RECENT POSTS
No doubt a scroll through my previous posts will show plenty of references to Saturday night feast night - it's a tradition Rob and I started over the summer under the inspiration of our bountiful CSA bag. Between travel and colds, we haven't endulged in a while, but we managed to bring feast night back this week with an Italian multi-course meal which, as you'll read, needn't be as time consuming as you might think.
Our antipasto was left over baba ganoush that I made last week (it was good - still looking for a great recipe though. Anyone?) and Goat Lady Dairy's Sandy Creek aged goat cheese. This is one of my favorites of their cheese though a favorite is certainly hard to choose. It's mellow and buttery with a layer of surprisingly tasty grape leaf ash. We ate these on toasted Italian herb bread from Great Harvest.
Our salad course was very simple: baby greens from our CSA bag and a shaving of pecorino romano. I happened to have made some roasted bell pepper dressing for my book club pot luck last Wednesday.
We got by with a little help from our friends on the pasta course: goat cheese and herb ravioli from Giacmo's - Giacomo's is a relatively new discovery for us, after having driven by their newer New Garden location for years. We're totally hooked now. With the ravioli, I made a sort of relish inspired by our CSA bag and Pat's suggested serving:
I sauteed Italian frying peppers from the CSA bag along with a ton of sliced garlic and chopped onion. Then I added chopped sun-dried tomatoes, a little chopped proscuitto and chopped broccoli raab from the CSA bag. Once everything cooked down, it was only about a cup of relish total but the perfect accompaniment to allow the ravioli flavors to shine.
I also used the last of the season's eggplant, also from Pat and Brian, and the last of the marinara from the freezer, to make a tiny little eggplant parmesan casserole - my favorite!
For dessert, we split a piece of cheesecake from Giacamo's - it was a reasonably sized (read: not 5 servings disguised as one) piece but still perfect to split.
Not a lot of cooking for a lot of reward - recipes below!
I don't actually want to talk about the CSA bag because most of it has ended up snacking food, like cherry tomatoes and cukes. Basil went into everything I could put basil in; same with the sweet peppers and garlic. We also got slicing tomatoes with which we made:
We also got from the farmers' market Japanese eggplant which we charred on the grill and ate with a little soy sauce, as instructed by the slim Japanese man I often run into at the market but whose name I've never caught. We ate corn on the cob (with our favorite chile lime butter), in corn and crab (from the Shrimp Connection who sells across the street from the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market) pasta and pureed corn in the crust of the above tart.
All in all, it was a week of feasting on local foods - and to top it all off, I lost another half pound this week. Not bad for eating like a queen!
Talking about my weight and weight-loss journey are among my least favorite topics, mostly because of all the emotional baggage that goes along with being a self-perceived chubby kid (in fact, I was very slim after my pre-teen growth spurt did away with the last of my baby fat). I've always loved food (obviously) but due to my belief that I was heavy, I felt ashamed of that love and hid it - until, that is, I decided to become a personal chef. It was such a catharsis to not only admit to my love of food but to embrace it so fully!
You can read about the first 35 pounds of my weight-loss journey on a previous post. Since then, I lost another 3 1/2 pounds, coming within a pound and a half of my goal weight - and then I started putting it back on... and on... I stopped counting Weight Watcher points and gained back half of what I lost. I tried to go back to counting points but would quit in the face of a dinner on the town or other cumbersome count, swearing to start again after the next weigh-in but no... Rob, who lost with me during my original round of Weight Watcher, also gained back as I gained.
A couple of weeks ago, we decided to try a new tact. With the abundance of great food in our CSA bag and my ever-increasing distaste with processed foods, we decided to make a real effort to cut out most things with an ingredient list. We still eat that weird low-fat ice cream most nights and Kashi TLC bars, but gone are the cheetos and Weight Watchers snack cakes and other easy fillers, the kind of stuff we grab instead of fruit because it's just more convenient.
We've added some unlikely suspects too, such as great cheese. Every week at the Farmers' Market, we pick out our goat cheese du week which is often gone by the end of the weekend. Goat cheese is a great compromise because of its naturally lower fat content, but we've also added cow's milk cheeses - the real-deal, full-fat, hunk of cheese kind - no more pre-shredded, preservative-laden "cheeses" in our fridge. I've also been keeping hard-boiled eggs in the fridge which we've been eating sliced on whole wheat English muffins for breakfast - we've been amazed at how long we stay full from that one egg. I've also made egg salad, leaving in only a yolk or two.
I've got to tell you that there hasn't been a moment of deprivation in the last two weeks - while I think I may cook a little more elaborately than the average home cook, our meals have soared into the realm of feasts as we pack as many CSA veggies as possible into each dinner.
This morning, we each weighed ourselves (only once a week, on the same day at the same time every week in true Weight Watchers fashion) and we've both lost significant amounts, averaging about a pound a week - a slow, sustainable loss.
All of this brings to mind the first conversation I had with Charlie Headington, the co-head of Slow Food Piedmont Triad. I asked about Slow Food's idea of healthful eating and he said, "Well, I never really thought about it. I guess I just assumed that if I eat wholesome foods, health would naturally follow."
I'll be curious to see how my once high cholesterol reacts to our new diet, but so far it seems that Charlie was right!
- 2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes - not sure how I will use these yet - suggestions?
- 1 bunch Swiss Chard which I used in a pasta recipe I found in the News and Record. It was good but not great.
