In Brown Gravy

Let's just skip right over the fact that it's been a long time. So, hey, I'm cookin squirls!  In brown gravy!

Brown gravy just doesn't sound at all appealing, does it?  The first thing the words used to bring to my mind was the unfortunate time I once signed up for a "tasting panel" at McCormick Spice Company. McCormick is headquartered near where I live and you can sign up to do focus groups and taste testings at about $50 a pop. So I go in and taste literally ten different kinds of brown gravy, the kind you mix out of the foil packet with some water. Yes, as good as it sounds.

But then a trip to Louisiana last year, to hang out with the very last Cajuns who do crawfishing for a living, introduced me to a very different kind of brown gravy.  We got in late the night we arrived, but our incredibly sweet and accommodating hosts, Mike and Alice Bienvenu, were waiting up for us. They fed us leftovers from their own dinner, apologizing profusely the whole time for not cooking us a brand new meal from scratch at 1 a.m. And it was only the best thing I'd ever eaten - wild duck in this incredibly rich and complex sauce. I was sure I tasted all kinds of things - wild mushrooms, complexly carmelized dark sugars, exotic spice. What on earth is this ambrosia called? Brown gravy, said Mike. It's how we cook just about everything, said Alice.

Last week I called Mike and asked exactly how to make that dish, transcribing his every word. So when I cooked my very first squirrels two nights ago, brown gravy was on my mind - I've had squirrel before, but always in something like Brunswick Stew and never on its own, treated like a legitimate entree.  This is what he said to do (using duck) and I tried my best to replicate:
“First of all you gotta take the feathers off, and then you take the guts out.” (Laughs). “You can cut it in pieces or cook it whole, it’s easier to brown if it’s in pieces. Season it good with red pepper (cayenne) and salt -- make it red all over with the pepper.  Then you take the point of your knife and you stab it all over the breast and on the legs, because you want that seasoning to get in there good. Get a black iron pot and put little bit of grease in, not a lot a lot of grease but enough to cover the inside where the duck won’t stick too much. And then you just put it on medium high heat, about 6 or 7 on an electric stove. Throw him in there and get him good and brown all over, keep turning him til he’s nice dark brown. And then you put a little water in there, not much, just enough to keep from sticking, and you put a lid on.  And you let it keep on til the duck gets nice and tender. Once he’s tender you cut you some onions and bell pepper, and throw that in there with a little bit more water. Then you cover it up again and cook it til it surrenders. The main thing is to season it, and you want to brown it good.  And if you got a black iron pot then you shouldn’t have a problem.

“It’s kind of trial and error. You do it a few times, you start to pick up a few tricks. You get the feel of it, how to add some little bit of water just to keep it from sticking. Not too much.

“A duck to me takes, from the time you start until you finish, about three hours. You want to cook it long because you don’t want to fight it when you eat it, you know? You put the cover on it, that’s going to smother it and help tenderize. When you cover it, the pot is going to get hotter. And the duck is going to keep browning in the pot till the very end when you add the bell peppers and the onion. I don’t know how you all like that, but the reason we put the bell peppers and all in at the end is so they don’t cook down to nothing.  So when you put the gravy on your rice that you’re going to eat it with, you still have some onions and peppers in there. But that’s it.  And basically that is how we cook everything. Everything we eat, we cook like that.  The key to it is to season it and brown it, and then you got it.”

So I tried to do exactly as Mike said, only I quailed at the making the meat literally red with the cayenne pepper.  As I was shaking it on I thought, no way will this be edible with so much cayenne, and stopped while the squirrel pieces were more of a dusty dark pink with pepper. Two hours later, though, the heat from the capsaicin had faded, leaving behind a rich and complex flavor. But not as much as I remembered from eating Mike's master class version. So at that point, when I added the peppers and onions, I put in some more cayenne, but it was really too late.  Next time I'm going deep, dark red.

Still, it was crazy delicious.  The squirrels were meltingly tender, and the flavor rich and smoky with a back-of-the-throat memory of heat. We ate them over fluffy white rice and mopped every last drop out of the skillet.

I Guess I Really DO Mean What I Say

I spend a lot of time at my mom's house. Mom's sporadic help is the closest thing I've got, as a single mother, to someone holding the other end of the stick, and the boys and I all derive comfort and enjoyment from weekends at Nanu's. Thing is it's sort of like going camping: we don't simply hop in the van and drive the hour betwixt here and there. We gotta pack first, and not just our jammies and toothbrushes. My mom does NOT see the value in organic foods, to put it mildly, and so going to visit there means pretty much taking along everything I will be wanting us to eat while we're there.

She pretends she doesn't mind that we won't so much as drink her water (yes, we even bring our own water. I'm sorry but the water there tastes awful to me, plus comes from an aquifer contaminated with MTBE a few years back by a nearby gas station). I try to not make faces at the uber-industrial comestibles in her pantry. It works out. More or less.

Last weekend, though, Mom got me. I've just been struggling along for a good long while now through an incredibly protracted, difficult and penury-inflicting divorce. Simultaneously I get to enjoy feeling guilty that my standards regarding SOLE food just aren't as high as they used to be. It's not that my beliefs have changed. More that I'm too exhausted and overwhelmed to keep up the serious and continuous work that feeding us sustainably, organically, locally, ethically AND affordably entails. Take yogurt: I've gone from making my own, weekly, from grass-fed raw milk, to buying Stoneyfield organic cream top, to...well, this is depressing, but to hoping that Dannon uses non-rBGH cows and no lowly tricks like bulking up with dried skim milk. These days I'm too tired to look it up and honestly I just don't really care as much as I once did. Scurried a few rungs downward on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs scale, have I. Anyway, once upon a time when energy and/or optimism flagged I could take my class privilege and buy Amish raw milk yogurt, or really fantastic local yogurt I utterly adore from a farm whose name I am too utterly tired to drag forth from my brain right now. Seven bucks a quart, though, I just don't have that kind of financial wherewithal anymore.

But I digress. Nanu had just returned from a visit to BJ's WHolesale Club with a clamshell of Campari (tm) tomatoes. It's early May and the last time I had a tomato that tasted anything like a tomato was probably October. But these were terrific: great texture, firm and aromatic and hoo boy tasty. Some dim memory twitched, something about genetically engineered tomatoes, wherein scientists figured out how to keep the gene for ripening turned on while switching off the (evoluntionally intertwined since dawn of time) gene for softening. I suppressed it, despite a longstanding prejudice against eating food that does not rot, not to mention produce that arrives packaged in plastic clamshells, but. That seductive, fecund tomato smell. Wow. It's something of an understatement to say that my life has for rather a long while been short on sensory indulgences, so I was an easy mark. An easy mark who ate like half the tray.

I've felt sorta bad about it ever since, but not bad enough to look it up on ye olde internet. I was pretty sure my memory was accurate, that these were GMO tomatoes that I'd gorged on, so why make it worse by knowing beyond all doubt?

So. A week later I'm spending Friday night shopping Costco because that's just the kind of wild woman I am. I'm provisioning for MAPS Meet, a primitive skills workshop next week where I'm going to be teaching wild foods classes, picking up stuff that the boys will eat and that will be relatively copacetic spending four likely warmish days in a cooler. One of my favorite Costco items is actual mozzarella di bufalo from Italy -- I used to live near the very farm this stuff comes from and I'm thrilled to be able to buy fresh Campanian buffalo's milk mozz in White Marsh, Maryland (although it's now pasteurized to pacify the USDA, something the Italians would never tolerate). I picked up a tub ($11.99), thinking I'd make sandwiches between teaching sessions of traditional food preservation methods. What I was really thinking was, wow, my tiny spindly little tomato plants still under a grow light because it's been such a cold spring and dude I'm at least two months away from a homegrown tomato worthy of this cheese. And then I thought: Campari.

Yep. Sure enough, Costco gots Campari. I stood there for a really long time, holding a clamshell full of fragrant ruby-red fruit, looking and looking and lusting in my heart. My basil plants are big enough to pick from, even if my tomatoes are spindly weaklings. Insalata caprese would taste soooo good...

After who knows how long I shook it off and said aloud, stick to your principals, girly, and step away from the tomatoes. I put them back, and also the mozzarella. It can wait for the right time. Eventually things are going to get better, and tomato plants grow tall and fruitful, and I can legitimately enjoy the flavorful magic that happens when ripe tomatoes meet buffalo mozzarella, basil leaves, a drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil, and a touch of coarse salt. Even tired, even hungry and lonely and sad, I'm still me under all that baggage. And the real me still cares enough to wait for the good stuff to come along, all in the fullness of time.

