Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Never Alone When Cooking for the United Nations

I am alone in the kitchen. At least I think I'm alone. And I have to make something.

My life demands that I make something, - NOW! But I don't know how. I admit panic. It's as if the entire United Nations will soon arrive at my house to feed, and they expect Crayfish Mousseline, a dish I once saw a picture of. And if I fail to feed these hungry United Nations delegates, their grumbling stomachs will derail negotiations, condemning all I love to violent chaos. The future of World Peace totters in my kitchen. It is up to me, and I stand alone.

I look up at cookbooks stacked in a messy pile on a high shelf. I take them down. The authors are absent, but their recorded experience fills pages, which I comb for direction. I fail to find specific, step-by-step instructions. These cooks offer only related recipes. But as I read, I understand that they have done a similar task and succeeded. My task ahead loses some of its omminence.

Reassured I can create something, I take out the mixing bowl and set it on the counter. Now here is a help, I muse. I have a bowl. Someone took the time to make a bowl; I have it, and now my ingredients will not spill all over the floor. I look down, and I have a floor too. Combined with the luxury of my counter, I will not be squatting in the dirt with my bowl.  

Yes, other people, different people, people who didn't know each other, made my floor, my counter, my bowl, - my entire kitchen, where I stand. I marvel and take up a wooden spoon, perhaps the oldest form of tool in my kitchen. Thousands of years ago, someone had carved the first wooden spoon. Last month someone's machine manufactured this one, the one in my hand. A spoon, a bowl, a counter, and a floor and all those people who built them stand ready in my kitchen.

I walk to the 'fridge. I take out eggs, milk, and butter. Who made these? How many 'who's' made them? How many 'who's' does it take to get butter from grass via cows? How many 'who's' does it take to build and work in a milk factory, in a store, on a car that drives down a road others poured and smoothed, and into a machine I call my refrigerator? How many people's lives are present in these things, here now in my kitchen, with me?

I feel surrounded by people. My kitchen is so packed with people, I cannot walk without bumping into someone. I man the mixer and  realize that someone outside my kitchen, in a building far away, is right now supervising the electricity that powers it. Other people, in other buildings, are overseeing the gas that flows into my stove. I am not the only one creating this mousseline.

And at this point, comparing it to all the important inventions I use to form my mousseline, this previously daunting task feels tiny and overwhelmingly trivial. But I can't think about this for long.

The United Nations delegates arrive. They are so hungry they are irritable. I bring the mousseline to the table. We share it; we feast. We sit with one another. Then we reassure each other that we can do it. We change our world in peril to our world possible.

The delegates return to their work. And I do the dishes, knowing that no important work is ever done alone. 

Pass the Pork Chops and Green Beans, - Easy Recipe for a Pot-luck Culture

Here's a recipe that won't win any contests. It's a recipe for simple honest food that satisfies the belly, comforts cold limbs, and most people like - including people under twelve. The recipe is probably as old as the hills. And if you're old enough, you've probably made some version of it or another. I found it in my battered, old recipe box and the bottom of the recipe card reads 'From the kitchen of ... Mom.'

Yes, my mom made this recipe for Pork Chops and Green Beans regularly when I was growing up. And I know why. The recipe is easy plus fool-proof. Whether it's made ahead of time or served late, it'll taste pretty much the same, which means good in many respects. True, if kept warm too long, a wrinkled skin will form over the casserole's top. But a quick stir eliminates that. So let's not worry about wrinkles.

So is it a casserole? You could call it that. The pork chops and string beans all cook together in a creamy, soupy sauce. But it lacks the starch filler common to casseroles. So I generally serve it with rice. Mom accompanied it with baked potato. But a simple hard roll will do just as well.

Is it bland? Usually, but if I were cooking only for me and my friends who love spicy food I'd substitute chilies for thyme. However, it's seasoned enough that nobody complains and most come back for seconds. All of which make it a very congenial food to bring to pot-lucks. It travels well and won't mind sitting or being kept warm in a crock-pot.

Pot-lucks were on my mind this weekend because our church was having a pot-luck lunch to kick-off the fall season. No, I didn't bring pork chops and string beans - it was hot out so I brought a pepper salad. But the idea of a pot-luck joined my other ruminations about giving and sharing. If you're interested and have got the time, click on 'continue reading...', otherwise, click here for the recipe for pork chops and green beans.