- 3/4 lb sweet bell peppers which are gorgeous with their mottled skin. I've been throwing those in everything I make
- 1 bunch fennel - We marinated these in a balsamic vinaigrette along with onion, mushrooms and the aforementioned bell pepper and grilled it Saturday night for a feast that also included a tuna steak and some left-over squash casserole
- 1 lb patty pan squash - I found a recipe that cooks zucchini eggplant parmesan style - should work for squash.
- 1 lb cucumbers - these will probably be come a spicy sweet cuke salad to eat with the tomatoes I bought from another farmer at the market - they're still a little mealy but I just can't resist tomatoes...
I also picked my first cherry tomato from our garden yesterday. This has been our first gardening effort beyond a few potted plants and it's gone really well - though to call it an effort is a little misleading. We put up a little fence to discourage the dogs, planted, mulched and have watered occasionally. Between the crazy rains the last few weeks and what is apparently a fertile piece of land, everything has just taken care of itself. The beetles are feasting on the basil but there's so much of it, there's plenty for our dinner and theirs. We have a couple tiny bell peppers and hot peppers and a village's share of Italian parsley. We're thinking of uprooting the dog run (which hasn't been dog-proof in years) and making that a much larger garden spot next year.
Meanwhile, my laissez faire gardening attitude has allowed the weeds to obscure the intentional growth - off to handle those...
I've probably mentioned this before, but this season Rob and I are participating in a CSA (consumer supported agriculture). In January, we paid a lump sum to Handance Farm, Pat and Brian Bush's organic farm in Reidsville which specializes in heritage varieties. In exchange, we get a share of whatever is fresh on their farm for 20 weeks. The monetary costs averages to about $11 a week for produce I would have spent $40 on at the grocery store.
We never know what we're going to get until we're at the Market, picking up the bag - it makes cooking for the week a kind of culinary boot camp: how many ways can I cook kale? How many veggies can I stuff into a quiche? Since I love to cook, this is my idea of a good time.
Also fun are the farm updates the Bush's include on the bag along with the week's contents and the occasional recipe. The updates talk about the work they're doing, how the weather has affected the crops and other details that really connect us to the origins of our food.
I thought it would be fun to periodically keep you updated on what's in this week's market bag and some of the ways I've used the food. This week, we have:
* 2 pounds of Yukon gold potatoes, half of which I made into mashed potatoes last night and served with a barbecue turkey meatloaf, made with onions from the previous week's market bag as well as eggs, bell pepper and garlic from the Farmers' Market.
* 1 bunch baby Swiss chard which I cooked Monday night, wrapping the steamed leaves around slices of tomato and Goat Lady Dairy Jersey Girl Gouda and roasting. (I used a spritz of canola oil instead of the 2 Tb the recipe calls for.) I served this with squash fritters made with yellow squash and thyme from our garden and eggs and garlic from the Market. The recipe was the one Chef Chris McKinley cooked at the Market on June 17th.
* 1 bunch baby carrots - I'm going to roast these tonight with some olive oil and kosher salt along with:
* 1 bunch baby fennel, on which, according to the Bush's note, the bulb is good grilled and the tops are good raw in Greek salad
* 1 bunch beets - I haven't used these yet but based on the success of my pickled beets (I used roasted garlic rice vinegar instead of the illusive tarragon vinegar) from last week , I may pickle these. I also like to roast them to serve on salad.
* surprise - which for us was a small bag of broccoli - I also haven't used that but they may well be used as dippers in my homemade hummus for an afternoon snack.
I used to be a little embarrassed that eating is one of my favorite hobbies but I guess with a blog like Thought for Food, it's kind of pointless to deny. That said, Rob and I went to
While we spent some time in
Dinner the first night was in
Sullivan's
Finally came brunch on Sunday and one last opportunity for a culinary adventure. We decided to take the client’s other suggestion and head to the Isle of Palms to a place called Seabiscuit. Again, we saw most of the island in our hunt for food - even stopping for directions got us most of the way there but still no sign of Seabiscuit. Finally, stomachs grumbling and desperate for coffee, we stop at a brightly painted building with a sign reading Acme Cantina. The menu was sparse but everything on it was appealing - and our waitress was perhaps the kindest person in all of food service (we overheard her convincing a co-worker to take her tip for all the help the co-worker provided at the table). She suggested the shrimp and grits when I couldn't decide between everything on the menu and everything else - she liked them so much, she served them at her wedding. I added a side of biscuits because... well, why not? The spice-rubbed shrimp and slightly cheesy grits were as great as promised and the biscuits were even better. Upon leaving the restaurant for a walk on the beach, we finally discovered Seabiscuit... right next door...
The steering committee of Slow Food Piedmont Triad has often discussed the need to show people that Slow Food need not be, well, slow. Crock pots aren't excluded but they certainly aren't necessary. While I hope many of the ideas batted around come to fruition, like fast Slow Food demos at the farmers' markets, I'm going to periodically post some of my fast slow menus here in the meantime. To me, Slow Food is as much about intention as it is about the food itself. In my mind, I see joy and leisure and sensory pleasures as integral components.
The other night, I spent the evening with a wonderful friend, Chelsea. We met while working at Great Harvest Bread Company; we were both finishing college - she in piano and I in psychology. She has since been one of those friends who is just easy to spend time with, if you know what I mean. The kind of friend you can say anything to, have friendly debates with, sit smack next to even when on a couch big enough for a crowd.
