It’s that time again. This week I decided to think outside the box, that is the icebox.
The following are pictures of frozen blackberries. Each year, I freeze them so I can cook black and blue muffins (combination muffins with blackberries and blueberries) at will, rather than waiting for them to be in season during the summer months.
Macro shots taken with my cell phone’s 3.2 megapixel camera.
Last week running errands, we had a minor inconvenience. When one task did not go as planned, we coped like any self-respecting couple, and went to a mexican restaurant for a cheap lunch and a stress-reducing margarita.
The waiter who showed us to our booth, was new. He was an older gentleman, whose smile, and demeanor was laced with the kind of euphoria displayed by those who have either dodged a bullet, or beaten cancer. It was the joy of someone who is simply glad to be here, and ecstatic about being alive.
As we were seated, the waiter took notice of my shoes (I wear these odd looking, shoes with separate pockets for each toes, so it looks like you are wearing gloves on your feet.). He asked about the shoes, took our drink order, and showered us with gratuitous thank yous.
When he brought the drinks, he took our food order, and asked about the shoes again, inquiring if I would write the name of the store where they were purchased, showered us with thank yous again, then left us to our margaritas.
After entreés arrived, he enquired if we needed anything else, and asked about the shoes, again. By now we were bemused. His service was fawning, and his interest in the shoes obsessive. If he was angling for a better tip, he was going about it in an interesting way.
After a few more minutes passed, he returned to the table with a water glass to see if we needed anything else, and then he proceeded to show his appreciation (I assume about writing down the shoe vendor) by pouring additional alcohol into our glasses, transforming two house margaritas into margarita martinis…
We smiled and thanked him. After he left, we discussed how much time we needed to walk around before driving home.
Favorite summer meal, Open face tomato sandwich with bacon & fresh mozzarella.
A true masculine chauvinist product of his generation, my FIL never could understand why I invested time in calla lilies instead of the edible delights practical gardening had to offer. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t have an adequate location for a vegetable patch. The back yard, too shady, and the front yard was under the fascist rule of the homeowners association. My green thumb… wasn’t. I’ve murdered enough basil, rosemary, and oregano to supply a chain of Italian restaurants for a year. I never succeeded with potted herbs. I just dried them…on the stems. Nonetheless, he felt I should enjoy the labors of vegetable gardening as much as he did.
What he might not have known, or possibly remembered, was I had a garden once. The summer I met his son, I attempted a small “bucket” garden behind my duplex. Half a dozen plants in five gallon buckets. Tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. I had visions of fresh salsa and open faced tomato sandwiches. The plants flourished. The tomato vines were so healthy I draped them over the clothes line to prevent the fruit from rotting.
Things went well, until I started spending more time with the one who was to become the Better Half. In my absence, the birds turned my garden into salad bar and pecking holes in each to tomato and absconding with all the peppers. The plants were healthy but naked. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my houseplants begin dying one by one until the only remaining live botanical was au succulent stuffed in an insufficient amount of potting soil.
In light of the results, I concluded that I was only qualified to nurture one relationship at a time and five gallon buckets were assigned other uses.
Perhaps I was hasty or superstitious, but it can be burdensome to nurture. Need nags and some withstand the drain better than others, not that it isn’t good to be needed… We are simply not allowed to quantify the dosage, and are left to cope with that which is thrust upon us.
Do you remember being the age when you showed those first signs of self-awareness that other families do things differently? You are sitting at the table at your bffs house and, oh crap they’re blessing the food, or maybe, oh crap, you can eat without blessing it, or the more sublime, you mean you can prepare beef without over-salting it and roasting it to the consistency of tire rubber?
When Better Half and I got engaged, we were cranberry sauce novices. Our combined experience was limited to the mysterious gelled substance that made a disgusting slurping noise as it was disturbed from the the vacuum that sealed it in the can. If it wasn’t cylinder shaped and ribbed, it wasn’t a cranberry sauce, it was some sort of fancy impostor.