Im-Morel

Spring sure is dragging its feet this year. First asparagus finally got itself up and out of the ground fully two weeks later than in 2010, and I desperately wish the morel mushrooms would take a page from asparagus' book because they are NOwhere to be seen. At least not by me.

Every year I always start looking too early, just in case. But I've never gone this long, and on this many fruitless forays, without finding a single morel. Or, as has occasionally happened, hollow-stemmed holes in the ground from where someone else got there first. This year, I swear, I'd happily take the holes -- at least I'd know I wasn't crazy, that I hadn't somehow lost my eyes. Because the season appears here at last, all the spring cosigns to morels pushing their wrinkled snouts forth from the leaf mold are present: poplars leafing out, may apples fully unfurled, jack-in-the-pulpits open for pontification and pollenation.

My first few forays I was ok with not finding anything, because I didn't really expect to. May apples were nothing but green spikes just emerging, and the trees were bare -- and this was barely two weeks ago. But since then we've had the couple days of rainy weather followed by a really warm day pattern that morels like. In fact we've had it TWICE. And still no morels.

I go at least every other day, looking. I most often visit a place I consider my bellwether spot -- over the years it never has a lot of morels, but it has them reliably. Also I can park, hop out of the car and be standing in the midst of where the morels should be in about 3 minutes flat. I check here often, have been there at least four times -- I'm starting to lose track, seriously -- and nothing. Was there this morning, the first time I could get there after Wednesday's first seriously warm day of spring (84 degrees) and STILL nothing. Not even holes. At this point I'd welcome holes. I know I already said that. But I'm starting to get a little nuts, now.

Looking, and not finding. With no control over whether the thing I so assiduously seek will even appear, no matter how long and how hard I search. The frustration is quite serious. It's very much akin to the frustration of asymptotically approaching, yet never quite being able to reach, sexual climax -- wanting, not getting.

It's at this point I begin to doubt myself. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough? Looking in the wrong places (even though they've been right places, years past)? Maybe I've somehow lost my ability to see?

I both doubt and completely believe this last. I doubt it because I do have good eyes; at last night's Little League game I found a tiny plastic toy, not even two inches long, my four year old had lost from his pocket -- in the middle of a 2-plus acre grassy meadow that he'd been running all around for over an hour. He was quite upset but also full of touching faith that I would find it for him. The toy -- did I mention it was mainly green in color? -- could've been anywhere, but with some patient pacing and triangulation I eventually found it. These are skills I learned hunting morels.

And, while hunting and not finding, I've found all kinds of other things. Some things that look like morels:



My heart leaps each time, but only for the briefest of flashes before crashing back to the same old morel-free ground. Amazing how much heartbreak can be contained in a pinecone half buried in dead leaves.

Furthermore, I know my eyes still work because I've found other things while hunting: oyster mushrooms, nettles, two animal skulls and tons of bones. I am happiest about finding a half dozen cool old glass bottles, including an intact blue glass Ball canning jar that is at least 70 years old. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with these finds, yet they are mere consolation prizes. More consolation -- though I am not usually given to schadenfreude -- is that friends went to one of my morel spots (which I introduced them to: credit to them for asking, first) two days ago, when I could not, on super-warm Wednesday which SHOULD have been a prime day, and ALSO did not find morels. So it's not just me.

But it is me. I'm actively miserable over this. Downright grumpy. So I have a new theory: I haven't found any yet this year because I have yet to go morel hunting in the rain. It's too dry, despite the at least four days of rain we've had in the past two weeks including pounding thunderstorms complete with tornadoes and power outages.

Now all I need is some rain. And, apparently, a life.


Consolation prizes: stinging nettles, which were delicious sautéed in butter; bottles I found in the forest while not finding morels.

Opening Day

Jack started Little League baseball recently -- his first go at an organized sport. (I know, I know, I'm un-American, keeping my kid off the field of rec-league glory until the hoary old age of eight years). Jack is adapting beautifully to Life After Little League -- there's talk of making him pitcher, kid's got a natural arm on him -- but me, not so much. We're three practices into the season and we've been late to every single one. Shoot, you may as well also count us late for the one they canceled due to rain, because I'm sure we would've been the last ones there that night too...

I don't especially care if we're a few minutes late, but Jack does. So tonight I was determined to get us to the park on time, for once. We were, of course, fantastically and record-breakingly late. BUT this time, however, I have a bona-fide gold-plated excuse for our tardiness: First Asparagus.

Seriously, I was just going to stop by our favorite farm stand...pick up a couple bunches of asparagus that were waiting there for me...cook it up later, after practice was over. I swear I didn't mean to splay out those lovely green spears on a tray, roll them around in a little extra-virgin olive oil, coarse salt and pepper. They just, um, fell into that 450 degree oven all on their own.

OK, OK, I confess: I did it. I cooked that asparagus BEFORE practice, knowing that it would take half an hour when we had to leave the house in 15 minutes, 20 max, to be on time for baseball. But I did it for the best of reasons: because my two little boys begged me to. How could any mama say no to her children's pleas for vegetables?



I was astonished at their excitement over First Asparagus, at how badly they wanted to eat it. Cole loitered impatiently in the kitchen, asking every few minutes if the asparagus was done YET. And when it came out of the oven the three of us clustered around the pan, plucking up spears with gingery fingertips, burning ourselves, dropping them, doing it again and again until finally they were just barely cooled enough to cram into our eagerly awaiting mouths.

Yes, we were late for baseball. Half an hour, actually. So sue me. We also ate every last fat, luscious spear of asparagus and walked in heads held high, smiles gleaming with olive oil and satisfaction.

A note on the asparagus: last year's First Aparagus was March 30th. It's been chilly and wet this spring and this season is rolling along a solid two weeks behind last year's. I got tired of fruitless drives past the farm stand, which since we moved is no longer along any of my daily routes. So, this year I got smart: I started emailing the farmer. He promised to let me know as soon as he put asparagus out for sale. He even gave me daily asparagus status reports ("Only 4-6 inches tall today, we need a couple days of sun before they'll be ready -- maybe Thursday?").

And, bless his heart, he did email as soon as he put out his first three bunches. We got there within the hour, and bought all three. O happy day, that hath asparagus in it.

For the Record: Jambalaya

On Xmas eve, facing an incredibly busy 24 hours ahead, one of the tasks I needed to accomplish was coming up with some sort of Xmas dinner. I had planned to bake a ham my friend Deb hooked me up with earlier this fall when she offered to split half a pastured hog from Forever Endeavor Farm .

We've already feasted on the extremely tasty, super-thick uncured bacon from this hog share, and I am looking forward to trying the ham. The thing is, it's big, this ham. Also I've never cooked a whole ham before. I have a bit of Ham Anxiety going. Plus I really, really didn't want to wreck it, and when I'm multitasking like mad on 10,000 different things that need to be done NOW is precisely the time I tend to lose track of little things like the ham in the oven.

Then I just forgot to get the darn thing out of the freezer. Since it would require at least a day to thaw that pretty much took ham off our family's Xmas menu. Standing in the grocery store late on Xmas Eve afternoon -- me and the other bazillion last-minute grocery shoppers -- casting about for a replacement meal I came up with jambalaya. I've made this recipe literally dozens of times; it's always been a go-to dish for football weekends, open house holiday scenarios, any time there's an open-ended time frame yet lots of people to feed.

The recipe comes from a cook book that I alas no longer have access to. It's a church fundraiser cooking collection from some tiny parish in Louisiana, self-published in 1982 in blurry mimeograph print. There are recipes for muskrat and alligator in there, plus all kinds of Cajun dishes -- some common outside the bayou, others I've never heard of even in Paul Prudhomme. I've made some amazing dishes from that book -- a smoky, buttery crawfish etouffe prominent among them -- but always go back to this jambalaya. It's relatively easy to put together, holds well, and tastes even more amazing the next day.

I really really wish I could reproduce the original recipe in all its glory; the directions are quite eccentrically bossy and specific. But the ingredients are right. I made this late Xmas afternoon and we've been living off it ever since.

Serve with the best French bread you can find, sliced and thickly spread with lots and lots of sweet butter.