Anyway,
In my own defense, the week I decided to close my business, I received no fewer than two (count them, two!) calls from people wishing to be clients. The business was slowly growing but my enthusiasm was fast waning. I even started to dread cooking for Rob.
So, now I’m a private chef, as in I cook for Rob and the occasional dinner guest or potluck. I still love the idea of helping people eat more healthfully and yet still fully enjoy their eating experiences – that’s part of my motivation for this blog and part of my attraction to Slow Food.
All of this was a bloated and self-serving introduction to my new ongoing segment: Be Your Own Personal Chef. You can do it! Go team!
I was talking with one of Rob’s clients yesterday, a truly lovely woman by the name of Terri (I know sarcasm doesn’t always translate well on the written page so let me go ahead and say that this isn’t it – Terri is really, honestly lovely). Her primary dinner dilemma is trying to turn whatever happens to be in the pantry into a meal her twelve-year-old twins will eat.
So, Terri, Part I is for you!
While this isn’t strictly food related, I thought it a worthwhile story to share…
On March 29, Rob and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. It’s hard to believe that we have now been married half the time we’ve been together, and even harder to believe it’s been only two years – it already feels like a lifetime in the best possible way.
Being the foodies we are, we like to celebrate every occasion with a special meal. Sometimes I spend a day cooking several courses and sometimes we make a reservation at a restaurant we’ve been curious about.
This anniversary, we chose the latter. Recently, Slow Food started working toward a partnership with Bistro Sofia, a little house-turned-restaurant on Dolley Madison, right off of Friendly. In this partnership, Slow Food is helping Bistro Sofia connect with a local farmer for as much of their produce as possible. It’s a natural fit for BS which prides itself on its recycle program and previous support of local and sustainable farming.
I try to use my money as a vote for how I’d like the world to be. It’s not always possible, of course, but in this case, money spent at BS was a vote for Slow Food, local agriculture and restaurants who think outside the box trucks of commercial suppliers. I made the reservation and spent the next few days drooling over their online menu.
So the 29th rolls around; Rob kept his work duds on and I even wore pantyhose and heels (you know I’m serious when the heels find their way out of the back of the closet). We arrived early for our reservation but I called and they were pleasant and inviting. I may be a staunch feminist but I still love chivalry (and try to practice it myself); the host not only took my jacket but held my chair. I was practically swooning. But it gets better: he came back and sprinkled celestial confetti on our table in recognition of our anniversary.
Those of
you who know us know that Rob and I are a giggly pair – people around us are
generally charmed or nauseated but it works for us either way. That said, we order our wine and turn our
attention to our dinner menus. Rob’s
eagle-eye soon lands on a notice on the bottom left-hand corner of the menu
announcing an “excessive bread service” charge of $2.00. So, let us get this straight: $25.00 entrees
(average) and a bread service charge?
Still, we’re not ones to miss an opportunity for smack talking so when our waiter, Josh, returns, Rob, laughing, asks about the fee.
Josh leans in and says quietly, “Oh, that’s for the Jews.”
You don’t have to scroll too far back in my blog archives to realize that I’m Jewish. Now, being a lifelong Southerner, I have certainly faced this kind of comment before. And I have been known to react in a variety of ways: as a teen, I would yell and make a general nuisance of myself; in my early twenties I would encourage people to elaborate, thereby digging their own graves – then I would stuff them in it with a guilt-laden lecture; more recently my tendency is to stop people at the first off-comment, tell them I’m Jewish and gently steer them to understanding.
Knowing all of this, Rob turns to me as Josh stuffs his foot down his throat. Rob is gauging my reaction so his can match. I start laughing; he starts laughing. Josh digs his ditch a little further before I can tell him I’m Jewish. And thus began the back pedaling… It’s only some Jewish customers, they’ll eat two loaves of bread, the notice is mostly a conversation starter and, what he thought was his trump card, the owner is Jewish.
Once Josh finally stops talking and leaves the table, Rob and I debate leaving. But you can’t educate people if you leave and, more importantly, you certainly can’t make people uncomfortable. So we decide to stay and make ourselves examples of why stereotypes are useless. We also decide that I would write a letter to the owner, Beth, the next day.
It’s only fair to say that Josh turns out to be a good waiter – a little snooty (he physically balked when we ordered one appetizer to share) but generally attentive enough without staying underfoot. And the food… good golly, the food was exquisite. The appetizer we shared was the Confit of Duck leg with Braised Lentils and a Balsamic Reduction – the flavors were perfectly balanced with the rich duck meat and the saltiness of the lentil countering the sweet tanginess of the balsamic reduction.
My mom has already given me a mostly-teasing dressing down for my entree so I’ll just go ahead and fess up: pork tenderloin! I haven’t kept kosher… well, now that I think about it I’ve probably been not keeping kosher longer than I kept kosher. I love the idea of kashrut, that it’s a constant reminder of Jewish roots… but I also love pork tenderloin… and shrimp… and goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts…
Anyway, Rob had the lamb with an espresso barbecue sauce and both of our dishes were unbelievable. We finished the meal with warm chocolate cake which came with roasted banana ice cream and a guava sauce. (Josh, apparently unable to believe we would share a dessert in addition to sharing an appetizer, brought, and charged us for, two desserts. C’est la vie.) The bread, well, it was okay…
All in all,
I would have to say that our meal ranked up there as one of the best meals
we’ve had in
At the end of the evening, we sipped our coffee (which they serve with sugar cubes – who knew those were still around?) while Josh charged our meal to our bank card. All $1,250.00 of it. Seriously, that’s what he charged us.
