Put on Your Apron

Newsflash!  Seismic shift!  Ego shattering revelation!

After more than four decades of putting food in front of my family, I’ve discovered I am not a cook.  

It’s kinda a big letdown.  

I wasn’t raised on fancy food.  Was anyone who was a kid in the 1960s?  Round steaks and meatloaf, spaghetti and stew, canned green beans and corn and peaches and pears.  My mom could bake everything and did: homemade cinnamon bread, homemade noodles, gooey rolls and fruit topped coffee cakes.  From my granny: round loaves of brown bread studded with raisins and baked in fruit cans. From my grandma: oatmeal cookies with caramel icing.  She could also pan fry chicken, a task I undertook to learn despite my father’s admonition that only women of a certain girth could be expected to do that successfully.  I wasn’t fazed because none of the women in our family met that criteria and all fried chicken. Carrying on tradition, I would faithfully fry a big mess of chicken parts the night before we would leave on family vacation so we could picnic out of the cooler for lunches along the way.

Sure, my mom used recipes: her Joy of Cooking and Betty Crocker cookbooks were well-thumbed.  But after awhile, I doubt she needed to look back at the recipe for teriyaki marinade or Spanish rice or raisin bars.  Aside from steak on special occasions and grilled burgers and barbeque chicken in the summer, our dinner table was set for sustenance, not style.

Me too.

So our kids grew up on pasta with hamburger and homegrown spaghetti sauce.  They choked down the big chunks of tomatoes in the chili though they weren’t thrilled about it. We ate homemade pizza and baked chicken, pot roast with potatoes and sweet corn from our freezer.  We ate a lot of eggs. But I was creative every once in a while: from the recipe insert in the St. Joe paper, I would make one really tasty recipe for pasta called “Amatriciana” every once in a while.....

Bucatini all'Amatriciana

…..no, not that one….I had to look up what ‘bucatini’ is... My recipe called for bacon rather than pancetta and I’m certain I used Kraft-Parmesan-out-of-a-can instead of Pecorino Romano!  But! It was a recipe! I followed it, and it tasted different and took more time and effort than my usual throw in a pound of this, a jar of that, a handful of salt and oregano, and put the cheese on the table.  Cooking in those days focused on bulk, not art, and any dish that could wait on the stove on low without becoming totally inedible was a keeper. Double bonus if supper could be created from what was in the freezer and the pantry when the HyVee was miles away and people were hungry.

This extended preamble is intended to illustrate that I am in full realization of the rudimentary level of my cooking skills. But that self awareness was no match for the schooling, nay...revelation, that  I received at the gas burners of the New Orleans Cooking School. Here, we learned culture: that Creole and Cajun are like light and dark, city and country. That the best French bread is stale within hours.  That the “file’” in gumbo is sassafras and should be used to taste with care.

When it comes to ‘the roux you do’, we grew faint of heart as the flour and lard darkened and needed constant reassurance that our skillet would survive.  This glorious hue, achieved after forty plus minutes of stirring with a roux spoon, was the result…

How to Make a Roux

Looking at this link will show you the color progression.  I will say that Chef Kati did not suggest oil; we began with about a pound of lard.

Cooking up the sausage required another leap of faith.  Again, the bottom of the pan became ominously black, but we were told not to worry: that all that crunchy stuff was essential for full flavor.  And, sure enough, when the ‘holy trinity’ of celery, pepper and onion was finished ‘sweating’ , like magic, the bottom of the pan was as clean as a mirror.  Notice how casually I throw around terms like ‘sweating’ and ‘holy trinity’? Before my stint at the Cooking School, sweating was for humans and the Trinity was not constrained to vegetables.

Time to taste.  “Needs salt!”, was the unabashed opinion of one cook.  We did, and added a shot of Crab Boil for good measure….

Crab Boil

Finally, we shook in a little Joe’s Stuff, the all purpose seasoning of the New Orleans Cooking School, tasted again, shrugged our shoulders, and handed our dish off to the chef for his professional opinion….

And...and...after all that chemistry, all that culture, and all that care, the chef simply dumps Joe’s into the pot willy-nilly...just like I would???  We all gasp….then taste...and declare our gumbo the best.

