week just looking at them before I finally went to Whole Foods and got some dill.

And speaking of my Whole Foods-dill adventure, here’s a shout-out to the nicest produce man in the country. Marcus not only went in the back to find me some dill, but when he came back with it, he gave it to me for nothing! Said he loves dill pickles! Maybe I’ll take him a jar.

But back to canning….. Pickles are particularly pleasurable to make, because they smell so darn good. The smell of fresh dill combined with the smell of the vinegary brine just makes me think of late summer.

I used pint jars instead of quart jars (which all the recipes told me to use), and this resulted in me having to cut my cukes into quarters in order to fit them in the jar. That’s okay. I prefer a pickle spear over a whole pickle anyway.

Don’t be afraid of canning. It’s the simplest thing ever. It just requires that you are careful about using sterile jars and lids. Once you have the jars filled with whatever the content is, add the liquid to the top (or about a quarter of an inch from the top), wipe the rim, and put on the lid. Then you just boil the jars in a big pot (I have a canning pot that I got years ago from Ace Hardware) for the required time (remember to add 10 minutes if you live above 5,000 feet). Once the jars have processed for the required length of time, remove them from the boiling water and set them on the counter to cool. As they do so, the lids make a cheerful popping sound, which tells me a vacuum has been created. Yay!

I said don’t be afraid of canning, but I must admit that I don’t can fresh vegetables unless I pickle them. There’s more of a trick to preserving them – I think it requires pressure cooking, which terrifies me. Maybe some day I will get up the nerve. In the meantime, I stick to pickles, tomatoes, and jams and jellies.

Here’s my recipe for pickles:

2-3 pounds of small pickling cucumbers
Fresh dill
Garlic
Peppercorns
1 qt. water
1 qt. white vinegar
¼ c. pickling salt

In the bottom of six pint mason jars, place a garlic clove that you have peeled, six or seven whole peppercorns, and a sprig of fresh dill. Place your cut cukes into the jars, as many as you can fit in.

In a pan, boil the mixture of water, vinegar, and salt for five minutes. Pour the brine into the jars right over the cucumbers, filling the jar to about a quarter of an inch from the top. Place another sprig of dill (and another peeled garlic clove if you like your pickles really garlicky) on top of the cucumbers. Put the lids on, and process for 10 minutes (I process for 20 minutes because I live in Denver). Remove the jars, place on the counter, and wait for the pop.

They say you should wait three weeks to eat the pickles. That rarely happens. Here’s a true story: While I said my mother never canned, she did make pickles. She made what she called her 3-day pickles. She would cut up her cukes and place them in a bowl. It was always the same green bowl – it came from a set that she got as a wedding present. She would pour her brine over her cukes, put a plate on top, and put a heavy can of some sort of vegetables or fruit on top to hold the cukes down into the brine. The goal was to wait three days for delicious pickles. But we never waited. Almost immediately my dad would sneak into the kitchen and take a pickle from the bowl. All of the kids would follow suit. Little by little, the cucumbers (you could hardly call them pickles) would disappear. By time the three days passed, there wasn’t a pickle to be found. Yum.

Here’s my mother’s recipe for 3-Day Dill Pickles, just as she dictated it to me:

4-6 cucumbers
Dill
2 pints water
1 c. vinegar
¼ c. salt

Clean and wash cucumbers – cut in quarters and place in open bowl. Cover with fresh dill or dill seed. Bring liquid mixture to boil and pour over cukes. Cover with a plate so liquid covers cukes.

Birthday Cake

My grandfather was a professional baker, and owned his own bakery in the small Nebraska town in which I grew up. My father, following in his own father’s footsteps, was also a professional baker, and ultimately took over my grandfather’s bakery. That bakery bore our family’s name for nearly 50 years.

When people learn about my family’s culinary background, they often say, “You must have grown up with lots of sweets in your house. Did your father do a lot of baking at home?”

My father did exactly zero baking at home. It would have been extraordinarily difficult for him to translate a recipe from 200 loaves of bread to one. And, since donuts and cookies and pastries and fresh bread were always available to us (our entire family worked in some capacity for my father at some point in our lives), we rarely brought anything home. Except for bread. My father made the most delicious white bread you could ever imagine. Some day I’m going to make a loaf of white bread that rivals his….. But, I digress.

I started thinking about this today as I baked a birthday cake for my son, who will turn 30 on Sunday. A banana cake with chocolate icing. It’s what he always requests. (I love baking cakes, but still, after all these years, I struggle to get the perfect cake in this high altitude.) Anyway, I began thinking about how I am pretty sure I never had a homemade birthday cake (meaning a cake prepared in a home kitchen) until I was an adult. An OLD adult, as a matter of fact.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I always had a birthday cake. But it was always a cake prepared in the bakery. And very often, it was a cake that someone else had ordered and neglected to pick up. In fact, we have a story we tell every year on my brother’s birthday, and the story is absolutely true. His birthday falls right after Christmas, and my mother had forgotten to prepare him a birthday cake. But, luckily enough, one of their customers hadn’t picked up the cake they had ordered that day. That year, my brother Dave’s birthday cake said Happy birthday Frank from Friends.

I found a recipe for a delicious banana cake with rich chocolate frosting. I’m going to pair it with homemade frozen vanilla custard, and it will knock my son’s socks off!

I wonder if Frank was mad at his friends for not getting him a birthday cake?

Simply cooking simply

I love to cook. Preparing delicious food for my family and friends is one of my greatest joys. Very often, my husband will say, “Make it easy on yourself and just buy it already-made.” That makes sense to him, because he doesn’t even like to get too close to the grill. I’d rather prepare it myself.

Furthermore, people think I’m a pretty good cook. In particular, my daughters-in-law frequently tell me what a good cook they think I am. They tell their children that Nana can make ANYTHING.

One day I walked into our son’s house and was greeted by my 5-year-old grandson with, “Nana, can you make eggnog?” No “hello Nana,” just a culinary dare of sorts.

I looked sort of blankly at him since the question came without context. “Say yes,” said my daughter-in-law. She told me they had been talking about cooking, and she had told him that there wasn’t anything Nana couldn’t cook.

“Well,” I said to him, “if I have a recipe, I really can cook just about anything – even eggnog.”

That apparently resonated with him. On a recent Saturday morning, I arrived early at their house to watch the kids while Mom and Dad did a long early-morning run in preparation for a marathon. My grandson was the first one up that morning. I asked him what he would like for breakfast, and he immediately answered, “banana bread.”

“Well, I don’t think there is any banana bread,” I said.

“Then make some,” he answered simply.

I appeased him with peanut butter toast with bananas, and promised him some banana bread very soon. I kept my promise yesterday and delivered a loaf of freshly-made banana bread, with instructions that he must share it with his three sisters.

Cooking touches some very inner part of me and makes me feel like I’m connected to my family and friends and to the planet on which we live. Perhaps I learned this from my mother, who was a good, simple cook who prepared a full evening meal nearly every day, after putting in a full day of work outside the home. She made it seem simple. I do not.

But that’s okay. I want to help people know and understand that cooking doesn’t have to be flawless preparation like we see on the cable cooking channels. It just needs to be taking ingredients, putting them together in a way that makes sense, and serving loved ones. It’s that simple.