While Rob and I live in a lovely home which we’re slowly buying from the bank, and have many lovely luxuries like tivo and four pets with updated shots, sticking a charge for $1,250.00 in our checking account set off a decidedly unpretty chain of events. Though Josh apparently voided the charge while we finished our coffee, by the time we got home to check our account online, our checking was drained, our savings had been tapped into, previous charges we bouncing like hotties in a hip-hop video and we were incurring overdraft fees like crazy.
In an usual role reversal, I was slightly calmer than Rob at this point so I called over to BS and asked to speak to the manager, who turned out to be a fellow by the name of Kerrie, one of the lanky gentlemen assisting Josh throughout the evening. When I told Kerrie about the charge, his initial reaction was to laugh. Believe me when I tell you, the giggling part of my evening was long since over.
Once the titters died down, Kerrie said he didn’t think there was anything he could do but made himself available if the bank could find him useful. Then he says something about how great Josh is. And then the conversation devolved:
Sarah: Honestly, we weren’t thrilled with Josh’s service before he brought the bill.
Kerrie (oddly frantic in tone): We
tried to make you feel as welcome as we could!
Sarah: You and the other gentleman were lovely but Josh said some off-color things that we found offensive.
Kerrie: Well, I will certainly speak with him about that.
Okay, the boring and good part of the evening is that we bank with Wachovia and they rock – I think the employees are somehow tested on their rockingness before they’re hired because I have yet to encounter one of their employees that didn’t rock. So the woman at the Wachovia call-center had me call Kerrie on 3-way to verify it’s an overcharge (he was very polite and helpful during that call) and clears up the charge – in fact, the next morning, there’s no charge at all – not even for the expenses we incurred during our meal.
The next day I tracked down the owner’s email address and write a letter almost as long as this post, detailing the good and the bad parts of the evening. I also tell her that the entire charge was gone and thanked her if that was their way of making amends, and offering to come back and settle my bill if it was an oversight. I did tell one unintentional white lie: that my only motivation was to give feedback and that I wasn’t looking for retribution or an apology – I thought I meant that when I wrote it but I was wrong. I did want an apology and a damn good one at that… and maybe a little Member of the Tribe camaraderie.
Two days pass during which I tell everyone I run into. Not only do I think people should know the story but, in a way, it’s fun to tell, especially to other Jews. Almost everyone has the same reaction: first, their mouths drop open. Then they say something like, “No Way!” And then they start laughing hysterically because, really, what else can you do? And sometimes, they suggest that I expose BS through my upcoming regular column in the News & Record. I thought one couple was even going to offer to head up a picket line.
Finally, Beth wrote back. Here are some direct quotes:
“I was very upset while reading your letter because
I have been in many situations like this since moving to the South.”
“When Josh read your letter, he was very
embarrassed. Josh is very proud to be working at Bistro Sofia and would never
intentionally insult a customer.”
“I
understand if you do not return to Bistro Sofia but I hope you will. I think
you will find the staff, the ambience and the food a pleasure. My staff at
Bistro Sofia are genuinely good people and try to create a wonderful experience
for the guest to remember.”
I was satisfied with her response… for a few minutes. That’s about how long it took me to start up Quicken to balance our checking account. There it was, in the automatically downloaded transactions: a charge from BS for the amount of our dinner (including a tip for Josh with my husband generously left – can’t say that I would have), posted after I sent the email to Beth. No warning, no nothing – just a charge like a slap in the face.
I’ve been working in various parts of the food industry most of my working life. My sister managed Lucky 32 after she graduated college. And in our experience, no amount is too great to comp if it means keeping a customer and keeping them from talking badly about you to their friends… or blog readers.
I’ve spent the last two weeks mulling over that whole experience. I have had similar experiences but this one was so much more shocking because of the situation. In the past, the anti-Semitism I’ve faced has been dumb school kids, drunken party goers, and simple, ignorant country folk. Those times have stung but never like having to face it in an upscale restaurant where it was apparently condoned, if only through inaction, by the Jewish owner.
Maybe I will still write about it in the News & Record. Or maybe I’ll post this cruelly long blog post, add the experience to my “life of a Southern Jew” list and cook for our next special occasion.
Okay, so really it was cow cheese but it was Goat Lady Dairy and I did help…
Monday morning, before Rob even started our daily battle with the snooze button, Steve Tate, who owns Goat Lady Dairy along with his wife, Lee, and sister, Ginnie, drove to a small dairy farm down the road to pick up roughly 48 gallons of fresh cows' milk, as in still warm from the cows.
An
hour or so later, I was on the road toward Climax to get an idea of how
we can turn the cheese-making process into an episode for the Slow Food
cable access show. The low sun cast long shadows like stripes in the road as I drove through lush pastures and old farms not 30 miles outside of
Norma, Steve and Ginnie’s mother, led me through the rustic dining room where the Dairy holds monthly dinners (though they added over 1,000 seats to this year’s dinner schedule, every spot was reserved within 14 minutes of going on sale) and to a screened door on the other side of which Steve and Brian, one of the farm hands, were unloading a truck.
After greetings and a trip to the coffee pot, Steve and I donned smocks, hairnets and clean clogs to enter the cheese-making room, a tiled room smaller than my ex-garage of a den. Carrie, a part time cheese-maker and mother of three, was already busy unmolding cheese from small perforated baskets and portioning the Dairy’s signature chevre for restaurant and market sale.
