Wednesday Anti-recipe: Aluminum Soup

So here's what I made for dinner tonight:


That's, um, aluminum soup on the burner. I'd had a burst of energy and decided to make quiches for dinner - one with artichoke hearts, the other with asparagus. I put the pot on the burner, cranked it up to high, chopped the asparagus, and went to dump it into the pot.

That's when I saw the pot was empty. I'd neglected to add water. (What was that about my beautiful brain?)

I picked up the pot to rescue it from the heat, and the aluminum soup spilled out in a big glop. The aluminum layer sandwiched between two layers of stainless steel had liquified, expanded, and popped the bottom off the pan.

The blobular aluminum was shiny and pretty, in a perverse way:


Now, the good news is that this stove is 25 years old. It bakes unevenly and I've been jonesing for a new one ever since we bought this house nearly seven years ago. I know we could just replace the burner, but maybe this is the nudge I need to do a little research and buy a new range. Any suggestions? Past negotiations on this have always hit a stalemate because I long for a gas stove, while my husband wants something like a ceramic top that's easy to clean. As you can see, he's not being unreasonable - not at all.

The other reason I can't be upset about this is that I'm ecstatic about the surge of energy behind this kitchen fiasco. Yesterday I rode my bike to work and was pretty useless for the rest of the evening. Today I felt strong enough to bike to work again, and I still had enough oomph to embark on cooking a real dinner for just the second time since I fell sick on January 20.

As for the quiches? They were delicious.

Tuesday Recipe: Date Cookies

I made these cookies a week ago with my kids. Lately it seems like I can only manage one major activity per day, and then I'm out of oomph. It was a Sunday and date cookies seemed like a better use of my energy than laundry. (Of course, the darn laundry still didn't wash, dry, and fold itself!)

It's a recipe that comes from my mom, so between the cookies' origin and their yumminess, they're great comfort food for me.

Date Cookies

Boil filling gently until thick:
1 8-ounce package of chopped dates
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar

While filling cools, prepare the cookie batter:
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup butter
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat the oven to 350°. Cream the sugar and butter, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the sifted dry ingredients. You may need a bit of extra flour; I added nearly another half cup.

Drop batter on non-stick or greased cookie sheet. Indent dough with a teaspoon and fill with about 1/2 teaspoon of the sticky, gooey date mixture (too much will just overflow and make a mess). Cover the filling with a little cookie dough and bake about 8 minutes. Cookies are done when they are just light brown; you don't want to overbake them (says my mom's voice in my head). I had to decrease the temperature to about 325° for my cranky old oven.

Makes about five dozen cookies.

Belated Tuesday Recipe: Stuffed Mushrooms with Pine Nuts

Image from Flickr user One Good Bumblebee, used under a Creative Commons license.

Despite my last post, I'm not all gloom and politics, y'know. I've been enjoying some holiday cheer. Last night, the festivities included these stuffed mushrooms. The recipe is slightly adapted from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook.

The kids loved watching me make them but turned up their nose at actually eating them. (The Bear at least tried them; the Tiger refused even that.) Everyone else was happy to eat the kids' share.

Stuffed Mushrooms with Pine Nuts

18 to 20 large white mushrooms
2 T. lemon juice

Stuffing:
Stems of the mushrooms
2 to 3 garlic cloves (more if it pleases you)
1/2 cup pine nuts (previously roasted is nicest)
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
Olive oil for sauteeing

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Gently clean the mushrooms. Finely chop the garlic and the stems of the shrooms (I use a food processor), then saute them in olive oil. Remove from the heat and mix in the rest of the stuffing ingredients.

Dip the mushrooms in lemon juice (use just enough to coat the outside, otherwise it can get too tart). Stuff them gently but generously and place them in an oiled baking dish. Bake 20 to 25 minutes.

Tuesday Recipe: Pecan Tassies

Maybe you've had these miniature pecan pies. Unlike with my pecan-maple pie, I haven't contributed anything original to this recipe. The tassies are one of the treats my mom used to make around the holidays, and I could eat them by the handful.

Since we had a snow day today (and another is likely tomorrow - eek!) I figured I might as well spend it baking. And so I made a triple batch of these little guys, 72 in all. My family will probably fight over them anyway.


Pecan Tassies

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 3-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
Filling (see below)

In a small mixer bowl, beat together butter and cream cheese. Stir in flour. Cover and chill about 1 hour or till easy to handle. Cut into 24 pieces. Shape into l-inch balls. Press onto bottom and up sides of ungreased 1 3/4-inch muffin cups. Fill each with 1 rounded teaspoon filling. Bake in a 325 F oven for 20 to 25 minutes or till done. Cool slightly in pan. Remove and cool well. Makes 24.