On impulse, we purchased a bag of ripe cranberries, We assuming people purchased them for snacking on because they were next to the grapes in the produce department, and the dried cranberries tasted pretty good, and heck they had fiber, you can’t really go wrong with fiber.
We popped a few cranberries into our mouths, which immediately caused my face to contort like one of those scary denture-less old ladies you see in the hospital wearing the backless gown wandering down the hallway trying to remember where she parked her Buik, then I spit them into the sink and threatened to lick the shag carpet to eliminate the memory of the unfortunate assault on my taste buds. We decided those berries might not be ripe enough, and chose darker berries for taste test number two, and dude what the hell, those were bitter too. We threw away the bag.
Fast forward to the following year, and my aunt invites us to join her for Thanksgiving dinner. Like a gracious guest who is relieved not be saddled with the burden of cooking for eight, I ask if there is anything we can bring?
Yup, you guessed it. A bag of fresh cranberries. I asked if she was sure, and the Better Half went into a lengthy diatribe about the bitter truth about cranberries. Unconvinced, she insists. Fresh. Cranberries. In. A. Bag.
Fine.
So, we show up with fresh cranberries. In a bag. My aunt tells us, oh the cranberry sauce is easy. Just follow the instructions on the bag. Better Half gives me the, you can’t turn shit into shinola eye-roll, and I think to myself, THERE WERE INSTRUCTIONS? ON THE BAG? FOR REALS? I am such an idiot.
It was easy. Sugar repairs a host of ills when it comes to cranberries. But they aren’t really ill, just misunderstood. It’s easier to make cranberry sauce from scratch than it is to coax that gelatinous glob out of the can….although homemade is ridge-free and I find that suspect.
Have you ever had one of those moments when an idea permeates your gray matter, relentlessly nagging you until you cave? This is like that, only it involves heavy whipping cream and cognac. Not foreplay for the brain, but for the taste buds. The better half and I were eating dinner on the couch, as is frequently the case since we have spent so much time together in the past few weeks, we have almost completely exhausted all civil discourse reserved for meals. The television was on and the characters were becoming uncharacteristically obsessed with food. Steak au poive to be exact. My partner had to know, what is the steak au poive and should he be eating it?
After a quick web search, he concluded we should try it, so we gathered a list of ingredients and settled on this recipe. Aside from the kitchen fire, I didn’t deviate from the recipe. I even made a special trip to the liquor store for cognac.
The preparations were straight forward and trouble free, until it was time to prepare the cream sauce. I lifted the skillet off the burner to add the cognac. You already know where this going, right? Immediately the alcohol flamed, without any encouragement from a combustion source, and three foot flames rose from the pan, around the stove hood, tracing the cabinet doors. I backed away from the stove, with the pan, and went about the business of efficiently extinguishing the flames, both in the pan and on the counter top before calling my partner in to wisk the cream before I busted my ass on the kitchen floor in the small puddle of cognac at my feet.
After checking for singed hair and the presence of eye brows, the Mister asked why I didn’t call him sooner. I responded that it simply wouldn’t have worked. When your dousing the flames that have consumed your entrée, you don’t have time to explain why, lest you singe all the hair from your arms, and set the whole fucking kitchen on fire. Sometimes reactions are more important than explanations.
I have never seen that much fire in a residential kitchen, much less been the cause of it. Strangely the means justified the tenderloin. Just keep a fire extinguisher available should you follow my example.
* Television is evil.
The magical goodness that is locally grown, fresh sweet corn. Microwave in the shuck, for one minute, plus an additional two minutes for each ear (i.e. 2 ears, cook 5 minutes regular power). What? You expected more effort? Surely you jest. Okay, add salt and butter, if you must.
The weekly market is in full swing. Each Sunday, through December, local produce, live music, handcrafted items, massage therapist, and a climbing wall for the kids (Yours, not mine. Mine prefer the drapes) are conveniently located in the same space. Now it feels like summer, as if the crunchy grass beneath my feet, and sweat rings on my clothes wasn’t indication enough.