Was it fun to follow the rules...to execute rather than wing it?  To know why? To create as we replicated? To honor tradition and culture?  Yes..this was cooking food that I would pay money to eat like I would buy tickets to the theater...performance food.  While the method undoubtedly determined the excellent results, I wondered how many Cajun mamas stirred the roux for hours to ensure the perfect color and maximum flavor and how many looked at the clock and said, Mon Dieu! Papa’ll be a bear if this isn’t on the table when he walks through that door……

….as she pours a bunch of Joe’s  into the pot and gives it a quick stir…..

Today, I looked up a recipe for Sunday dinner.  I put on my apron before I wiped onion and garlic and chicken juice on my jeans.  Putting on the Cooking School apron made me feel all official. I had my chicken and mushrooms, my angel hair pasta and cheeses.  I’d bought a jar of Ragu, but, under the influence of the Cooking School apron, halfway through the process, I decided to go home made all the way.  Hmmm….well I didn’t have the three Romas, but no matter, I did have a can of fire roasted tomatoes. And...yeah, I didn’t have a lick of half & half, so I cut the flour a bit and added all the tomato juice in the can.  That’s a picture from the website. It looks almost exactly like mine.

I tried to follow the recipe….

My husband still added salt.

 I think it would be even better with shrimp.

Must be the apron…...

Everyday, Every Day

Sometime this week, while celebrating, we lost someone.We didn't notice.  But today, as I began  to dismantle the Christmas decorations, I discovered one of the little Snow Village shoppers had disappeared.  Not a trace, even of a dropped peppermint striped shopping bag.  I thought the little figure might have slipped beneath a poly quilt filling snow drift.  We checked the empty gift boxes as we hauled them to the trailer to take to the farm.  Lee even asked Ryan if he had any inkling...since he has been known to rearrange the inhabitants of Snow Village when no one is looking...but alas, after all the ornaments were boxed and the decorations bagged and carried to the basement, the china tot was nowhere to be seen.

Christmas 2018 is in the books, but the Christmas mystery remains.

Tonight while the north wind is howling at the windows and hissing around the doors, I think I hear  the old year digging its nails into the trees and its heels into the driveway while the new year chugs in like a freight train.  Farewell to ye, old year, and a good riddance to your foul weather and rotten politics.  Whatever may befall us in 2019, there will be a minimum of political ads, if not opprobrium.  The elements? Meh...it will be too hot and too cold, droughty and rainy at unfortunate times.  The elements will be what they will be and we can but pray for the best and expect the normal extremes to average out to "normal".

The 2019 family calendar is hot off the presses at Shutterfly and in the mail,  nearly every date filled with the best moments of 2018 in pictures and/or birthdays and anniversaries of loved ones.  It's my constant reminder that each day brings its own blessing, the small ones as vital to our well-being as the big ones.  However crummy the corporate memory of a year, it cannot be considered an unmitigated disaster if a person has 718 happy pictures to fit into 365 days....

I have been enjoying a recent addition to the YouVersion app: using some of my own photos as backdrops to favorite Bible verses. The verse comes first and then the search for an image. The right photo doesn't always appear, but these ordinary snapshots of my oh so ordinary life make God's Word a more integral part of my daily routine than the spectacular photographs and calligraphy often provided with the very best of intentions.

This frigid New Year's Eve Blake and I stayed home.  While I loved last year's extravaganza of music and a night out, our evening of grocery store sushi and Netflix, snug under the flannel sheets when the midnight fireworks popped and crackled, was comfortable and fulfilling.  The Christmas tree is downstairs with just a few staticky pieces of tinsel left behind....those, and the gifts that need to be framed or hung on the walls.  Matt and Aaron, Lizzie and Josh sawed and drilled and fitted the stained glass door from my folks' house into one of the doorways here at Spruce...a labor of love performed in the busy week before Christmas.  Ryan worked his metal magic and produced lantern covers with wonderful cutouts for the summer patios of all us gardeners...mine's a bison, a reminder of our Wyoming adventure. A graceful pottery bowl in Western hues waits for its turn to hold strawberries or cherry tomatoes this summer....Lee's choice along with two little watercolors from Missouri artists.  Ann took time to add pictures to the blogposts from 2018 and now they are a hardcover book created by Storyworth.  Forgive me if I am kinda excited about "being in print" even if it is a single volume!  Kenzie and Ben have given us music....tickets to Lyle Lovett in a couple of weeks...and art for the garden when sunnier days are upon us