JAMBALAYA
2 lbs shrimp, peeled
1 lb andouille sausage (the andouille from Neopol in the Belvedere Market makes for a truly outstanding jambalaya)
1 c chopped onion
i c chopped green pepper
1/2 chopped celery
4 cloves garlic
1/8 t cayenne
1/2 t salt
4 bay leaves
1/2 t chili powder
1.5 t thyme
1.5 t basil
1/4 t allspice
1/4 t cloves
2 cans stewed tomatoes, drained, reserve juice
2 c beef stock (use tomato juice to reconstitute stock if using beef base)
1.5 c rice
green onions
curly parsley
Crystal hot sauce

Sear andouille, set aside. In same pan, melt 2 tablespoons butter with 2 tablespoons oil. Sautee peppers and onions until softened, then add garlic, spices, tomatoes (drained, saving juice to make up stock if using stock base). Add stock and rice, bring to boil, cover, cook on low 20-30 min until rice is cooked. Add shrimp, stir frequently five more minutes. Stir in chopped green onions and parseley. Top with more of both, plus hot sauce. Don't forget the butter bread.

Maryjane Reunion

I am having a Not Great Day and the one thing that could seriously help right this ship, right NOW, would be some good chocolate. Since yesterday was Hallowe'en there actually is quite a bit of chocolate around the house. Unfortunately none of it's anything I want to eat. Why oh why do people not give Green and Black's for trick or treat?

So after ferreting through the guys' goody bags, rejecting inferior chocolatelike products - waaaay too much sugar, not enough endorphin-enhancing cacao -- I landed on some Mary Jane candies. Remember Mary Janes? Essentially unchewable nuggets of peanut butter and molasses? God knows what else is in there these days -- please don't tell me -- but I am really enjoying renewing my acquaintance with Miss Mary Jane, who has been around since 1914 courtesy of the Necco company. Chewing that hard, it turns out, is sorta cathartic.

Now excuse me while I go peel the wrapper off another one and crank up Cee Lo Green's single from his new album Ladykilla...Yes, the song is called "Fuck You" and it's also extremely cathartic. I highly recommend a listen, but only if you're not at work. Also you need to be someplace you can boogie frantically and without embarrassment. And if you choke on your Mary Jane candy while doing so, I am so not legally responsible.

Moment of Truth With Condensed Cream-of-Mushroom Soup

So I underwent a drastic rearranging of the old existential furniture, recently. As a result I've been very busy for a couple of weeks, moving the boys and me into a new, mostly empty, house, trying to settle us in and outfit us and keep everyone feeling cherished and safe. It's the discombobulation of a sudden new life in an unfamiliar space coupled with the keenly felt lack of small yet essential items like a pencil sharpener for Jack's homework, pot holders, dental floss, waste baskets...(when we first moved in, every time I needed to throw something away I had to journey from all over the house to the kitchen where the one and only trash can resided).

Many hands are carrying us right now -- close friends, family, even relative strangers. These people have cared for us, taken us in, given us emotional and financial support, cheered us on. We're slowly getting our feet under us here in this new life, starting to stand shakily on our own, but it's a huge and ongoing adjustment for everybody. Cole suddenly can't bear to go to the bathroom alone, asks for potty accompaniment; Jack resists bedtime like its lights out forever, not just until tomorrow morning. Me, I have developed stone cold insomnia, falling asleep easily enough but coming intractably awake at 3 am to ponder all the myriad mistakes I have made in my frivolous and wasted life.

One way I'm trying to take care of us, ease us all into the shallow end of this brand new pool, is by cooking. A lot. Part therapy, for me -- there have been remedial wee-hours blueberry scone baking incidents, for example -- and part just striving for normalcy. If in our old life we ate a lot of pancakes and paht thai, then eating those same meals in our new home, smelling the same smells emanating from a new kitchen, tasting the same flavors even though served on unaccustomed plates, will help make render the unfamiliar, familiar. Or anyway that is my passionate hope.

Given the huge amount of organization, setting up and shopping (oh god, the shopping -- I think the employees of our nearest Target store think I'm stalking them, given the frequency of my visits) required to get us settled, we've been either eating out more than usual or making use of convenience foods. Either of these are in some ways more stressful than just sucking it up and figuring out some way to stay home and make dinner for two boys who hate eggs and cheese, respectively, when eggs and cheese happen to be the only ingredients we actually have on hand. We live pretty far out in the country so driving to a restaurant, eating, and driving home is a solid 2 hour proposition. Tragically, our lovely rural setting also means pizza delivery is just so not happening at our house.

So, it's time - we live here now, and we've got to start eating here the right way, with SOLE-food integrity even if sometimes we do need to take turns with who gets to use the fork. My mom and I dropped the guys at school yesterday and headed to Wegman's to do a big time stock-up shopping trip. One of the recipes I was shopping for was chicken pot pie, a favorite of Cole's and a way to use up the remnants of the Sunnyside Farm chicken I'd roasted for our dinner the night before. It was a massive undertaking, this Wegman's trip, requiring multiple hours and carts. Although we even took a snack break at one point by the end we were both totally exhausted, overwhelmed and just plain used up. We were in the very last aisle and steaming hard for the checkout lanes when my mom reminded me that I need to grab ingredients for the chicken pot pie.

Now this pot pie recipe is a family treasure in its way, and my mom is unaware that for the past few years I've monkeyed around with its highly ritualized ingredients. When I am at the top of my game the vegetables in my pot pie, for example, come from either my garden or the CSA we belong to and not from a plastic bag of mixed frozen corn/carrots/peas as is called for in the ingredients list. Since I am currently locked out of my previous home, where all the food I've worked hard to grow, gather and preserve is stored, I recognize I'm not going to be able to hit this particular pot pie out of the park. I take comfort knowing that at least the chicken is righteous, as are the lovely Yukon gold potatoes picked up from the CSA last week, and so I don't feel too bad throwing a bag of frozen veggies into the cart. Scrolling the various ingredients for the biscuit crust through my memory, I see they'll too be anonymous but acceptable, some Bob's Red Mill organic flour that I can leaven with raw Amish butter. Okay. I can do this thing.

Until one last requirement stops me in my tracks: the Gienow classic version of this recipe calls for a can of cream-of-pretty-much-anything soup to bind the filling. It's not an optional thing, unfortunately. It's also getting late in the afternoon, I'm completely drained, and under pressure to get through the checkout line and over to school to pick up the boys in the next holy shit 34 minutes, school being a solid 25 minutes away. I'm standing there looking at the racks of Campbell's soup cans -- it would be so easy to just grab one and go, dinner deliverance right at hand. At this moment the idea of going home after all this shopping, rowdy hungry boys in tow, and whipping up a little bechamel sauce to put in the pot pie seems as within my abilities as turning loaves into fishes. But: Water, Mushrooms, Soybean Oil, Modified Food Starch, Wheat Flour, Contains Less than 2% of: Salt, Cream (Milk), Dried Whey (Milk), Monosodium Glutamate, Soy Protein Concentrate, Yeast Extract, Spice Extract, Dehydrated Garlic.

I. Just. Can't.

How can you have cream of anything that does not contain actual cream? (C'mon, less than 2% cream content is essentially a cream-free product). I guess it's the same way you can have coffee "creamer" that contains no actual dairy products -- some kind of industrial magic is worked on the soybean oil to create a convincingly cream-like product. I could just lighten the hell up: although cream of mushroom soup is like some sort of culinary punch line there's nothing in there that's actively harmful. Our food culture embraces convenience as though it were holy writ, despite the cost to our souls, waistlines and arteries. Plus, if anyone has earned a temporary pass to take a few culinary short cuts it is certainly me, now, in the middle of my own personal midlife maelstrom. The temptation to just ease on down the path of least resistance is powerful -- at this moment I am just so incredibly tired and, believe me, I really really really want to. But. I just hate food that lies to me. I place the can gently back on the shelf. I hear my mother sigh.

So we did get to Montessori pickup on time, just barely, and the boys were of course starving, all but gnawing their own arms while clamoring for dinner. And, yes, dinner's timely arrival on the table was delayed somewhat by the need for me to stand at the stove making a roux of equal parts flour and butter, browning that til the raw flour smell faded, and then whisking in chicken stock until the sauce was nice and loose before slowly stirring in cream off the top of a gallon of raw milk to get everything to the proper velvety consistency. I toted up the cost of scratch-made sauce ingredients in my head; it adds up to around the same 79 cents that can of soup would have cost. And really the pot pie still would have tasted pretty darn good, had I just gone that path of condensed soup least resistance -- no one would have known the difference.