I’m something of a food snob, with a mediocre interest in cooking. I’m not constantly plagued with recharging the fire extinguisher, but I have burned more peas than any person should have to account for when not cooking meals with the aid of a welding torch. But, you know shit does happen, and when it happens to peas it smells a lot like smoldering hair.
Zucchini and yellow squash are at the peak of freshness. When picked young, their flavor has a natural sweetness, seldom duplicated from truck farmed inventory available at the grocery. These are usually roasted in the oven, are added to baby portobello mushrooms to create a bastardized version of stir-fry. The commonality is both meals require less effort from me in an apron.
I like food. I like good food. But, I don’t like not knowing what’s in my food or preserving my food. Cooking has become something of a necessary evil. The scientific names on can labels, and boxed preservatives tends to freak me out, so I don’t prepare convenience food as often as I once did.
Fresh produce shouldn’t be a luxury, but for many families it is. It perplexes me how fresh food that hasn’t been heavily processed (washing doesn’t count) can cost more than crap in a cardboard box. Although I doubt understanding why, would make me feel better about it.
Some things are learned by example, others require research, and then there are things which are more easily absorbed when taught. My mother wasn’t much of a teacher. As a career woman, and mother of three, it isn’t like she had a lot free time on her hands to gently coax us or unscrew the tops of our skulls so the information might be poured directly into our brains. She didn’t leave us to our own devices Lord of the Flies style, but many learning experiences were trial by fire, particularly when it came to cooking.
Whenever my mother, or her sisters asked my grandmother to teach them how to cook, my grandmother would point them to a sink full of dirty dishes, and respond, “You can start by washing those.” In the end, my grandmother passed down good recipes of home cookin’, but I seriously doubt she taught any of the girls how to boil water. Thankfully, she didn’t teach them how cook on high, either.
My grandmother was a different generation of a career woman raising a family. She and my grandfather were products of the Great Depression and embraced the entrepreneurial spirit of people who worked hard to earn what they had. She baked cakes. Lots of ‘em, for my grandfather’s grocery store. I suspect the first four letter word my mother learned was, shit. It was my grandmother’s expletive of choice when she dropped a freshly baked pound cake on the floor.
In spite of my grandmother’s influence, or perhaps her simple lack of patience, all three of daughters became good cooks, each bearing a distinct style of her own though all were influenced by southern traditions. The oldest, developed gourmet leanings. Unafraid to substitute ingredients if it suited her purpose, no recipe was too complex, nor too much trouble to prepare for a standing crowd of forty. What good was a crowd if you couldn’t experiment upon them? My mother, the middle child, was more traditional. She followed directions to the hundredth decimal point. The recipe wasn’t perfect, unless it contained all the ingredients exactly as printed. Unlikely to try new recipes on her own, but if prompted she would search through recipe books for hours attempting to honor my request for chinese food or paella. She is genius at selecting cuts of meat, and preparing them to their tenderest. Time spent in my grandfather’s butcher shop, was well invested.The youngest’s cooking style, was an amalgam of the older two. She tried new and exciting recipes, and followed directions with such attention as to make one think she was constructing plastic explosives in the kitchen. She surpassed the others when it came to presentation. Not only did her preparations comfort the palate, but the presentation was exquisite.
Over the years, grandchildren, would prompt my grandmother for recipes, but they all lacked the essence of what made them hers. She issued one recipe for biscuits, without including flour (her impatience wasn’t limited to teaching, apparently it included written directions as well). She advised another on her wedding day, it was essential to keep three quarts of frozen chicken stock on hand at all times, but neglected to mention why. On her fifth anniversary, the niece asked, “what am I supposed to with that chicken stock, anyway?”
Two generations of impatient women, who don’t have the time nor inclination to explain the nuances of tedious tasks. We take for granted we learned theses things the hard way, and consider you are a bright enough spark to do the same for yourself. I doubt I ever learn to make biscuits.