I take time to enumerate these generous and thoughtful gifts for a reason:  because these parents give of their time and talents, their kids are learning the joy of making and giving.  Levi chose presents for all his grandparents at the "Elves" shop where they label and wrap too! Kenzie laughs when she describes his care in choosing just the right item, "He has a reason for every one!"  Aaron picked out vintage style National Park postcards for each family, choosing parks we had visited, and then mounted them on finished boards...strikingly reminiscent of the boards and stain of the Schlouse!  Gabe vanished into the his dad's garage to build his grandparents a sweet smelling cedar shelf.  Lizzie drew and hand-colored a beautifully detailed Christmas doorway, arched and lighted and hung with greens (something else to frame!) and Abbie sprinkled the house all Christmas long with fanciful origami birds and flowers, Santas and stars, snowflakes and reindeer.  As they did last year, the kids prepared and practiced, (Lizzie made programs and Josh drew a sign)  then sang and played Christmas songs for the second Redbarn concert...before they opened even one package.  When the new garden tools are muddied; the Legos deconstructed; the boots outgrown and the letter jacket left hung in the closet, the music will be remembered still.

Wish I noted where I read these lines this Christmas Eve: I think they perfectly express the heart of giving and what the grandkids are learning at home.

" .......we cannot purchase pleasure. Joys are given by God; man can only accept them.
But joys cannot be bought, only received.  The one thing we can do to develop a capacity for enjoyment is to practice generosity--a kind of reckless sharing that imitates the divine largesse."

Wishing everyone a generous New Year...give with gladness and receive with thanks.....

The everyday. Every day.

From Scratch

As predictable as Santa Claus and way more dependable than the Tooth Fairy or the Great Pumpkin,  I will come home from work one afternoon in the general vicinity of my birthday and find my present from Millie on the counter.  It will be not just home made, but made "from scratch": a tall, fragrant, sticky, angel food cake, the dripping glaze just begging for a finger to scoop it up and a tongue to lick it off.  Millie's chickens provide lots of eggs, and an angel food cake is a perfectly splendid way for a dozen eggs to be cracked.

Lest you think my birthday is somehow special, I hasten to mention that Millie makes "from scratch"angel food cakes for almost EVERYONE's birthday: like Caesar, she includes 'friends, Romans, and countrymen' in her wide flung generosity. Her chickens may contribute the raw materials, but the beating, the baking, the delivery on either the blue/white china plate or the melamine chicken plate is all a personal labor of endurance and love.

Love...and homage.  Millie's gloriously light and moist angel food cake is a legacy of her mother, Dora Nelson. Not to be impious, but every wedge of birthday cake says to her children, grandchildren and great-grands: Enjoy this!  And remember..... Grandma's copious notes and scribbles speak to us from the pages of the old St. John's cookbook and come back to life every time Millie brings us a cake.

Clearly, Grandma thought of her cakes as works in progress.  She would laugh out loud to hear me express it this way, but she had high standards for her cakes and sought always to express in writing what she innately sensed through repetition and experience.

Millie has the same humility...I don't know if I've ever eaten one of her cakes that 1) she was satisfied with ("It fell","Ít stuck", "It's uneven"...or the perennial "Its just not quite right.") or 2) tasted like anything other than what I imagine the Lord sent down as manna.

All the directions and notations in the world cannot capture the nuances of "from scratch".   Consider this advice: Sift cake flour four times...fold in flour and sugar mix 1/4 cup at a time, counting 15 strokes....add vanilla and fold 25 more strokes...beat each egg 21 times....Pretty calculated, huh?  One expects the measures to include a decimal point or two of significant digits..With directions this precise, even a novice should be able to reproduce a "from scratch"masterpiece, right?

But wait....here's the rub...Beat the egg whites until foamy...beat the eggs 'til soft peaks form....fold the sugar one cup at a time gently 25 times by hand.  All of a sudden the clinical precision of the recipe has diffused into haze of subtle judgement calls, the kind of make or break decisions that leave novices rigid with deer in the headlights terror.