Though Goat Lady Dairy’s goat milk
I’m hesitant to go into too much detail about the cheese-making process itself, in part because I don’t want to take anything away from the show, whenever that may be, and in part because though I took copious snapshots as a storyboard of sorts, I didn’t take notes and have already forgotten much of the terminology.
What I can speak to is the feel of the process. Steve called it a “hurry up and wait” process: periods of activity, like stirring slowly to break up the curd, followed by waiting times, much of which I spent watching the kids on their playground.
Goat Lady Dairy is in the middle of its kidding season; those that I watched were a dozen of the 70 or so baby goats born at the Dairy so far. Were it not for their fur, I would have had a hard time distinguishing them from their human counterparts. Braving the upper ledges of the wooden play set, the tiny goats spurred one another on, hovering at the top of the tallest, sliding-board-like 2X4, touching a tentative hoof to the board and quickly removing it as they lost their nerve. On the ground, the kids playfully butted heads and chased one another in little packs.
Inside, I watched and tasted as the fresh milk turned from liquid to large, soft curds with a yogurt-like consistency to big rounds with a sweet, fresh taste and a texture firmer than brie.
While the
Carrie had already left, having finished her work for the day. Six
of us gathered around a table, Lee, Ginnie, Norma, Brian, Steve and I,
for a feast of roasted chicken, herbed peas, mashed potatoes, gravy,
fresh bread and salads of baby greens topped with homemade croutons and
slices of boiled eggs with vibrant orange yolks, harvested from the
Dairy’s heritage chickens. For dessert we had Norma’s chocolate yellow-squash bread, frozen since last season, and hot spiced tea. Dinner talk drifted from deworming pigs to Brian’s recent camping adventure to the Tate family’s 19th century tuberculosis-curing trek to
After dinner, Steve took me on a tour of the Dairy in what was truly a lesson in small farm sustainability. Three varieties of goats contribute their milk to the cheese, the white Saanens, the floppy-eared Nubians and the mottled French Alpines each adding their own flavor and butter-fat content.
Next we visited the speckled pigs, bred from four species specifically to be raised outdoors on a small farm, unlike the conventionally-raised pigs who have been bred with long bellies for maximum output of consumers’ favorite meats, rendering them incapable of living outdoors. The Dairy took on pigs, as do most small dairies, to eat the whey left over when the curd is extracted for cheese.
The heritage chickens, some of which lay green-shelled eggs, wander in and out of their laying coop while making fertilizer for the garden, in which everything from edible flowers to broccoli rabe are grown for the Dinners at the Dairy and the family’s eating enjoyment.
I left the Dairy after my six-hour stint with the satisfaction of having participated in the creation of amazing, hand-crafted cheese and the inspiration of having spent the day with people who have not only followed their own unconventional path but have done so in a way that is beneficial both to the people and the land around them.- not to mention a container of Sunny Paris chevre, some of which I ate on pita chips immediately upon arriving home and a little more in spicy onion-and-mushroom quesadillas for… uh… supper.
My cooking Achilles heel has always been the seemingly simple procedures. It took me years to figure out how to make pancakes without ending up with a first batch that was burned on the outside and raw in the middle. I still occasionally fluff a batch of brown rice only to find a lagoon at the bottom of the pot, which leads to the dilemma: do I re-cover the pot and attempt to cook the rice further or do I eat the rice from the top of the pot and sacrifice the bottom ½ inch to the cooking gods?
Unfortunately for Rob, these are the very cooking mishaps that really make me boil. (I’m sorry… I couldn’t resist.) I’ve merrily thrown away entire meals because the recipes sounded like Nirvana but tasted like Courtney Love’s sweaty fishnets after one of her late-night making-a-fool-of-herself benders (or at least, how the fan sites say her fishnets taste). So I’m not a big Courtney Love fan but the point is that I can accept failure if the recipe is something totally new and bizarre, but rice for Julia Child’s sake?
I say unfortunately for Rob because inevitably, he is the one a growling stomach, merrily waiting for a meal that history suggests will be palatable if not scrumptious. I’m no gourmet chef but I can hold my own when it comes to everyday dining. So picture it, Rob’s had enjoyable meals for weeks. Maybe he’s reading a book on the couch, listening to me bang around the kitchen. (It’s always banging – my cabinets are so cramped that it’s not usual for me to remove a pan, close the door and then hear an avalanche of pans, lids and whatnot sliding off shelves because the precarious organizational balance has been disrupted in the name of sautéing.) And then, the most dreaded of kitchen noises: me cussing. Loudly. With no shame. Followed quickly by the dull plastic sound of pots banging against the side of the trashcan. It’s not pretty, people.
All of which brings us to this past weekend when we brought home a relic of Rob’s childhood: his mother’s waffle iron.
Gotta give it to his mom, the woman cooked three meals a day for nearly 50 years and she’s had enough. Other than the occasional scrambled egg and bacon, she’s given up her apron and I applaud her for it! I can barely cook two meals a day – and it’s only two if you consider putting English muffins in the toaster cooking.