Zucchini Bread Recipe - Or Diving Into Food Fun By Giving Away So Gosh Darn Much Zucchini!

'Every harvest, every farm woman I know says the same thing: 'Next year, I'm not planting so gosh darn much zucchini!' But spring comes; the garden gets plowed; the warm, black soil is sprawled out under the sunshine; and sure enough - in goes the same amount of zucchini. Then when harvest comes, recipe after recipe is dragged out and tried; neighbors are busy on the phone giving zucchini away to neighbors." - That's how Wisconsin farm woman turned restaurant owner, Helen Myhre, introduces her recipe for 'Mad Zucchini Bread' in her cookbook Farm Recipes and Food Secrets from the Norske Nook. 

Helen's recipe for zucchini bread turns the common garden fruit into a breakfast delicacy. I've never met anyone who didn't rave about Helen's zucchini bread. And like Helen I suppose, the recipe is very flexible and forgiving.

When I lack sufficient zucchini, compensating with carrots adds extra texture, sweetness, and color. When the vanilla went AWOL from the cupboard, almond extract stepped in and is now my preferred extract flavoring. I even once completely left out all the oil and we still liked it, - the neighbors did too! I admit however, that my sweet-tooth is not as large as Helen's restaurant customers'. I routinely use less sugar than Helen's recipes call for. But it's O.K. - people rave about my zucchini bread too.

And although our family's alphabet game has finished, and I need not cook more 'Z'-foods, today I'm baking mad zucchini bread because of its end-of-summer abundance. Like Helen and the folks in Osseo, Wisconsin, neighbors here have been giving away zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and whatever other vegetables over-grew their gardens.

In some work-places, employees bring in zucchinis and put them on the break-room table as a free offering to others. Their mind set is 'better to share than to waste'. As soon as one person starts this practice, other gardeners join in and sometimes a break-room table can resemble a farm stand. Non-gardeners, having enjoyed their co-workers fresh produce, periodically reciprocate with bagels, baked goods, and candies. And this wonderful, bountiful break-room table is why we all get fat and very, very happy.

But the hurdle to establishing this break-room sharing is getting someone to be the first to give. Being the first is the scary part. An empty break-room table is just that, - empty. For the gardener contemplating laying down the first zucchini, no sweet reward is at hand ready to be picked up in return. Nor is any promise of future reciprocity ensured. The gardener holding zucchini must decide whether to release them to the table, or take them home and make zucchini bread, - which by the way freezes very well. The weight of this decision, the uncertainty of the answer to the question: 'If I give up something now, will I later be in need?' creates anxiety.

I once knew a man completely unfettered by such anxious thoughts. I met him at college. I think he had graduated, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he hadn't left the alma mater, and instead frequented the co-ed fraternity to which I briefly belonged. I'll call him J. J. was quiet, low-key, easy-going. Guys generally liked him, and I guess girls did too, -although his out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye leer made girls and animals nervous. A psychologist might say J. had trouble with boundaries. If he recognized them, he didn't always observe them.

Perfect Peach Pie Pleases Picky People Plus Precious Pet

Fresh Peach Lattice Pie - an unassuming name for the BEST pie ever baked! Hardly a pie to die for, - it's a pie to LIVE FOR! I now know that the complete life must include a piece of this perfect peach pie. If someone's life is unfulfilled, or a loved one is on the brink of departure, MAKE THIS PEACH PIE AND SHARE IT! It IS ambrosia - food of the gods baked in a mortal's kitchen.

Unaware I was courting the divine, I pick out this recipe from Marge Snyder and Suzanne Breckenridge's Wisconsin Country Gourmet because peaches are in season and it was 'P' day in our house. (Some bright person thought up a game for teaching the alphabet to a preschooler by using food. Beware of such people.)