Only time's pendulum ensures more successes than flops and makes legends of grandmas and aunties.  My grandmother was a magician with caramel frosting from scratch.  With her ruffled apron protecting her dress from hot splatters, she wouldn't say a word, just smile while she beat and beat the brown sugar and butter until it was creamy and spreadable.  I think of her every time I count down two minutes of boiling and stirring, not hundreds of strokes with a wooden spoon, before I add powdered sugar with the electric mixer to ensure smooth rich and reliable frosting. I can remember my mother's indecision about when to take her angel food cake pan off the Coca Cola bottle it was upended upon.  Meringues, pie crusts, homemade bread...all approach the level of alchemy when successfully concocted from scratch...and their makers earn every plaudit bestowed for the effort lavished on something so ephemeral.

After all, it's just a cake...here today...and with us eating it...gone so soon!  But a well worn recipe is family history...and legacy. Every time we cook a dish that begins with 'Mom's' or 'Grandma's', we reinforce the memories of our common past and honor all the backs of envelopes and dog eared recipe cards stuck inside the stained and sticky pages of the church cookbooks.

And if it takes a dozen eggs and more than a hundred strokes of handiwork...it's a 'from scratch' angel food cake....and priceless!

We All Scream

Just back from my favorite local ice cream joint...Ray's Dairy Diner in Fairfax. On tonight's menu: a small Heath Bulldog, generously studded with chunks of Heath bar and gently flowing out of the spoon hole over the side of the Styrofoam cup. Ice cream for supper is a summer ritual with no one around to judge the shape of our food pyramid.

What do I love about ice cream? Well, obviously, I relish the stuff itself. There is nothing wrong with a dish of Breyer's before bedtime, or a sinfully rich scoop in a crystalline footed dish. But as much as I love the food quality of ice cream, I love the romantic notion of ice cream, the associations, the memories, the "remembrance of things past".

I grew up when chain restaurants were in their infancy. Our town sprouted a Dog 'n Suds across from the little gas station we patronized. You still see an occasional Dog 'n Suds building, usually in the guise of a used lot; they're hard to mistake with their distinctive v-shaped awnings. We didn't eat out much; to tell the truth, I don't know that we ever ate anywhere but our dining room in Orland Park. So I cannot speak with authority on the ice cream at a Dog 'n Suds.

That doesn't mean we didn't avail ourselves of root beer and root beer floats. Outside of Louisiana, Missouri we'd occasionally stop at the A&W Root Beer drive-in for a refreshing brew. This was a good thing in a myriad of ways. First of all, someone came up to your window and took your order. The root beers came in all sizes, from Papa Bear to cunning little mugs just for kids. The mugs had a perfect rime of foam on the rim and were thickly coated with frost in the constant summer humidity. I loved the way the trays hung on our car windows and the spongy rubber mat that cushioned the trip of the mugs to our door.

 

Jefferson City had its own marvelous ice cream emporium. I didn't eat much ice cream at Central Dairy until I was a teen. Then it was a tough decision whether to opt for a Jamoca Almond Fudge cone or a strawberry shake with chunks of fruit large enough to plug your straw. The counter stools were round, vinyl topped and swiveled. The flavors were crammed on two boards on the wall. The booths were simple bare boards and the flooring vintage linoleum in checkerboard red and white. The whole place gave me the impression of being part of the time warp that kept parts of Jeff City comfortably in the past. The overwhelming sensation of Central Dairy was that of chill. The ice cream was just warm enough to detect flavor and the ambient temperature of the fountain, maybe a degree or two higher. Stepping out into the street made was a physical shock and my glasses fog over.

For many years, my folks hosted a family get together at Redbarn given the handle of the "Pigout" around July 4th. Needless to say, pork in several manifestations provided the entree but dessert was invariably a birthday cake for Annie and homemade ice cream. This continued the tradition begun at Granny and Grandpa's 4th of July celebrations. The homemade ice cream was a joint collaboration between the men and women. My mother, or Granny, would mix up the magical ice cream concoction. The men's job was to chip the ice block in an old washtub and pack the ice and rock salt around the metal cylinder. Then it was time to churn, and jaw, and pour salt and pack more ice and tell more stories and crank....you get the picture. We kids would snitch ice chips or maybe even take turns with the ice pick. We'd hang around and offer to crank awhile. But even when we were old enough to be helpful, we were as invisible to the guys making the ice cream as we were to those same guys turning the pork steaks over the glowing coals on the sheet of tin. It was ritual. It was tradition. The ice cream came out cold and crystalline, either ur-vanilla or the essence of peach flash frozen right off the tree.