No one, that is, except me. And the integrity of doing the right thing, even when it is the hard thing, is why I am here, cooking my heart out in this unfamiliar kitchen.



MARLENE'S CHICKEN POT PIE

Oven to 375.

1 chicken's worth meat, chopped
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken stock
1 bag frozen mixed vegetables
1 pint potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled, cubed

Boil potatoes in salted water, 8 min. Add frozen veggies, return to boil, boil 2 more minutes. Drain. Mix vegetables and chicken in 9x13 pan. Pour condensed soup into veg cooking pot; whisk stock into soup by the 1/4 cup until the soup is a thick but pourable consistency, then pour over vegetables and chicken.

1.5 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups milk
6 tablespoons melted butter

Mix dry ingredients, then quickly stir in wet ingredients. Pour over filling. Bake 30-40 minutes until topping is set and dark golden brown, and filling is bubbling around edges.


CHICKEN POT PIE THAT MAKES MY MOTHER SIGH

Oven to 375.

White Sauce:
3 tablespoons white flour
3 tablespoons butter
~ 1 cup good chicken or vegetable stock
~ 1/2 cup cream, half and half or whole milk

Melt butter in skillet over medium, then sprinkle flour over and stir together with wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the roux thickens and starts to turn deep gold. Slowly pour in stock, in 1/4 cup increments, and whisking between each addition, until roux loosens but still stands up. Whisk cream/milk in by the tablespoon until the sauce has thinned somewhat but still thickly coats the whisk or spoon.


Filling:

2 cups cooked chicken meat, chopped or pulled into small pieces (from a pasture-raised chicken!)
4 cups total vegetables of your choice, prepped to be approximately the same size (for even cooking): i like diced carrots, green beans cut to about 1 inch lengths, lima beans, and peas. Baby pearl onions are really, really nice if you have them.
2 cups potatoes, scrubbed but skin on, cubed
2 cloves garlic
fresh rosemary

Boil potatoes in stock or salted water 8 minutes. Toss in veggies according to required cooking time -- limas take the longest time, peas the least -- returning to boil between additions, and cooking til just barely tender. Drain.

Place vegetables in 9x13 pan with chicken. Sprinkle with about 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary and a couple cloves of garlic pushed through a press; go over with several good grinds of black pepper too. Stir in sauce until all is well incorporated. Taste for seasoning, add salt if necessary.

Pot Pie Crust:

1.5 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons melted butter
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Mix dry ingredients, then quickly stir in wet ingredients. Pour over filling. Bake 30-40 minutes until topping is set and dark golden brown, and filling is bubbling around edges.

Blackberry Fingers

Typing with purple-stained fingers. Blackberries today. Wild blackberries. No other fruit in my experience requires such attention in harvest, not even morels. Most plants either/or: if they're there, they're ready to be taken and eaten. Blackberries however are about extremely fine gradation. Discernment is called for, even as the line between unripe and overripe is crossed in the span of an afternoon. With other berries, a little over or under doesn't much matter; it's a spectrum of more or less sweetness. Blackberries, however, are unappealing most of the time: sour even on the very verge of ripeness, then soft and leaky when they pass peak. When perfectly, oh-so-briefly ripe, however, they are sublime. Far better than any other berry. Not merely sweet, they express flavors as exquisite and complex as those of any fine wine. Today i had several blackberries whose taste I swear hinted of tobacco and coriander. Dazzling.

You can tell the pick-me-now, just-ripe blackberry a little bit by looking -- the color does not vary, but unripe berries have a showy shine, and overripe ones are dull-looking. The ones you want to go after look satiny, luminous. The only way to truly judge, however, is by feel. A sort of gentle simultaneous roll and pull between questing fingertips. Unripe berries don't budge, and overripe ones collapse. Ripe blackberries yield themselves, generously, voluptuously. Human touch seems exquisitely calibrated to discern the moment for plucking a blackberry at peak perfection.

I pick berries by feel, and I take only the ones that want to come. I leave the not-quite-ripe behind, even if I know I won't be coming back.

Sharing the Love

Update: still only a scant few tomatoes trickling in each day, but I am awash in cucumbers. Crazy cucumbers jumping off the plant, dozens each day -- I am but one woman with only two hands, and this family will eat only so many pickles in the course of a year...We're eating lots of raita and also cold cucumber soups, but there's simply no way for us to keep up with the barrage of cukes. (Unless someone has a way to preserve cucumbers, other than pickling, that I'm somehow missing?)

So I've been giving away a lot of cukes, both slicing and pickling, as well as squash -- so if you happen to read this and would like to adopt some drop me a line and we'll figure out how to transfer some of the garden love from me to youski!

Gazpacho!!!!

Another red-letter day in my personal calendar for 2010: July 15th, the Feast of First Gazpacho.

Seriously -- I feel like summer has only truly arrived when I'm able to fire up the Cuisinart for that first batch of cucumber/tomato soup. Despite the passing of solstice nearly a month ago and record-setting 100+ temperatures recently, summer wasn't really real for me until I realized last night that I had finally accumulated enough ripe tomatoes for a righteous round of gazpacho.

The irony is that none of my real tomatoes are anywhere near ready; I grow heirlooms, and they take their sweet time ripening. However, my next-door neighbor had some extra veggie starts he purchased back in May and gifted me with a couple of well-established hybrid tomato plants -- some Sweet 100 cherries and an Early Girl, the commercially raised plants all significantly larger than my earnest, spindly little started-from-seed heirlooms. So while waiting for the *real* tomatoes to get a move on I've been getting a couple of (unreal?) cherry tomatoes each day for the past couple of weeks, and maybe a small ripe Early Girl every other day, while the rest of the tomato herd languishes along far behind.

Early Girl has never been a favorite of mine; the tomatoes are small, with a dry, even mealy, texture, and they don't have a lot of flavor. But heck, you want tomatoes in early July, here is how to get them -- this hybrid lives up to its name (at least the "early" part; I have no idea what flavor the "girl" might contribute). I've learned to leave them on the plant to the point of over-ripeness as a way to maximize the flavor and even impart a little bit of juiciness, but it requires stone-cold discipline not to pluck those first little red globes from the vine when it's going on nine months since I last tasted an actual, ripe REAL tomato...maybe there's something significant about that natal time frame. Maybe it's just my brain wilting in the heat -- we spent most of today out on the Gunpowder, where it is currently 95 degrees, Accuweather Real Feel (tm) 104 degrees -- but today I'm wiling to swear I look forward to each summer's first tomato with nearly the intensity that I awaited the birth of my children.

Get your hands on some good tomatoes and try my gazpacho recipe, and see if you don't agree that anticipation is the ultimate appetite stimulant.


Michelle's Juicy Gazpacho

6-8 tomatoes, ripe as can be, quartered
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled
2-3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil -- the best you can find
1 large cucumber, peeled and seeded
salt to taste

Toss garlic into Cuisinart and pulse until finely chopped. Add everything else, pulse several times until coarsely pureed. Taste and correct for seasoning; I suggest starting with the smaller amount of vinegar and adding more if needed -- the amount depends heavily on the acidity of the tomatoes.

I eat this straight, or with sliced avocado, sometimes croutons tossed on top.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Greetings fellow eaters -- I know, I know, long time no post. It's been an interesting time (in a Chinese curse -- "may you live in interesting times" -- kind of way) hereabout the cul-de-sac, and my computer time is hampered by many competing demands. Mainly, though, this time of year I'm doing so much hands-on food production -- growing, foraging, and preserving next winter's stores -- that I don't have much time or, honestly, energy left for writing about it.

So far this spring I put in my usual garden, plus two dug-from-sod new ones -- a berry patch and a second, much larger veggie plot. The berry patch is strawberries and red raspberries, both of which I planted on Mother's Day. Since this plot won't see much action til next spring, I've interplanted them with watermelons (Crimson Sweet) and cantaloupes (Athena). Cole and I had fun yesterday working on his number skills by seeking and counting the baby melons while we sprayed the plants with homemade deer repellent (garlic + rotten eggs + hot pepper oil + water + trying hard not to breathe through nose equals a reasonably effective deer deterrent).