I'll post the recipe below, but let me first say that I was not the only one in the household whom this pie struck dumb. My children - those adorable, picky people whose culinary finickiness would drive Julia Child to drink - LOVED the pie. "It's the best pie you ever made, Mom," they raved in amazed tones. Eight-year-old Lauren added that she had thought the pie would just be peaches in a pie crust which sounded "Yucky," but "This was GOOD!" Yes, I cook to a tough crowd. We all enjoyed it so much that I allowed each of us to take another piece. Admittedly, Lauren and I felt a bit sick following our gluttony, bu it was worth it. Five-year-old Dave couldn't finish his second piece.

About to pitch his left-overs, I glanced at my precious pet - my old dog, Sam. Sam is no gourmand - he eats roadkill and worse. But he also is no picky eater. Sam ENJOYS food. There he lay in the kitchen, next to me, next to the trash, looking up at me. Enquiring eyes asking, "Would you really discard the Perfect Peach Pie?" I looked at the pie then back at him, - his telepathic pleading continued. "Haven't I been a faithful friend? - Guarding your house? Leading you out of the woods when you got lost, time and time again? Haven't I been good to your children - letting them pull my tail and dress me in doll clothes?" I couldn't stand it any more! Nuts to his prescription diet! Into his dish went the remains of Dave's piece of perfect peach pie. Sam reveled in sweet peaches. Yes, the old dog's life was now complete. I had done a good deed.

So if you owe someone a good deed - or if someone in your life needs a sign of your appreciation - and especially if that someone happens to be you, then it's time to bake Terese Allen's fresh peach lattice pie. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe.

Cake Decorating, Raising Animals, and Carnival Rides - Ways We Teach Children Life Skills

I think we trick our kids. We lure them with sweet flavors, bright colors, and creamy, soft textures to make them learn the hard skills life requires. At least, that was my impression after seeing the fun, elaborately-creative cake decorations on display at the Dane County Fair in Madison, WI. Children in 4-H clubs throughout the county competed for prize ribbons in cake decorating by artistically coating pieces of Styrofoam with colored frosting. The designs they painted on their simulated cakes, cookies, and cupcakes celebrate our life-changing moments and major holidays, -birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, harvest time, Christmas, and even April Fool's Day -that day we play tricks on each other and laugh.

Recalling my own efforts to make King Lingonberry and a spiced nose cake made me appreciate the skills these children exercised in creating their masterpieces. First, the children had to choose the occasion they wished to celebrate and then look inward to tap their unique creativity. They needed to imagine, in fine detail, each colorful image they wished to paint. Then they had to plan exactly how to re-produce that image in frosting. Construction of the imagined final product had to be translated backward into a step-by-step series of actions. The tools needed to be gathered, - the workplace organized.

Then, for most, the hard work began. Any ease in seeing something gave way to the challenge of making it. Eyes, brain, muscles, hands, -the whole body had to coordinate its movements to precisely layer the frosting. Mistakes inevitably happened. Frustrated emotions were curbed and problem-solving practiced. How could the mistake be fixed? If it couldn't, then how could the design be changed to turn the blemish into an asset? Distractions occurred and had to be ignored, -attention continually redirected to the task, hour after hour. Each child gave a day of his or her life to creating the Styrofoam cakes on display at the fair.

Elsewhere in the Exhibition Center and outside in the fairground barns, children were practicing other life skills. They were grooming and showing the animals they had spent months raising. Some children showed their pet cats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Others showed commercial livestock, -their beef and dairy cattle, pigs, sheep, lamas, goats, and poultry. The children were tested not only on the physical condition of their animals, but on their own skills in showmanship.

I watched the nervous intensity that the children focused on their animals,-readying them in the stalls, and showing them in the ring. This was serious business. Months of daily labor would be judged over the course of a few minutes.

Give What You Need! - A Spice Cake Recipe To Humor the Nose

What follows is a winding explanation of why I made a spice cake in the shape of a nose. If you're anxious for a recipe for a delicious, fragrant, scrumptious, and unusual spice cake, click on Wisconsinmade.com's recipe for Slimm and Nunne Mustard Spice Cake. If you want to know how to form the cake into the shape of a nose, keep reading. 

This nose cake resulted from a perfect storm of disconnected ideas. The strongest idea was this: Give What You Need.