Pecan Filling:
Beat together 1 egg, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans.

You can also substitute other fillings. One I thought was pretty good (though not better than the original) was Cranberry-Nut Filling: Beat together 1 egg, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh cranberries and 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts. I'm guessing Craisins might work in lieu of fresh berries.

And finally, here's one I'd like to try if I can ever get out of my delicious pecan rut, Almond-Raspberry Filling: Divide 1/4 cup red raspberry preserves among pastries (about 1/2 teaspoon each). Beat together 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup almond paste, crumbled. (I would probably substitute ground almonds.) Spoon 1 level teaspoon of the mixture over preserves. Sprinkle with coarsely chopped sliced almonds. If desired, drizzle cooled baked tarts with additional red raspberry preserves.

Still Life with Fruit (and Vegetables, and Bread ...)

Apart from a few woeful pansies and the Silver Tidal Wave petunias that just won't die, my flowers are now out of season. I'm bereft of fresh garden porn. But in a before-and-after sorta way, I'm almost equally inspired by food photography, which is fresh year 'round. And now, via Benjamin Cohen of Science Blogs, I've discovered that a British artist, Carl Warner, combines both genres.

But is it art?

Whatever - it's very trippy. This garlic-scape looks as though Alice and the White Rabbit ought to be skulking through it ...


... and this might be where they landed when Alice went down the rabbit-hole. Note the carrot stalactites.


This valley appears to be an edible version of Yosemite. Instead of Half Dome, maybe it's Half Loaf?


And this fruity balloonscape makes me think of the opening sequence from Ian McEwan's Enduring Love - minus the catastrophe.


All images nicked from Carl Warner's gallery at The Telegraph (UK); go there and to Warner's website for more.

The last photo is an especially striking illustration of the point Benjamin Cohen makes: that food is used to depict the growing of other food. Kind of twisted, and kind of cool.

One of My Many Blessings: Maple Pecan Pie

I've been sluggish about posting the past few days; apologies to anyone who was kind enough to drop by anyway. I've been under the weather, and pies needed to be baked - both pumpkin and pecan - along with all the other trappings of Thanksgiving dinner.

When I lived in Germany, I came up with my own version of pecan pie that didn't require corn syrup. Since I couldn't find it there, I substituted maple syrup instead. (This was before nutritionists started to pillory corn syrup as the devil's own nectar.) My maple pecan pie is still plenty sweet but I think it's way yummier than the conventional version.

Maple Pecan Pie

1/2 cup butter (one stick), melted
1 1/2 cups pecans
3 eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
9-inch pie crust

Melt the butter and let it cool. Toast the pecans for about 5 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, which will keep them from getting soggy; then chop them very coarsely. Beat the eggs until frothy. Add the brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and butter; beat until mixed. Sprinkle the pecans over the bottom of a prepared pie crust (I cheat and use Marie Callendar's frozen crusts, which are quite good and vegetarian-friendly to boot). Pour everything else over the nuts. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then at 350 for about 40 more.

This is what mine looked like. It wasn't my biggest blessing, this Thanksgiving, but it was still pretty darn good.

Tuesday Recipe, Part II: The Tiger's Bunny Birthday Cake

This doesn't really count as a recipe, but it was just as yummy as it was silly - the Tiger's cake to celebrate his fifth birthday.

It's Max the bunny from the "Max and Ruby" books by Rosemary Wells. The cake is chocolate from a mix; the frosting is homemade buttercream with a dash of almond extract. I carved Max out of a 9 x 13 rectangle, basically by cutting away everything that wasn't bunny. The Tiger's daddy did most of the face with a little help from me.


The Tiger likes Max. The Tiger also is Max. That stinker-ish glint in the eye is one we know a little too well.

His actual birthday is still two days from now but we had to celebrate early because I'll be out of town (sniffle). I don't really expect he'll grow out of his mischief between now and then. But I do know that a lot happens in the sixth year of life, and by a year from now, he'll be a whole lot more civilized. I'd better stop now before I get all maudlin about how my baby is about to leave his early childhood behind.

Tuesday Recipe: Bright Lights Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts

This is an adapted recipe that comes from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. The original used spinach. The pictures below are all mine.