The other two plots are the Jekyll and Hyde of vegetable gardens; the more established one, at my house, is a struggling 15x20 foot fenced plot that never gets enough sun to get semitropicals like peppers and tomatoes to set fruit. On the flip side, it's a fantastic place to grow tender greens all summer long, so I've bowed to the inevitable and planted a salad garden -- plus incubator to about a billion Cinderella pumpkin seedlings which sprang up from a Hallowe'en pumpkin I tossed on the compost heap last fall and inadvertently planted when I spread the compost this spring. Turns out the greens like to shelter under the giant pumpkin leaves, so it's a very interesting unintentional co-planting.


After five years of listening to me bitch about how I can't grow tomatoes at my house my mother finally said, Oh, all right, put in a garden here. When I was a kid we had an enormous -- nearly half an acre, we grew our own corn, dude! -- garden that produced a serious portion of our family's provender. My brother and I were required to put in an hour a day in garden work (which in our opinion didn't pay off until after the first frost, when we would engage in epic rotten tomato battles). Once her free labor had gone off to college, Mom happily turned the garden into lawn and lawn it has stayed until this spring. My Mother's Day gift was getting the berry and vegetable plots roto-tilled, which in my opinion beats anything in a blue Tiffany box.

My little shade garden has been producing daily salad fixins since April, but now my large garden is really kicking into high gear. We went camping week before last, and right before we left I harvested a handful of stuff to take along -- a few cucumbers, some baby Patty Pan squash -- but pickings were slim. One week later we came home to bedlam. Okra the size of Marketmore cucumbers and cucumbers the size of Ron Jeremy's one-eyed monster. The squash plants are vining all over creation, plotting takeover of the remaining lawn, and producing squash the diameter of dinner plates on a daily basis.

That first day back I harvested a bushel and a half total of squash, cukes, eggplant and okra, and it's been go to war Miss Agnes ever since. I've been doing my level best to keep abreast of the wave ever since, eating as much as we can, giving a bunch away, and lacto-fermenting cucumber pickles.

On one hand I can't wait for tomatoes to come in -- other than daily small handfuls of cherry tomatoes, nothing else ready yet from the 48 tomato plants I put in. Once tomatoes begin we'll be able to eat our favorite supper of gazpacho and fried squash every, and I do mean every, day. But: once tomatoes begin in earnest, so does the picking and canning and freezing, and I'll be able to look forward to free time in, like, October.

So although this is my favorite time of year, it's also the most demanding -- I'll put in full-time labor over the next couple months harvesting and preserving. Good thing I don't have to waste time going to the grocery store these days; nearly everything we
we have the privilege of eating these days -- and I don't use the word privilege lightly, being able to nourish ourselves with such marvelously fresh, conscientiously produced food is indeed a daily joy and also honor -- comes from either our own ground, or nearby ground tended by folks we know.

Yesterday was case in point. Breakfast: lamb's quarters and pico de gallo, all made from garden goodies, plus eggs from a neighbor's nearly feral hens (they roam the woods of her farm all day; the only grain they get is when she scatters a handful to lure them into their pen at nightfall). Lunch: leftover fried chicken (shout out to Dru & Homer at Sunnyside Farm, best chicken in the world!) and a big bowl of purslane salad. Dinner, fried patty pan squash, cucumber salad, and bhindi masala.

(The only store food I used yesterday was coffee, salt and peanut oil -- I'm very pleased with the cider vinegar I fermented from soured cider left over from last year's pressing. Such hard work, pouring cider into a jar, covering that with a coffee filter, and letting it linger on the kitchen counter until it smelled, like, well, vinegar. Probably the most calories burned in the process were expended feeling smug as I calculated the value of the 20 oz of vinegar: organic apple cider vinegar, from TJs, at $2.48 for 8 oz or $40/gallon, means I'd just saved $6.20 by *not* pouring old cider down the drain).

GIANT CUCUMBER SALAD

Cucumber(s)
Vinegar (cider, white balsalmic, or rice wine vinegars all work nicely)
Salt
Sugar or honey

Check toughness of cucumber skin; if too tough to pierce with fingernail, either pare them entirely or if skin is only a little tough you can peel alternating stripes, which makes a very pretty salad. Cut off ends.

Slice as thinly as possible (I use a mandoline to both get paper-thin slices and make quick work of slicing a lot of cucumbers -- this keeps well, so I make giant batches).

Put in large glass or ceramic bowl. SPrinkle salt and sugar (or drizzle honey) over. Start with a little, and add more later to taste. Pour vinegar over everything (I do this by eye, but my guess is about 2-3 tablespoons per cucumber depending on size of cuke and strength of vinegar).

Now here's the fun part: wash your hands and then get 'em in there, squeezing and squishing and turning and mixing it all up. The idea is to break down and soften the cucumbers -- they'll express a good amount of liquid. You can eat this right away but it tastes even better if it sits awhile. Great quick relish too -- I use it on hamburgers, etc.

The Morel of the Story

Spring is here, and every species in the world is getting down -- birds are noisily advertising for mates, pollen fills the air indicating rampant plant sex right here right now, and I am so not getting any. Morels, that is! Mushrooms!

I have been morel hunting for a few years, and been lucky at it. I had a good teacher who shared a good spot with me, and helped me get my eyes on. Since then I've been able to do well each spring, finding good spots of my own, bringing home dozens of delicious 'shrooms. This year however I've been eagerly awaiting morels...and waiting...and waiting.

All the co-signs of morel time are here, and even starting to be gone. Folklore says to look for morels when oak leaves are the size of squirrels' ears -- that was so three weeks ago, the forest canopy is close to fully leafed out at this point. Jack in the pulpits and mayapples are way up, the garlic mustard is flowering, and still no morels. I have gone out looking nearly every day over the past three weeks (I started early, just in case -- it's been unusually warm this spring) and have found a grand total of six. Which is six more than other friends, looking in the same park, have been able to come up with.

Morels are famously finicky; the felines of the fungus world, they come when they feel like it -- or not. So if the winter has been not too severe, but also not too mild, if precisely the right amount of rain has fallen at the right time, and the temperature is not too hot, but also not too cold, and if you look in the right place at just the right time...you might find some morels. Then again you very well may not: thus the thrill of the morel hunt.

So today I stopped by the public park where more than two weeks ago I found four morels. Historically this has not been an abundant site, but so far it's the only place that I've found any at all this year. After a half hour of looking I found two more(ls). The first four from a couple weeks back I dried, but these two I threw in a bunch of butter with the rest of the lion's mane and eventually a big clump of dandelions. A fantastic late lunch on a busy day.

In the Weeds

Yesterday was the monthly Baltimore Food Makers pot luck, and about thirty of us enjoyed a picnic in the Jerusalem Mill area of Gunpowder Falls State Park. After eating we hiked through the park along the Gunpowder to the Jericho covered bridge and over into neighboring Flying Plow Farm, searching for wild edible plants the whole way.

Some folks from the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group joined us for the day, and MAPS leader/expert wild foods forager Hue started us off with an appetizer of maple seed pods, and also picked up a pokeweed shoot and spring beauty corm for show-and-tell.

I also helped point out common wild edibles as we ranged through the park. My emphasis on these weed walks is on the weeds -- they're basically everywhere, even in the city; nobody cares if you kill the plant when you gather it; and many varieties are so abundant it's fairly easy to gather enough to feed a family and even preserve some for winter. So we started off taking a look at some common varieties -- dock, plantain, chick weed, dandelion, cow cress, day lily -- growing right by the park roadside.

Once we entered the forest, however, the emphasis was more on looking rather than gathering (with the promise of free-for-all foraging once we reached Flying Plow). The harvesting of native plants is prohibited in Maryland state parks, but we got to admire a pantheon of native varieties in situ. A partial list: skunk cabbage, jack-in-the-pulpits, wild ginger, trout lily, spring beauty, toothwort, greenbriar, wood nettle, jewel weed, and wild ginseng. We also found, in distressing abundance, invasive non-native edible species such as Japanese knotweed, lesser celandine and garlic mustard.

One of the highlights of the walk was when Hue spotted a hericium erinaceus -- lion's mane mushroom -- growing on a beech tree.

(Thanks to Aliza Ess for the photo -- the pieces missing from the mushroom are because several samples had already been taken from it!)

It was a large, dense double cluster, and so after Hue gathered as much as he wanted for the gourmet wild foods cooking class he's teaching next week there was plenty left for other group members to take some home. We all stood around together totally geeking out on this fungus, smelling and tasting and utterly delighted.