Its been awhile since I rode with Blake hauling grain to Atchison in the summertime. It wasn't a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon but it was a way to spend time together. The truck lacked air conditioning so we rode down with the motor roaring and the gears laboring up the hills into St. Joe. Conversation was impossible so I looked out the window at the sweltering fields. The atmosphere grew tense as we crossed the bridge into Atchison. Would we or would we not catch the green light on the other side. Would Blake have to labor mightily to bring the creaking load of grain to a screeching halt. Would the clutch hold when we did and had to start up again.

But there was compensation and a treat after we left at the elevator. On our way out of town, we could sneak the 10 wheeler into the parking lot at the DQ and get a giant iced tea and a shake or Blizzard. Somewhere in this time frame, Dairy Queen created the Cappuccino Heath Blizzard and it has remained my favorite ever since. The truck was lighter and quieter on the way home and the riders cooler thanks to DQ.

And what discussion of ice cream would be complete without mention of Ted Drewes'? Our summer trips to St. Louis have always been joyful events, whether we get to a Cards game, or the Garden, or golf, or eat on the Hill, or partake of Mark's culinary expertise. I rest my case on the myriad pleasures of summer in St. Louis and a visit to Pernod Gardens. Not the least of these is a pleasant evening stroll down the neighborhood streets to the bright lights and commotion of Ted Drewes' on Chippewa. There is constant traffic entering and leaving the parking lot and a long congenial line at the windows. Most people stand and eat their concretes or sundaes before driving off, but we are pedestrians and find a comfortable curb or window ledge to eat our treat. What do I eat at Ted Drewes? I haven't the faintest idea! It's all good, but its more than food...it's community, it's tradition, it's common ground.

 

Back to the Dairy Diner. Ice cream at the Dairy Diner is another lovely tasty proxy for summer. The building is square and old, but the picnic tables outside are a great place to watch what happens in rural Missouri in the summer. On the east side is a big pop machine. The fluorescent bug lights are yellow and flyspecked. I wonder while I wait for my Bulldog how long it has been since the individual light sockets drew moths to their tempting halos. The Dairy Diner is and is not a charming anachronism in a chain store world. We are regulars there and they apologize to Lee for making her previous Bulldog with vanilla ice cream. The sign is freshly painted for the season with Bulldog green. Its only June; we hope there are many more ice cream reminiscences in the summer ahead.

 

Posted with Blogsy

We All Scream

Just back from my favorite local ice cream joint...Ray's Dairy Diner in Fairfax. On tonight's menu: a small Heath Bulldog, generously studded with chunks of Heath bar and gently flowing out of the spoon hole over the side of the Styrofoam cup. Ice cream for supper is a summer ritual with no one around to be judgmental about the shape of our food pyramid.

What do I love about ice cream? Well, obviously, I relish the stuff itself. There is nothing wrong with a dish of Breyer's before bedtime, or a sinfully rich scoop in a crystalline footed dish. But as much as I love the food quality of ice cream, I love the romantic notion of ice cream, the associations, the memories, the "remembrance of things past".

I grew up just as chain restaurants were in their infancy. Our town sprouted a Dog 'n Suds across from the little gas station we patronized. You still see an occasional Dog 'n Suds building, usually in the guise of a used lot; they're hard to mistake with their distinctive v-shaped awnings. We didn't eat out much; to tell the truth, I don't know that we ever ate anywhere but our dining room in Orland Park. So I cannot speak with authority on the ice cream at a Dog 'n Suds.

That doesn't mean we didn't avail ourselves of root beer and root beer floats. Outside of Louisiana, Missouri we'd occasionally stop at the A&W Root Beer drive-in for a refreshing brew. This was a good thing in a myriad of ways. First of all, someone came up to your window and took your order. The root beers came in all sizes, from Papa Bear to cunning little mugs just for kids. The mugs had a perfect rime of foam on the time and were thickly coated with frost in the ever present summer himidity. I loved the way the trays hung on our car windows and the spongy rubber mat that cushioned the trip of the mugs to our door.