First, sometime in April, you plant Bright Lights chard seeds about a half-inch deep in a bed tilled with lots of compost and manure. Chard is easy to grow - except for last season, when I thought rabbits were eating it but was puzzled at why bunnies would systematically eat only the large leaves and leave a smooth edge where the stem began. It turned out a homeless person was living in a nearby empty house. That's why the "bunny" was so clever.

Anyway, a couple of weeks after germination, you thin it to about a six-inch spacing in every direction because chard is a beet relative and sprouts more than one plant per seed. You feed it organically, which here just meant leaving it alone because the bed was rich. You keep it watered until its tap roots are well established. It probably doesn't hurt to just generally love on it and tell it that it's beautiful.

And then, about six weeks after planting, it looks like this:


You'll notice the jungle features lots of volunteer clover, left to flourish while I do battle with the crab grass at the back of the bed. It'll grow larger and last until the very end of the season. Unlike spinach, chard won't bolt or turn bitter in the heat. I've had it survive until nearly Christmas. Since it's biennial, it will come back in the spring if we get even a slightly merciful winter.


Up close, you can see some of the color variations. For some reasons, red is predominating in my patch, though I do have some yellow, white, and pink.


When you're ready to start cooking, you cut off just the big outer leaves with a sharp paring knife so you can harvest more later. You wash them, enjoying the absence of aphids, leafminers, or other pests - so far I've been lucky this year.

Here's the chard displaying its finery before cooking fades it:


And here's what all you'll need to finish the job:

About 2 pounds of chard (you can sometimes buy Bright Lights at the grocery store, but any chard will do)
3 T. raisins (I use a bit more)
3 T. pine nuts (I use a lot more)
3 garlic cloves, sliced thinly (I usually quarter them first)
1/4 cup olive oil (I use less)

I put the pine nuts in the oven at 400 degrees to roast for about 5 minutes; you could also sauté them with the garlic in some olive oil in a non-stick pan (I use a wok). Either way, you want both to be golden. While doing this, I let the stems of the chard boil or steam for a few minutes until tender and let the raisins plump up in hot water. Once the garlic is light gold, the chard leaves can be added. Stir them on medium-high until they're wilted to your satisfaction. Add everything else, including salt and pepper to taste, and give it a few more stirs. Add more olive oil if desired (I didn't).

And here's what you've got. Yum! I used to make this a lot during the 1990s, before kids, while I was still living in Berlin and white chard (Mangold) was ubiquitous. Last night, even the Bear enjoyed it, and I wondered why I ever stopped making it regularly.

Tuesday Recipe: Sometimes Size Matters

I'm making artichokes for dinner tonight. Okay, so I'm cheating on the Tuesday recipe. When it comes to arties, I really have a policy, not a recipe: The simpler, the better. Steam them. Eat them with vats of melted butter. That is all.

But these artichokes are remarkable for their size. I don't think I've ever seen any quite so large. I'm using my roast pan to steam them, which otherwise gets broken out for Thanksgiving and then collects dust all year.


Not that I'm obsessed with size, or anything ...


... but that measurement actually understates their size; the largest is close to six inches in diameter, but the shadows and the refraction of the camera lens distort it.

I hope they're as yummy as they look. Because, after all, sometimes size matters ... but size is rarely everything.

In fact, I'm not generally a believer in supersized foods - not at all - but I have one other mondo food product in my fridge right now, a container of cream from a wonderful local dairy, Snowville Creamery. Their milk is as luscious as their name. And I just discovered they sell cream, too.

Maybe it's because they're a small operation, but all their products come in the same sized carton: a half gallon. Which means I have a half gallon of heavy whipping cream that needs to be used. I think it's time for homemade ice cream.

Tuesday Recipe: Nut Loaf

In response to Sugar Mag's post last week about her meatloaf recipe, I mentioned a curried nut loaf recipe, and she was curious about it. So, since apparently Tuesday is recipe day around the intertubes, here it is. (Sugar Mag just put up something delicious looking - Chocolate Chip Orange Scones - for this week.)

A Scottish friend of mine gave me this nut loaf recipe. In the spirit of full attribution, I know that he got it from a book, but I'm not sure which one. I'm sure Cindy McCain was involved in its genesis, somehow.

Nut Loaf

6 oz. nuts (I only know it with pecans but my friend says walnuts are also yummy)
3 oz. bread crumbs
1 t. Italian mixed herbs
1 heaped t. curry powder
Small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Small bell pepper, finely chopped (I like red more than green)
1 fork-beaten egg
6 oz. chopped tomatoes, canned or fresh, enough to dampen mix, or substitute tomato sauce.