Yes, it's true, the surest way to get what you need is to give it. I thought I got this idea from my friend, Jean. But Jean swears she got it from me. She also swears it works. Once the son of a neighbor badly needed $200 and asked Jean for it. Jean's family was financially strapped at the time. She hesitated, but remembered, "Give what you need", so she said, "here goes," and gave him the money. Two weeks later Jean received an unexpected win-fall of nearly $1000. She's a believer now.

Yesterday, I asked myself, "What could I write in a blog post that a potential reader might actually need?" Of course, the real question is "What might a reader need that I have the means to give?" Clueless, I fell back on the question, "What do I need?" My instant answer? "I need a laugh!" Yes, troubles were weighing me down. Time to pull out the humor from somewhere - ANYWHERE! And I didn't have to look far - just to the end of my nose.

After brief deliberation, I concluded that the nose is the most humorous part of the human body. Noses make people laugh - especially when they're looked at UP-CLOSE. Study people's noses and you'll recognize how many humorous shapes, colors, and sizes noses come in. Being the first part of the body to arrive anywhere, noses are the parts that get caught up in things, - such as in mechanical appliances and flying pies. And this can be very funny. When the Three Stooges pull each other's noses, people laugh.

Yes, I must write a post featuring 'The Nose'. The nose is a critical topic of a reputable food blog. Aroma always precedes taste! Therefore, the nose is the great chef's indispensable aid. And what better way to celebrate 'the nose' than with an aromatic spice cake! In fact, two weeks ago I happened upon a spice cake recipe at work which I filed in the back of my mind to try. Why not try it now! 

The plan was cinched when I realized that 'nose' begins with 'n' and 'o'. These letters should have been celebrated two weeks ago in our should-be-once-a-week alphabet party designed to ready my preschooler for kindergarten. So I asked 5-year-old Dave, "Do you know what 'N-O' spell?" He shook his head and said, "No."

"That's right!" I cheered. "'N-O' spells 'NO'!" So tickled that his reply had made a joke, Dave had to tell me the joke over and over again to make sure I got it. Yes, we wrung the humor out of that one. Then I told him that it was time for our 'N' & 'O' party and since 'n-o' are the first letters in 'nose' we would make a 'nose cake'. Seemed logical to him. 5-year-olds are wonderful.

Tea - Jane Austen, Social Order and the American Revolution!

"Jane Austen (1775-1817) loved tea. She mentions tea so often in her novels and in her letters that I began to suspect that she was a true tea enthusiast...At the center of almost every social situation in her novels one finds - tea." wrote Kim Wilson in her book, Tea with Jane Austen. Wilson's book describes the central role of tea in the lives of Jane Austen's characters and the social order of Jane Austen's early 19th-century England. The book is liberally peppered with excerpts from Austen's novels and letters, plus the poetry and writings of Austen's contemporaries. All reveal how the drinking of tea, the particular foods eaten with it, and the special pots and dishes for serving them provided a daily, focal ritual which ordered the social interactions of the middle and upper classes of Austen's time. The title 'civilized' was earned by the way one drank tea.

How 'un-civilized' then were the American colonists who dumped the English tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773. The Boston tea party was a literal and figurative over-throwing of the social order, - a rebellion, one giant spark in the igniting of a revolution. The tea-party revolutionaries understood the symbolism of their dramatic act. And they emphasized the point by dressing as Native Americans, whom they viewed as savages.

Ironically, the revolutionaries' vision of a social order that would replace Europe's monarchal ethos was inspired by these Native American 'savages'. In his book, Forgotten Founders, Bruce Johansen wrote:

Contact with Indians and their ways of ordering life left a definite imprint on Franklin and others who were seeking, during the prerevolutionary period, alternatives to a European order against which revolution would be made. To Jefferson, as well as Franklin, the Indians had what the colonists wanted: societies free of oppression and class stratification. The Iroquois and other Indian nations fired the imaginations of the revolution's architects.

Johansen quotes H.L. Morgan, "father of American anthropology", who in 1851 compared the colonists' federalism to the Iroquois system of government:

"Their whole civil policy was averse to the concentration of power in the hands of any single individual, but inclined to the opposite principle of division among a number of equals...The People of the Longhouse commended to our forefathers a union of colonies similar to their own as early as 1755...They [the Iroquois] saw in the common interests and common speech of the colonies the elements for a confederation."