 

Jefferson City had its own marvelous ice cream emporium. I didn't eat much ice cream at Central Dairy until I was a teen. Then it was a tough decision whether to opt for a Jamoca Almond Fudge cone or a strawberry shake with chunks of fruit large enough to plug your straw. The counter stools were round, vinyl topped and swiveled. The flavors were crammed on two boards on the wall. The booths were simple bare boards and the flooring vintage linoleum in checkerboard red and white. The whole place gave me the impression of being part of the time warp that kept parts of Jeff City comfortably in the past. The overwhelming sensation of Central Dairy was that of chill. The ice cream was just warm enough to detect flavor and the ambient temperature of the fountain, maybe a degree or two higher. Stepping out into the street made was a physical shock and my glasses fog over.

For many years, my folks hosted a family get together at Redbarn given the handle of the "Pigout" around July 4th. Needless to say, pork in several manifestations provided the entree but dessert was invariably a birthday cake for Annie and homemade ice cream. This continued the tradition begun at Granny and Grandpa's 4th of July celebrations. The homemade ice cream was a joint collaboration between the men and women. My mother, or Granny, would mix up the magical ice cream concoction. The men's job was to chip the ice block in an old washtub and pack the ice and rock salt around the metal cylinder. Then it was time to churn, and jaw, and pour salt and pack more ice and tell more stories and crank....you get the picture. We kids would snitch ice chips or maybe even take turns with the ice pick. We'd hang around and offer to crank awhile. But even when we were old enough to be helpful, we were as invisible to the guys making the ice cream as we were to those same guys turning the pork steaks over the glowing coals on the sheet of tin. It was ritual. It was tradition. The ice cream came out cold and crystalline, either ur-vanilla or the essence of peach flash frozen right off the tree.

Its been awhile since I rode with Blake hauling grain to Atchison in the summertime. It wasn't a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon but it was a way to spend time together. The truck lacked air conditioning so we rode down with the motor roaring and the gears laboring up the hills into St. Joe. Conversation was impossible so I looked out the window at the sweltering fields. The atmosphere grew tense as we crossed the bridge into Atchison. Would we or would we not catch the green light on the other side. Would Blake have to labor mightily to bring the creaking load of grain to a screeching halt. Would the clutch hold when we did and had to start up again.

But there was compensation and a treat after we left at the elevator. On our way out of town, we could sneak the 10 wheeler into the parking lot at the DQ and get a giant iced tea and a shake or Blizzard. Somewhere in this time frame, Dairy Queen created the Cappuccino Heath Blizzard and it has remained my favorite ever since. The truck was lighter and quieter on the way home and the riders cooler thanks to DQ.

And what discussion of ice cream would be complete without mention of Ted Drewes'? Our summer trips to St. Louis have always been joyful events, whether we get to a Cards game, or the Garden, or golf, or eat on the Hill, or partake of Mark's culinary expertise. I rest my case on the myriad pleasures of summer in St. Louis and a visit to Pernod Gardens. Not the least of these is a pleasant evening stroll down the neighborhood streets to the bright lights and commotion of Ted Drewes' on Chippewa. There is constant traffic entering and leaving the parking lot and a long congenial line at the windows. Most people stand and eat their concretes or sundaes before driving off, but we are pedestrians and find a comfortable curb or window ledge to eat our treat. What do I eat at Ted Drewes? I haven't the faintest idea! It's all good, but its more than food...it's community, it's tradition, it's common ground.

 

Back to the Dairy Diner. Ice cream at the Dairy Diner is another lovely tasty proxy for summer. The building is square and old, but the picnic tables outside are a great place to watch what happens in rural Missouri in the summer. On the east side is a big pop machine. The fluorescent bug lights are yellow and flyspecked. I wonder while I wait for my Bulldog how long it has been since the individual light sockets drew moths to their tempting halos. The Dairy Diner is and is not a charming anachronism in a chain store world. We are regulars there and they apologize to Lee for making her previous Bulldog with vanilla ice cream. The sign is freshly painted for the season with Bulldog green. Its only June; we hope there are many more ice cream reminiscences in the summer ahead.

 

Posted with Blogsy