Except on Sundays when I ditch the Thomas muffins for a big breakfast, usually eaten over our game du jour (lately cribbage though scrabble was the favorite for months). Rob, in one of his bursts of domestic enthusiasm, took a toothbrush to the waffle iron that hasn’t seen the light of day for a decade. Twenty minutes later, he clicked the plates back into their electric bed for a little reheating. Then Rob took cover.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever cooked waffles. I’ve watched my mom make them in her typically nonchalant way. She pours the batter, wanders off and magically reappears when they’re perfectly golden. Seems so simple...
This, however, is me. The confusion began as soon as I plugged the iron in. My mom’s waffle iron has two settings: on and off. This one had 11: settings 1 – 9, high and off. I decided to preheat on high while I made the batter.
Though I like for my Sunday breakfast to be on the decadent side, I do like to feel at least a little virtuous. For that reason, I lean toward oatmeal pancakes with walnuts, whole wheat French toast, mostly-egg-white omelets with sautéed veggies and lighter cheeses, like Goat Lady Dairy goat cheese, and sides of fruit and/or soy sausage. I found and printed a waffle recipe that included whole wheat flour and ground flaxseed… but lurking below it in my search results was a Cooking Light recipe for chocolate chip waffles.
After combining my dry ingredients, adding my wet ingredients and folding in a beaten egg white, I folded in a half cup of mini chocolate chips. I turned down the waffle iron to medium, poured on my first pools of batter, gently pressed down the lid and, nonchalantly, walked away.
I don’t know if you’ve ever cooked Gimmie Lean soy sausage but it’s sticky… in a way that makes you wonder if it really is better for you than pork sausage. Probably not but it’s the sausage compromise that Rob, a fan of the southern-style sausage patty, and I, the formerly-kosher-keeping Jew, have made. I formed my sausage patties from the grey soy goo and spent the next half hour (minute) scrubbing it from the palms of my hands. A faint charred smell was starting to develop from the waffle iron’s general vicinity. Giving myself the first-try, will-be-better-next-time pep talk, I peeled back the lid to the waffle maker to find two perfectly golden chocolate chip waffles waiting for me.
Rob came out of his hiding place to applaud my first go as I poured two more blobs of batter onto the iron. Then I got impatient… and peeked… way too soon… which tore the waffles in half. Believing in waffle-elf magic, I closed the lid and imagined elf glue adhering the two sides, making my second batch as successful as my first.
Ah, but no. A couple of minutes later, I again opened the iron to find 4 very thin waffles where two thicker waffles should have been.
This is normally the moment in cooking when I either dump the remaining batter in the trash and gloomily eat my one good waffle or dump everything in the trash and declare loudly that I guess we might as well eat out. But as the fact sinks in that at some point during this year I will be attending my 10 year high school reunion, I’ve realized my temper tantrums, which weren’t cute when I was a kid, are even less cute now.
Strapped with a fork and tongs, I pried all four crispy waffles from the recesses of the waffle grid. They weren’t burned, and they had chocolate chips in them, so they became a natural choice for a brunch appetizer (Rob coined the term “brappetizer”). I used them to lure Rob out of his hiding spot where he dove, duck-and-cover fashion, when the waffles ripped.
The third truly was the charm: after talking myself out of peeking several times, I gingerly opened the lid to find that where I had dumped the remainder of the batter, two perfect waffles had formed. I love a happy ending.
Rob loves them even more: after a neck-in-neck race to the end of the cribbage board, Rob stomped me soundly in the last hand.
**Rob categorically denies that he hides in the face of impending culinary disaster. Any disappearance, he says, is merely convenient coincidence.
My first exposure to Slow Food was a few years ago in a Cooking Light Magazine feature on a Southwestern convivum. The article focused on a yearly potluck in which the foods were literally slow – sides of meat over a fire all day and slow cooked beans. It was interesting but not compelling. Last year, I was reintroduced to Slow Food during my first conversation with Donna Myer, the owner of EpiCourier Online Magazine in which I was talking organics and she was talking local. Up until that point, I had honestly not given much thought to the miles my food had traveled. I had considered the environmental impact of the industrial agricultural practices that stock our grocery stores but it seemed a problem so overwhelming that, for a while, I slipped into everyone’s favorite defense mechanism: denial.
As I mentioned in my first post of the year, on January 3rd I met with a couple of folks from the local Slow Food convivum and in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee, I came to believe that I could impact not only the state of agriculture in America but also my local economy, the environment and the emotional and physical health of my community.
Shortly after, I attended the Slow
Food Piedmont Triad steering committee meeting.
Pat and Brian Bush from Handance Farm were there, friends from my teen
years when I volunteered in the Pat-run kitchen of
Okay, I know, bully for me, I feel all warm and fuzzy, but what is Slow Food? According to the Slow Food international website, “Slow Food, founded in 1986, is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction. It now boasts over 80,000 members in 100 countries.”
I’m with you – it sounds like something rich people take up after they retire. Slow Food is a lot more accessible that the description sounds – I was an unknowing Slow Foodie for months just by shopping at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market. Farmers’ markets and Slow Food go hand-in-hand for a lot of reasons: you support the local economy by buying produce and meats from the people who raise them, you reduce pollution by your food traveling an average of 30 – 40 miles instead of the average 1500 miles grocery store food travels and, best of all, you have an exciting new culinary experience by trying the heirloom vegetables, fresh cheeses and grass-fed beef available at the Farmer’s Market. Don’t be intimidated by the thought of unfamiliar veggies: farmers inevitably have suggestions on how to prepare them – as do other shoppers.