Johansen agreed with Morgan that "the Iroquois confederacy contained 'the germ of modern parliament, congress, and legislature'."

Graduation Party Side Salads - Advice to Graduates - One Cook's Recipe for Success

It's graduation season, and we're going to a couple of graduation parties. They're picnic-type parties, so I started thinking about healthy side salads. The appropriate graduation salad should not be one of those fill-you-up, but are nutritionally-empty, ice berg lettuce salads. No, the graduate should start life's new path with a full-garden's-goodness-in-a-single-bowl type of salad, - one of those variety-of-veggie salads that energize brain, body, and soul. I wanted to make one of those.

But where to begin? I remembered a quote from Gerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, "I can tell your future, just look what's in your hand," which the cook translates into, "I can tell your supper, just look what's in your cupboard."

Last week my cupboard/refrigerator featured middle-aged broccoli and a 1/2 bag of pre-peeled mini carrots which, thanks to technological preparations, and similar to many middle-aged women, appear perpetually young. Plus, some pine nuts still reclined in the cupboard. But a salad consisting just of these offers only a glimpse of the glorious future befitting a graduate. To the Store!

In the veggie aisle, I quested for color, flavor, and variety, - foods to express my creative energy. My tongue suggested jicama - that sweet, white radish. But my eyes didn't see any. So my brain told my hands to pick up a daikon radish. (Life by committee. - It happens.)

I had never knowingly consumed a daikon radish. Neither had one been heartily recommended to me. At hand was new territory, but this radish path was already questionable. The sticker on the daikon read use within one week, which really means the purchaser should have eaten it yesterday. I bought the radish anyway, not letting the fear of imperfection impede me.

My imagined salad now consisted of green broccoli florets interspersed with dots of orange carrots and white radish. I'd throw in those pine nuts, too. Materials gathered, I was on course to manifest my vision.

1st step - I consulted cookbooks. I sought guidance from more experienced cooks who had already traveled the picnic, veggie-salad path. I compared over 2 dozen recipes. None exactly matched my vague idea, but some informed me of appropriate additional ingredients and proportions.

Thus educated, I heeded others' advice regarding blanching the broccoli. Now, if I have ever blanched anything before, I don't remember. To me, Blanche is a tragic heroine waiting tables in a forgotten, roadside diner, or perhaps, she's a copy-typist in a basement cubicle of a branch office of a multi-national corporation. Or maybe she's just someone Tennessee Williams made up. But she's anything but vibrant, green broccoli. So, did I blanch the broccoli correctly? I don't know. I dropped the florets into boiling water and when they were bright green and before they got mushy, I took them out. Perfect? - who's to say? - Adequate? - why not?

On to the carrots. The vision said to shave the carrots. They're so small that practicality said dice them. I diced them. And the daikon radish? The vision said large, round slices. I tasted the radish. It was slightly bitter, so I diced it too. Bitter is always better swallowed in small bits rather than large bites. - Remember this, if you haven't learned it already.

Then I mixed the veggies and realized something was missing. I diced 1/2 a red onion. - The flavors complemented each other pretty well. I was satisfied so far.

On to the dressing. I still had those pine nuts. Like a personal idosyncracy unable to be overcome, these pine nuts seem to go where I go. They were destined for the salad. But pine nuts taste better when toasted. So I heated 2 Tablespoons of peanut oil and 1 teaspoon of pure sesame oil in a skillet. I poured in the 1/2 cup of pine nuts and began to saute them. Some recipes had recommended fresh ginger as an ingredient of veggie salads. So I diced a Tablespoon of ginger root and added it to the browning pine nuts. I also pressed in 2 cloves of garlic and a dash of red pepper flakes. My simmering creation would be flavorful, with a touch of spice.

Mothers and Daughters - Baking Cakes and Growing Up Together in Wisconsin

The best Mother's Day gift is a growing daughter, - far more enjoyable than a flowering plant, though admittedly a bit more work. My eight-year-old daughter, Lauren, is a budding chef who this past Mother's Day longed to express her giant love with a sweet gift of food. Last week, she began begging me to make Lazy Daisy cake with her. She said we had to make it for Mother's Day because "Mothers like daisies and they're never lazy!"