This was my first lion's mane. Even uncooked it was delicious -- slightly sweet, with a faintly acrid aftertaste. Hue commented that lion's mane is supposed to taste like lobster, and I definitely got that from the dense, rich flesh.

Here is a close-up of a lion's mane, showing the shaggy strands of the mushroom's outer layer that give it its name:

Eventually the group moved on, but even as we toured Tom and Sarah's first year setup at Flying Plow Farm and identified even more edible species (dandelion greens, mint, dead nettles, gill-over-the-ground, sorrel, burdock) my mind was half occupied by thoughts of sautéing my share of lion's mane in lots and lots of spring butter.

A long day of weed walking plus hungry children the moment I got home called for a simple Sunday supper of spaghetti and meatballs (my homemade frozen "DIY convenience food" -- is that an oxymoron?) in heirloom tomato marinara. The guys had no interest in the lion's mane, which was just dandy with me -- more for mama! -- so while the main course cooked I divided the lion's mane in half and melted just enough butter to coat the bottom of a small cast iron skillet. I pulled half of the mushroom into chunks roughly the size of lump backfin crab and slow-sautéed them for a long time. They never browned -- I wasn't trying for sear -- and did not express any liquid; instead, they just seemed to soften and blot up all the butter.

A dash of sea salt was the only other need for these astonishing 'shrooms -- really, you could have told me I was eating lobster chunks and I would have believed you, the taste and texture were so similar. The lion's mane is just really rich, with a slight sweetness that reminds me of really fresh, ocean-y crustacean. I just stood over the frying pan letting each chunk melt on my tongue and savoring...until Jack came in asking for more meatballs, as in the ones I'd cooked for myself.

Inspiration struck: I'd cooked the mushrooms as a side dish, but they'd work well as an impromptu entrée. My house marinara is very simple, all about the brightness of tomato, and it worked really well with the remaining lion's mane when i swirled both into a plate of pasta. I ate a few bites, and then did a light grating of sheep's milk romano over the rest. It was really really good either way, but the cheese provided just a hint of earthy sharpness that made a nice counterpoint.

Brian later emailed me that he'd made faux crab cakes from his portion of lion's mane, a brilliant way to take advantage of the mushroom's unique properties:



He also mentioned, however, that even though the "crab" cakes were fantastic, he realized he couldn't tell them from a regular crab cake and felt almost disappointed. So, he wrote, "I just heavily seasoned both sides of two mushroom pieces with salt and threw those in the oil to brown heavily on both sides. (It was at this point that it occured to me that i should have been using butter). When I bit into the first one of these, I just sat there chewing in pleasure. It was so juicy and so sweet. It was like a cross between the seafood sweetness of a really good scallop and the oceany subtleness of an oyster. I had sprinkled good seasalt on when they came out of the pan, which might have contributed. But really, these two slices were mind blowing. It's amazing how different this is from something like a morel though. A morel is forest and earthiness - this was nothing like that, but in a completely different way."

Brian concluded, "We have got to find more of these." And I concur completely. Power to the weed walk!

Going for the Aspara-Gusto

So all of a sudden it's going Spring gangbusters around here, and in addition to some surging life and professional demands plus putting in my garden I've been busy gathering and cooking many fun edibles. The downside to all this busy-ness is that I haven't had a spare moment to write about the fun edibles part.

This year March 30th goes down as a red letter day in my personal calendar: Feast of the First Asparagus. There's a little farm stand down the road from where I live, and starting in late March I try to drive past at least once a day and see if the homemade "Asparagus" sign is posted out front. Last Wednesday was my lucky day -- the sign was flying, and I screeched into the field next to the little ramshackle compound. It was nearly 1 pm, and typically produce appears in the early morning at this place. When it's gone, it's gone, at least until the next morning, and so I tried not to get my hopes up. But I was so eager to see if there was indeed any asparagus left that I left my van door hanging open and dashed -- literally ran -- into the farm stand.

Ahhhhh...three bunches left standing upright in a couple of inches of water inside a big Country Crock margarine tub. I was shameless and bought all three ($1.50/bunch). It probably says something about my social life that I was ecstatic -- utterly over the moon -- to be holding three bunches of just-picked Baltimore County asparagus.

Drove straight home and as soon as I walked in the door I turned the oven on to 450 degrees F. Lined a baking pan with foil, plopped one bunch of asparagus on it, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkled coarse sea salt and cracked some fresh pepper on it. Into the oven for 15 minutes, and into my mouth as soon as I could pick up the spears from the baking pan without burning my fingertips too badly...

I'll happily eat asparagus every day until Farmer Bills decides to rest his patch -- at least, every day I get there in time to buy. I was too late each day after Wednesday, arriving once the Country Crock bucket was tragically emptied by earlier buyers, but yesterday as I was leaving all forlorn Mr. Bills happened to be walking across the field. I hailed him to say hello and told him my tale of woe (No asparagus! Five days in a row!) and he very kindly went back in the field and picked two more bunches for me. He says it's a little slow right now with the cooler weather, but as soon as it warms up some there should be abundant asparagus for all.

Unless, of course, I get there first.

Feelin' Sassy. Sort of.

Anyone who's hung out with me recently is well aware of my intense interest in homesteading skills. When I was a kid, back in the back-to-the-land days of the 1970s, the Foxfire books were something of a handbook slash bible for the cool skills needed when venturing off the grid and into a wild life.

I recently bought the first two books off Ebay, and was reading Foxfire 2's chapter on spring wild plant foods with great interest. Maryland's first spring forageables are just peeking above the ground, and I'm raring to start collecting -- and eating.

Old-time mountain folk valued sassafras tea as a spring tonic, saying that it thinned a person's blood made sluggish by a long winter spent indoors. I could certainly use a seasonal pick-me-up, and decided to make some sassafras tea while waiting for the dandelion leaves to get just a little bigger before I pick them and sauté them in an obscene amount of butter.

I uprooted a sassafras sapling while setting up my new compost heap, and making tea could not have been easier -- I scrubbed the three-foot long, fragrant taproot clean of mud, cut it into lengths, smashed those with a meat hammer, and boiled them in a big pot of water. The liquid turned a lovely deep red color and gave off a scent reminiscent of both licorice and shoe polish. I strained out the solids, sweetened the tea with honey (gathered from Baltimore county bees kept by a friend's 9 year old son!) and drank several cups. This might have been wishful thinking, but I swear it made me feel a little, well, tingly.

It's truly a delicious drink -- a complex, slightly sharp taste that reminds me of root beer, with a velvety mouth feel. (The mouth feel is very distinct, and I wasn't surprised to read later that sassafras leaves are dried to make filé powder, the Cajun seasoning that lends both flavor and especially thickening properties to gumbo). I poured the rest into bottles, one to give to a friend and brought the other as a beverage contribution for a pot luck following a Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group workshop on emergency preparedness.

That batch of sassafras tea is all drunk up now, and I was basking in a fairly deep sense of coolness about having made it. I mean, talk about your back yard beverage! But then it occurred to me to look up the health benefits of sassafras tea, other than of course the traditional springtime blood thinning thing.

Distressingly, it turns out that sassafras used to be popular as a food additive and flavoring but was banned by the FDA in the 1960s after it turned out that safrole, the essential oil that gives sassafras its distinctive odor and flavor, caused liver cancer in laboratory rats. Grrreeeeaattt...It also turns out that the Cherokee, who used sassafras as a traditional medicine, also stressed that it should never be taken for more than a week at a time, so even back before laboratories and rats it was known that you shouldn't drink a whole lot of this stuff. One side affect of too much sass, too fast: profuse sweating and shakiness.

I feel a little bad that I foisted potentially carcinogenic sassafras tea on my friend Brian -- he's been under the weather for the past couple weeks, a guy in need of a spring tonic if ever I've seen one -- as well as my new MAPS friends, all without doing due diligence on the potential benefits or, ahem, pitfalls of the foraged food.

Further research shows that a few cups of sassafras tea isn't going to hurt anyone -- it's long term, high-dosage use that brings on the liver cancer. (Now, what was it that Euell Gibbons died of? Since in Stalking the Wild Asparagus's sassafras chapter Gibbons mentions his fondness for, and frequent quaffing of, sassafras root tea). So I'll probably limit my own sassafras tea consumption to a single, annual March spring tonic brewing, and certainly alert anyone I might ever offer it to in the future as to its potential lethality.