There’s enough to Slow Food that I could write a dozen-page post but honestly, I’m still learning too. I’ll keep you posted on my journey but I hope you’ll join me for it in more than a virtual way; Slow Food has at least one event a month, often more. The first of the year is this Saturday at the first in the Food with a View film series. I’ll be there with my husband and a Fresh Pear and Blue Cheese Cake as will other members of the steering committee and their contribution to what promises to be a delicious dessert buffet. For details, head to the Slow Food Blog: http://slowfoodpt.blogspot.com/. For more on the Slow Food Piedmont Triad convivum, including upcoming events: www.SlowFoodPiedmont.org. And for the big daddy page, the international site, it’s: www.SlowFood.com.
I hope to see you Saturday!
My mom was recently teasing me that when she asks what I’m doing to celebrate a holiday, I tell her what I’m cooking. It’s true that I celebrate through festive meals – I enjoy the time in the kitchen, the special foods, the splurges. I spent my overlong absence from Thought for Food cooking and enjoying the cooking of my family. With the holidays over (always a bittersweet ending), I’m excited to get back on track sharing my food and nutrition passion with my kind readers. But first, a look back at the (food of the) holidays.
When I last wrote, I was just gearing up for Thanksgiving. My husband, Rob, and I say this every year, but this was one of the best Thanksgivings yet! When we bought our house, back when we were living in sin, we decided that we would open our home every Thanksgiving to anyone who would like to join us, family, friends and friends of friends looking for a place to go. Every year, the crowd is a little different and always wonderful.
This year, we were eight around the table: my mom, my mother-in-law, two great friends and two great new faces. For one night, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the temperature dropped enough for me to brine my free-range turkey effortlessly, in a big pickle bucket on the back patio, topping with a heavy stone sculpture to keep our dogs and any roaming backyard critters from sampling. The last couple of years, warmer temperatures forced to me make huge ice baths in what was once a keg tub, weighting the pickle bucket in the middle. I use Alton Brown’s recipe for brining, with vegetable broth, kosher salt, brown sugar, crystallized ginger, allspice and black pepper. Honestly, I’m not sure that the brining spices add flavor but it does make for a juicy turkey in about a third less roasting time.
Between the dishes I made and those our guests brought, our dessert buffet was nearly as extensive as the meal itself. A crowd favorite was a cherry pie made by our friend James, decorated with medley of religious symbols. It was almost too good to eat, but we managed to find a way.
The first night of Hanukkah fell on Christmas this year. My mom joined us at my in-laws for what will probably be their last Christmas in
Eight nights is a little more than my family can manage though we did spend several nights of Hanukkah together. My mom experimented with the traditional latkes (potato pancakes) by adding shredded sweet potato – a healthy hit! Our family grill-master, Rob, barbecued a batch of chicken breasts so perfectly, they were still juicy when reheated for leftovers the next day. Of course, we plowed our way through plenty of mom’s signature homemade applesauce. Guests are always a little shocked at how amazing applesauce can be.
On a very proud, non-food note, my 11-year-old nephew, Isaac, wrote a song for the piano and performed it after dinner, singing lyrics he also wrote. Isaac has always been a very creative guy and it seems that every year he adds a new talent!
Finally, New Year’s. I’ve never been much for going out on New Year's and after the whirlwind of the gift-giving party-going family-seeing holidays, it’s a nice time to sit back on the sofa with the hubby, watch some funny movies and decompress.
Around 6 o’clock on New Year’s Eve, we put on some good music (the sing-along playlist on my ipod) and I spent an hour in the kitchen preparing appetizers for dinner while Rob alternately kept me company and puttered around. I can’t think of a way I would rather spend an evening.
One of our favorite splurges is brie. This year, I topped our round with a recipe from Seasoned in the South, which calls for simmering cherries with a little sugar and adding a splash of rose water at the end. For contrasting flavor and a token veggie, I made a pomodoro topping for bruchetta with tomatoes (I used canned, I’ll admit it!), kalamata olives, fresh basil and balsamic vinegar. I also made a roasted mushroom, lentil and walnut pate but its subtlety couldn’t stand up to the bold flavors of the other dishes and so was relegated to the freezer to be paired more appropriately in the future.
We topped off our meal, while watching the Blues Brothers, with desserts from New York Deli. You
may remember NYD from its old location, a small shop attached to the
Exxon at the corner of Battleground and Cotswald Terrace. They recently moved down the road into the Tuesday Mornings shopping center, taking over the space that was once TJ’s Deli. Owned and operated by the Bissoondutt family, it’s one of the most unassuming restaurant gems in
That’s it, my eating tour of the holidays.
Yesterday, I met with Charlie Headington and Lavonne Childs of the Slow Food Piedmont Triad convivium – their excitement and dedication are truly inspiring! I’m
looking forward to learning more about Slow Food and passing it along
to you, as well as adding more posts on nutritional developments, food
history and my cooking experiences. I hope you continue with me on my food journey!
L’chaim – to life and a happy and healthy New Year!