She found the recipe in my cookbook, Mom's Updated Recipe Box: 250 Family Favorites Made Quick and Healthy. I think she picked it because the author, Donna Weihofen, wrote, "This is the first cake my friend Mary made when she was about eight years old. She got the recipe from her grandmother's cookbook. It is a wonderful dessert but it is also lovely served for a morning brunch or afternoon tea."

Initially, Lauren wanted me to make the Lazy Daisy Cake. But life was busy and I kept putting it off. Undeterred, yesterday afternoon (Mother's Day) Lauren said she wanted to make it herself. After all, the little girl mentioned in the cookbook had been 8-years-old. At that moment, however, I was about to leave for a walk with a close friend, -a weekly mental-health walk necessary for maintaining this mother's sanity. I didn't want Lauren using the stove by herself. Precociously persuasive, Lauren talked her Dad into helping, which meant her 5-year-old brother, Dave, had to help too. Dave didn't fit into Lauren's ideal plan, but she accepted and resolved to manage around him, -and thus her maturity develops.

When I returned, the yellow cake was topped with a brown sugar and coconut icing. Lauren and I LOVE coconut, though Dave remains ambivalent about it. We all quickly ate our dinner in anticipation of dessert. Lauren beamed when I served her cake. To show my appreciation I ate two pieces, something I rarely let them do. This made Lauren even more proud!

Lauren wanted to know if this was my best Mother's Day ever! I told her it was because I knew it certainly was for her. It was the first year that her gift to me had not been store-bought by her dad or fabricated by a school-teacher. She put the energy of her heart into her hands to create a gift to nourish a soul. Now if that's not a person in full bloom, I can't imagine what is. Thank you, Lauren.

For the Lazy Daisy Cake recipe, click on 'continue reading...'

Maturing Peppers Give Full Flavor to Roasted Green Chili Parties!

Front page news last week featured the latest in high-tech, anti-aging remedies, - remedies, as if aging was a malady from which one needed to recover. More accurately, youth is what must be remedied. Maturity is time spent fixing and compensating for the many mistakes caused by youth's hapless, self-absorbed sense of immortality. Every one of us has a "My name is Earl" list, -that's life. So we spend our mature years addressing it, and gradually exchange hubris for wisdom. All I can say is "Oh, to be a bell pepper!"

Put a bell pepper in front of a mirror. The pepper doesn't study its reflection and despair, "Ah, I'm losing my tone. My skin is sagging. How many new wrinkles today?... I used to be firm and crisp. What happened?"

A young pepper may anxiously long to grow large and ripe. In anticipatory excitement, it awaits to be picked, snapped open, and splash its juices out into the world. At that instant, it announces its over-abundant, fresh vitality! The pepper screams, "Bring on the salad greens!- I'll flavor them! I'll give them everything I've got -my fresh from the earth, raw, perky bountiful goodness. Now, at this moment, I stand, radiating my glorious, colorful promise of health to all who partake of me! I am a pepper!"

And what does a pepper say who's been in the crisper too long?..well, pretty much the same sentiment, except the words differ. This time it says, "Bring on the chili! I'm goin' to a party, - a pepper party! Family reunion time! Time for a HOT time in the old pot tonight! Come on anchos! Where you been poblanos,- my old cousins? Woo-hoo - habanero, you hot thing - you're sizzlin! YES! YES! It's time to ease myself down into that warm, bubbling tomato bath. Time to relax my fibrous cellulose. Time to check out what's been happenin' in the cupboard. HELLO onions! garlic! and beans! Spices, let me introduce myself and absorb your essence. To this chili I give my full pepper goodness. Take my flavor - take my texture - take all of me, - I AM YOURS! Mixed with my fellow foods, we are a complete, bountiful, nutritious meal. We satisfy and sustain. We are CHILI!

And what happens later to the discarded, left-over chili, or the forgotten pepper that shriveled in the crisper? Are there onion tears? Nope, there are not, -just shouts of "I'm headin' to the compost! Here I am worms, insects, and micro-organisms. Let's make some soil! Get busy everybody, - time to grow some new peppers!"

Peppers with attitude! - not spritzes and creams.

.

Click on 'continue reading...' for the Eldorado Grill's recipe for Roasted Garlic Green Chile Sauce'.