So I hereby apologize to Brian, and MAPS folks (especially Dan, who seemed to like it the most), and also to my liver. Happy Spring!

Cube-ism

So I waded back into the beef this week. Porterhouse steaks last Friday night -- the butcher cut them a little thin for me, on the skinny side of half an inch, but a quick sear on the grill with a nice sea salt and pepper crust turned out some tender, flavorful meat. Mashed potatoes (potatoes and butter courtesy of the Amish co-op) and a salad (from Gardener's Gourmet woodstove-heated greenhouses in Westminster, by way of the Waverly farmer's market) rounded out a quick and satisfying dinner.

Ever since I crammed, stuffed, and wedged that quarter side of beef into my freezer last month I've been wondering what the hell I'd do with the 20 or so pounds of cube steak that came along with. I wasn't even sure what cube steak *is* -- we never ate it when I was a kid, so it's not part of my retro-foods vernacular.

I did however have vague recollections of a fantastic Dorothy Allison essay I'd read in the NYT Magazine a few years ago. It was more about her scrambling up the economic ladder far enough to afford a duck and a goose for Christmas -- the accompanying recipe is how to roast a duck. The part that stuck in my memory, though, was a passage about pounding oddball cuts of beef with a Coke bottle to tenderize it -- essentially, home-made cube steak. I went looking for it and got to re-read one of the most lyrical passages of food writing I've ever encountered:

"Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps. That’s it. It smells of home, the door locked against the night and a stillness made safe by the sound of a spoon going round in a pan. It is anticipation, the last thing prepared before the meal comes to the table, the bowl in Mama’s hand closing the day out peacefully, no matter what came before."

Having read that -- and also the part about the Coke bottle pounding -- again, how could I not venture in for my own cube steak and gravy experience?

Once the inaugural pack of cube steaks thawed out, I opened the white butcher's paper to discover six heavily dimpled, flattened cutlets. The cuts were in a checkerboard shape -- hence the term "cube" steak. When I'd spoken to the butcher who custom-slaughtered our quarter cow, she'd offered this meat in the form of cutlets or cube steaks, my choice, but heavily recommending the cube steaks. "You'd have to work really hard to get this meat anywhere near tender enough to eat. You'd have to pound it within an inch of your life before you cook it," she advised over the phone. "But we have a machine that pounds the meat and tenderizes it for you."

Hey, I'm in favor of anything involving less work for little ol' me, so cube steak it was. Plus, though I'd envisioned engaging Jack and Cole in a little pre-dinner meat pounding, we utterly lack any of the heavy-lipped old fashioned Coke bottles Dorothy Allison references. So I told the butcher go ahead, pound 'er up.

Cube steak, it turns out, generally comes from parts of the cow that got a lot of exercise -- fairly tough cuts of muscle, like the the top or the round. Once tenderized, however, whether mechanically or via child labor, it's basically poor man's steak, straddling the divide between hamburger and cheap sirloin. Kitchens the world over have a use for cube steak, it seems. Browsing the innerwebs for cooking ideas, I mused over the phenomenon of smothered steak -- an approach ranging from intriguing, as in braising them in stock with caramelized onions, to terrifying preparations involving canned green beans and cream of mushroom soup. Latino kitchens marinate in lime and garlic to make bistec palomilla or adobo seasoning for bistec encebollado; Asian ones don't bother with the macerating, they just cut it matchstick-thin and stir fry. The cube steak concept that most made my mouth water, however, was chicken-fried steak.

I used to spend a fair amount of time in Austin, Texas, and I have fond memories of the chicken-fried steak at Threadgills. They claim theirs is world famous, and maybe even invented there if memory serves, but I just wanted to dine where Janis Joplin used to be the house entertainment. The outstanding chicken-fried steak was a secondary benefit.

Now, Threadgill's does East Texas CFS, which means batter dipped and served with sawmill (white) gravy. I am by birth tragically gravy challenged and so decided to make West Texas-style CFS, where the meat is simply coated in seasoned flour and quickly fried in a hot skillet. I am reasonably able to make a quick pan gravy, essentially a red-eye gravy, but cream gravies in my past have been regrettable.

So I filled a pie plate with flour, sprinkled on some coarse sea salt and lots lots lots of ground pepper. I floured the steaks on both sides and dropped them into a very hot iron skillet which had been liberally lubricated with lard. Once I'd flash-fried up a dinner's worth of cube steaks I then turned the savory, crunchy bits left in the pan into a dark brown gravy by dumping the leftover flour into the skillet to brown, then adding water and a little milk. By this time the smell of frying beef had filled the house, and once the gravy thickened up I called the boys to the table for chicken-fried steak and garlic mashed potatoes, with an ocean of gravy poured over.

I didn't have to call twice.

Loving the Leftovers

Since starting this blog a couple months ago it's become evident to me that we tend to eat the same dinners over and over. In any given week one night will almost definitely feature paht thai, and another is likely to feature spaghetti and meatballs.

(A note about meatballs: although I'm all about eating locally, sustainably and seasonally, there are a few convenience foods I might actually purchase, were they to exist, like frozen, pre-cooked meatballs made from pastured beef. I have never found these anywhere, but it would be great to keep a package on hand for last-minute meals. Instead I make my own meatballs in giant batches, cook and freeze them for quick reheating: DIY convenience food. For just those times when the meatball bag is empty and the guys are too starving to wait for -- and I'm too exhausted to assemble -- scratch-cooked anything, I stash a package of Applegate Farms uncured, grassfed hot dogs in the freezer. Hey, on those nights, it's either that or popcorn for our evening meal; peanut butter sandwiches would be a fantastic dinner alternative, except on those nights we are also invariably fresh out of bread).

Anyway, the guys often request skeddi (as Coley calls it) and meatballs. I usually cook an entire pound of pasta, even though we eat maybe a third of it for dinner, because what I really look forward to is the next day: Skeddi Pie. Or, as my Neapolitan landlady used to call it, torta di pasta.

I've never actually seen a recipe for this, though I'm sure you can find anything on the ol' innerwebs. It's one of those something-from-nothing dishes that Italian cooks seem to emerge from the womb already proficient in throwing together. It's brilliant with any kind of left-over pasta, from short or tube pastas to long strands, even if the pasta is already dressed in tomato, cream or any other sauce. This recipe can also make use of many other odds and ends you might have lingering in the fridge. It's fast, simple, and inexpensive, and best of all really really delicious. Also highly portable -- it's one of my favorite picnic foods.

Basically, once the pasta is tossed with the eggs and Parmesan, you can toss in whatever you've got loitering around: leftover roasted vegetables. Artichoke hearts. Sun-dried tomatoes, or chopped fresh ones. Anchovies or sardines. Olives, capers, marinated mushrooms. Pennies. (Just seeing if you were paying attention).

Torta di Pasta

4 cups cooked/cooled pasta (approx 1/2 lb, a little more or a little less is fine)
3 eggs, beaten,
1 cup grated Parmesan or Reggiano cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated pepper

Add-ins: at least throw a handful of sliced scallions in there, or some olives, but really anything goes -- as little or as much as you like.

Oven to 375.

In large bowl, combine pasta with all ingredients (except add-ins). Using your hands for best results, and also because it's fun, mix gently but thoroughly. Fold in scallions, olives, etc.

In a large (9 or 10 inch) ovenproof skillet (cast iron is brilliant for this), heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil. When pan is very hot, pack pasta mixture into the pan as evenly as you can. Cook over medium-high for about 3 minutes, until starting to brown on bottom. Run a spatula around sides and underneath to loosen torta and prevent sticking. Slide into oven for 15-20 minutes, until middle is firm to touch in center.

I usually serve this straight from the pan, but you can run a spatula under and around the cake to loosen it and then invert onto a platter.

Crunchy On The Inside

Recently I've been trying to take more of a problem-solving approach to life here on the cul-de-sac. Case in point: we seem to always run late for school in the mornings, and it's a major stressor for everyone -- me carping at the boys to get dressed, find their backpacks, finish their breakfasts, no really I mean it put clothes on right NOW. I swear the average school morning shaves an entire week off my lifespan, and the boys don't enjoy it either.

One thing that slows us down, I know, is that my insistence on a solid, nutritious breakfast, and preferably a hot one. Pancakes are relatively quick, and so is oatmeal when I remember to soak the danged oats the night before, but when you're working on getting everyone fed, dressed and out the door in less than 30 minutes, scratch-cooked breakfasts are just going to make us late for school. Again.