Last year, after a lifetime of being uncomfortable in my skin (first because I spent years thinking I was fat when I was slim and then because I had gotten to the size I always imagined myself to be) I started the weight loss process, a fact I initially decided to hide from everyone but my husband because I didn’t want the pressure (even in the form of encouragement) and, honestly, I was embarrassed that my love affair with food had landed me in a size 16/18. When my face started to noticeably narrow and people would ask me what I was doing, I would shuffle my feet and downplay the situation to, “Oh, you know, moving more, eating less. So how’re things with you?” As though dumping food was as casual or simple as breaking up with a high school boyfriend. Food was never about nourishment; it was about comfort when I was down, a reward when I was up, an occupation when I was bored, a medium for my own artistic creation, but more than anything, it was a friend and a constant in a life that’s often been unpredictable, as are all lives. Breaking up with food was more like breaking up with a first love and not because you want to but because you’re heading to different colleges on opposite ends of the country.
Though I’ve never had to quit smoking (not that I didn’t smoke – I was, after all, a teenage rebel – I was just fortunate that quitting smoking for me was as easy as not buying another pack) I imagine that dramatically changing eating habits is much like what most people experience giving up smoking. Cigarettes, like food, are everywhere. We can buy snacks and smokes at every grocery, convenience and drug store. We constantly run into people eating or smoking. And when our attempts to change those habits fail, we feel shame. Of course, you can’t just stop eating; you have to learn to moderate the habit, as though smokers’ health depended on one, just one, cigarette a day without diving back into the pack.
Over the years, I had tried to modify my eating habits cold turkey but inevitably gained because of reasoning that went something like this: I’ve been dieting so I can afford a splurge like a candy bar. The catch, of course, was that the splurges came more often than the dieting which wasn’t so impressive to begin with. I needed a little professional help.
Low-carb or other restrictive diets were out – I knew that from the start. While I was willing to modify my eating habits, I knew that any change that completely excluded anything was bound to fail. I
was reluctant to try Weight Watchers which I always imagined to be like
an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting populated by women who wound-bonded
about being fat (“I’m
My intention is not to advertise for Weight Watchers though I did ultimately join online, never again to set so much as a toe in a meeting, losing 35 pounds (and counting) while still treating myself to ice cream most nights. I’ve learned a lot along the way, about nutrition, attitudes about food and how to give up the shame while keeping my love of food - lessons I have included and will continue to include on this blog. But mostly, my intention is the simple act of sharing my story. I talk about my life because it helps me understand it and removes the stigmas that society maintains by matter of habit. And I talk about my life because hearing my story, or anyone’s story for that matter, helps other people share their own stories which, I believe, helps them understand and feel better about themselves.
What’s your food story?
My
sad history of gardening failures started with a cactus, a proud sentry
of a Sanita cactus that stood in a grey whale-shaped planter in the
family room of my childhood home, keeping watch over the French doors
leading to our deck. It thrived so
effortlessly that it blended into the background of the décor along
with a portrait of an old man with suspenders and an undone top pant
button. My mother passed the cactus along to me when she left for a two-year working adventure in
Over the years, thoughtfully misguided friends gave me plants to spruce up my dark, hot apartment, and one by one I performed similar funeral rites, until plants started protesting as soon as they realized their destiny, lying limp in the buyer’s hands as their only means of peaceful protest.
But age brings wisdom, or a healthy forgetfulness. Last year, during the first full summer in the house I share with my husband, I decided to try my hand at tomatoes. I went to a farmer’s market and was directed to a stooped, nearly unintelligible, neon-orange baseball-capped farmer and explained my plant plight. He selected two medium sized plants, a German Johnson and one for which his aged slur muffled the name, ready to bear fruit within weeks assuming I could manage the two simple tasks of planting and watering them. I bought a bag of “vegetable soil” and turned it in on a small, sunny patch of my yard with one of those garden claws you see arthritic people happily using on commercials. I bought wire hoops for staking the growing plants and even tried burying a perforated soda bottle for more efficient watering (which worked until our mischievous dog, Cosmo, unburied it, thinking it better for tossing around the yard than watering). Amazingly, the plants grew and bore perhaps a dozen tomatoes which I ate greedily with fresh basil and garlic salt on 9-grain bakery bread.
Inspired, my husband and I spent last winter planning this year’s garden which would be greatly expanded to include a variety of herbs, bell peppers, more tomatoes and perhaps even some corn. Planning a garden is really easy to do when the ground is frozen and there’s hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows inside. By spring, our grand plan had fizzled; not even a tomato plant entered the ground.
About a month ago, my mom and I were perusing the isles of the curb market for farm-fresh tomatoes and pattypan squash when we ran into a man selling herb plants, 2 for $5. We left minutes later with rosemary and tarragon for my mom, lime basil and lavender for me. Though wonderful, the distinct hint of lime in the basil wasn’t quite right for Italian dishes, so my mom and I headed back to the farmer’s market where we picked up a healthy sized sweet basil plant as well as chives for which I had recently spent an outrageous $2 for a grocery store pack which would almost definitely wilt before being used up. I bought potting soil and knocked the spent dirt out of four oversized pots: two left by the previous owners and two that once held a beautiful array of plants, another of those notorious, well-meant gifts from a friend.
I like the idea of growing herbs in pots because, theoretically at least, I’ll be able to move them inside this winter and have fresh herbs all year round – I try to keep my spirits up even when I look at the rotted stump of a basil plant still sitting hopefully in the living room window from last winter. The added bonus had been easily controlling the direct sunlight they receive during theses stifling dog days which have wilted some of the lower leaves of the lime basil plant though hasn’t seemed to send any of them into their death throws… yet.
The agonized pot-moving and early morning waterings paid off last night, though, when I took my kitchen shears to the front yard to snip my very own basil for a batch of pesto pasta which tasted of garlic and gardening satisfaction.