So I've been playing around with the idea of breakfast bars -- whole grains, fruit and protein in portable form. Add a travel cup of milk and you've got a car seat-friendly first meal of the day. I certainly didn't invent the idea -- the supermarket is rife with kiddie go-foods, from cereal bars coated with a white substance meant to suggest milk to slurpable tubes of technicolor yogurt containing more sugar per serving than a Coke.

Since I've long been concerned with organic and whole foods, I've also often been mocked for being a hippie: "You're SO crunchy," someone once told me. I don't wear Birkenstocks or tie-dyed anything, and never really counterculture identified (though I must confess to attending a few Grateful Dead shows) so I'm not sure why how I eat makes me a hippie when I seem to lack most of the other flower child cultural markers. Whatever, man.

Thus I think it's funny that I've only been making my own granola for a couple of years, and this is my first shot at granola bars -- granola being the standard culinary petard used to hoist hippies, I guess. Maybe I've been crunchy on the inside all along.

No matter my demographic, I would benefit as much as the guys from a healthy portable breakfast, if this morning's regrettable trip to Safeway is any indication. Today I had time for coffee but nothing more on a morning totally thrown off by the Daylight Savings time change, which sprang forward hard on my ass. After dropping the guys at school -- on time, though just barely -- I swung by the grocery store and was blindsided by English muffin lust. Safeway's got a buy-one, get one free sale on Thomas' products this week and, upon entering this particular store, shoppers are greeted by an enormous English muffin display.

I've worshiped at the Church of Michael Pollan for nearly four years now, and we eat as traditionally and seasonally as we possibly can. However, English muffins happen to be one of the industrial foods I've missed most -- for many years I breakfasted daily and happily on a toasted English muffin, slathered with butter and marmalade -- and this morning, confronted in my hunger-weakened state by the muffin mountain, I threw two boxes of whole wheat muffins into the cart. It wasn't til I got home that it dawned on me to check the ingredients list, which was appallingly long: thirty-eight separate ingredients (counting "mono- and di-glycerides" as two). Holy multisyllabic industrial food additives, Batman! I still toasted one up and ate it slathered with butter, but the joy was gone. English muffins are so over for me now.

Fortunately I have evolved a really, really good breakfast bar recipe. I played around with all sorts of approaches, including blending in tofu for extra protein and moisture, but ended up with a more or less classic granola bar. It's dense and chewy, not too sweet, and as chock-full of fruit and fiber as you want to make it -- you can add up to three cups of dried fruit, nuts, seeds, whatever you got, or none at all (though IMHO you're crazy if you don't, those tasty little treat nuggest are the best part!), it's all good. My favorite combination so far is 2/3 cup each dried fruit-juice-sweetened cranberries, walnuts and large-shred (flaked) organic coconut. (Anybody knows a reliable place to find flaked coconut minus propylene glycol and sulfites, please to let me know).

Cul-de-Sac Breakfast Bars

1 cup quick rolled oats (not instant)
2/3 cup old fashioned oats
1/3 cup whole wheat or unbleached flour
1/4 cup hippie sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
up to 3 cups coarsely chopped dried fruit, nuts and/or seeds*

6 tablespoons melted butter (can substitute some or all of this with coconut oil)
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
2 tablespoons golden syrup** or molasses
1 tablespoon water

Oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8x8 pan.

Mix together all the dry ingredients plus any additions you're adding. In a separate bowl whisk together butter, syrups and water. Toss wet with dry until evenly moistened. Firmly press the mixture into the prepared pan, packing it down and distributing it evenly.

Bake 40-45 minutes, until the edges are brown. The center will seem underbaked, but will firm up as it cools. Cool completely in pan on a cooling rack before slicing. To store -- not that these will hang around long -- wrap squares individually or keep in airtight container.

* Suggestions: any kind of nuts, of course, and chopped dried fruit like apricots or prunes. Also sunflower seeds, pepitas, sesame seeds, wheat germ, flax meal, even chocolate chips (cherries, walnuts and dark chocolate chunks are a pretty amazing combination if you're loose on your definition of acceptable breakfast foods).

**Lyle's Golden Syrup is my new favorite obscure ingredient! It's a British baking item that is a useful substitute for corn syrup. Genuine golden syrup like Lyle's is made from cane sugar, and has a marvelous caramel flavor that really comes out in these granola bars. (There are knockoff brands that mix corn syrup with molasses; technically this is treacle, not golden syrup, so be sure to read the label). For a darker, richer flavor you can of course use molasses. You could also substitute King syrup, or of course just use corn syrup. Golden syrup is sold at many grocery stores.

Kitchen Therapy

I've been making a lot of som tum (green papaya salad) recently. Actual green papayas -- not unripe regular papayas, but a distinct and separate papaya species that remains green even when ripe -- are hard to come by, and I generally only find them at H-Mart or other large Asian grocers. They tend to be big, so when I do get my hands on a green papaya it's som tum time for quite some time around here. (You can find the recipe along with one for paht thai here).

The thing about green papaya is that its flesh is really tough, and the recipe I use calls for tenderizing it via extended pounding in a mortar and pestle. Lacking a large enough mortar, I just pound the hell out of it in a giant Pyrex bowl using the pusher cylinder from my Cuisinart as pestle. It's quite the workout, really -- the whole recipe, which requires thorough pounding to mix in the seasonings as well as bruise the raw green beans, takes about 6-8 continuous minutes of rapid upper body exertion. It's a great way to work out any frustrations or tensions you may have carried through the day: it's not just dinner, it's an existential palliative!

Sometimes, however, even a thorough papaya pounding isn't enough to cure what ails and this morning I felt the deep need for Rice Krispie treats. I've been slogging through a rough couple of weeks, life-wise, and I've been craving them for quite a few days now. I believe in listening to the body and feeding what it asks for -- I mean, usually my body is asking for greens. (Seriously: my most common food cravings are kale, spinach and eggs. Go figure). But what about when your body says, hey, how 'bout some doughnuts?

So to both soothe my angst and stick to my dietary convictions, I've been trying to come up with a less evil version of RKTs -- using puffed brown rice, local raw butter and making my own marshmallows (more about that in a future post -- I have yet to conquer the homemade marshmallow learning curve). My first efforts were, in a word, inedible. The homemade marshmallow was definitely the problem -- once set, it refused to soften again to combine properly with the cereal. Instead of Rice Krispie Treats I had tooth-shattering brown nuggets that nobody wanted to eat, not even the squirrels after I chucked them out in the yard. And our aggressive mutant squirrels will eat anything left outside -- including pumpkin pie, bottled mustard and, once, the better part of a Coleman cooler lid.

This morning I just gave up the struggle and made some damned straight-up RKTs. I didn't do this on purpose but I did end up using just about the most vile ingredients possible -- WalMart brand crisp rice cereal that my mom brought over, plus supermarket marshmallows and some regular butter that's been sitting in the freezer. So this is truly a junk-fest of odd additives -- who knew there was blue food coloring in marshmallows? They're white, fer cryin' out loud -- and funky chemicals: bring on the tetrasodium pyrophosphate!

Making RKTs could not be easier: put 40 large marshmallows (or 4 cups mini mallows) and 3 tablespoons butter in a big bowl. Microwave for 2 minutes, stir, and microwave another 1-2 minutes untill completely melted. Stir again, then stir in 6 cups crisp rice cereal. Press into buttered 9x13 pan. Begin eating immediately.

I started the recipe at 8:50 and by 9 am I was chowing on my very own personal pan of industrial deliciousness. I guarantee they'll be gone by the end of the day, and yes I'll probably be feeling pretty gross, physically. But one-third of the way through the pan I already feel a little less bleak of spirit, a little more optimistic and energized (though that's likely due to the four different kinds of sweetener -- count 'em: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, and sugar -- found in the ingredients).

Eating sustainably is crucial, but sometimes sustenance wears a weirdly different form. I almost never eat this way, but today I'm feeding not my body but my soul. And my soul apparently is solidly white-trash.

FOOTNOTE: I only got to eat the portion of the RKTs you see already missing in the photo. Shortly after posting this blog entry I spotted our babysitter's adolescent Weimeranar dashing out the front door of my house carrying an entire giant rice krispy treat in his joyful jaws. Dammit.