Pulverize nuts until they're the size of little ground beef crumbles. Saute the onion, garlic, and bell pepper until the onion is soft. In a bowl, mix together the nuts, bread crumbs, herbs, curry powder, and veggies. Add the egg. Mix in tomatoes until moist enough to form a loaf.

Butter a loaf pan. Press mixture into pan. Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes.

Yum!

Photo of pecans by Flickr user Old Shoe Woman, used under a Creative Commons license.

Extremely Unfree Rice

I cooked rice this evening for the first time since I heard that its price has skyrocketed. My house is now redolent of basmati and my belly is happily full of delicious chick pea curry and spinach with paneer that my neighbors cooked. I guess it's the smell of privilege, though not the kind of privilege that I think we should feel bad about having; it's the kind that ought to be extended to all of humanity.

And you know, if it weren't for the completely misguided and shortsighted idea that we can keep guzzling gas if we just plant enough corn for ethanol, there might actually be enough food to go around. It used to be that I saw "corn as high as an elephant's eye" when was a kid only if we were driving through a small patch of southeastern North Dakota and southern Minnesota into Iowa. The landscape of my Great Plains childhood was durum wheat. Now, over the past several years, I've seen corn spread across Ohio like a malevolent stain. It's even taken over large swathes of southwestern Germany. Amazing how subsidies and the promise of a new market can totally warp agriculture! Whatever happened to the wacky idea that crops are meant to feed people?!

The price of rice locally has gone up about 50 percent (says my neighbor who just bought a jumbo bag of basmati at our town's one and only Asian grocery). Some of the big American retailers are restricting sales to no more than four bags. This is no big deal for southeast Ohio, where we have oodles of other food choices. But if you're poor and live in Vietnam or China, the rice shortage may threaten your ability to get enough calories.

Nothing is really going to change until citizens demand an end to the sort of perverted agricultural policy that would have made the Soviets proud. Or if we want to maintain an ag economy based on subsidies, let's at least diversify and remember that we need food even more than we need cheap fuel. (I feel almost stupid writing that - it's so obvious! - but duh, I guess it's not quite obvious enough.) And here's a really radical idea: If we could manage to conserve - by tightening our fuel consumption standards, driving fewer miles, and moving rapidly toward hybrid cars that can be plugged in and charged - we could decrease our appetite for ethanol and allow the appetites of actual humans to be sated instead.

This is a minor tangent, but if you haven't already discovered the Free Rice game, now's not a bad time to check it out. It's a vocabulary game, and the site's sponsors promise to donate a grain of rice for every word a player gets right. I'm sure the amount of rice donated won't make a dent in the hunger problem, but the awareness it's raising just might make a difference. And the game is seriously addictive. I quit cold turkey last fall, but when I played it again a few days ago I noticed they've got a bunch of new words at the higher levels, plus a new algorithm that feeds you the words you missed a few turns later, so I might actually learn something. (Hint: If you get up to about 44 or 45 - out of 50 possible levels - and don't know a word, assume it's something medical or archaic or related to weaponry. Oh, and if you're clueless but one of the possible answers has two words instead of one, that's usually the best guess.) Let me know if you get all the way to 50 - or have any clever ideas for tackling the hunger problem.

The muscari in the photo grows next to our elementary school; I took the picture.

Testing, Testing

I'm partly just testing to make sure I can still post from my new computer - woohoo! I got a lovely MacBook Pro, which arrived just today. And then I spent a good long time trying to get the wireless to work. Which, obviously, I did - and (not so obviously) without any help other than what Google could serve up.

But what I really want to grouse about is school testing, which the Bear is going through this week. He's in second grade. He's utterly casual and unstressed about it. He tests easily and well. He's lucky, I'm lucky, and I know it. That's not my point, though. Even though I really like our elementary school, the testing system is absurd and I'm not at all sure who it's supposed to be helping.

The older kids? All of them are obviously stressed, even if - like some of the fifth graders I know - they're not so much uptight about the tests themselves as burned out on all the homework that led up to them.

The teachers? They've been like hamsters in a wheel ever since our eleven snow days torpedoed their lesson plans. The problem with snow days, coming in winter as they tend to do, is that they also tend to fall before testing week. On top of this, the Bear's main teacher is dealing with some scary-serious health problems. She's wonderful. She's done an awesome job in the face of major physical challenges. Someone should please give her an A+ and call it good.

And what are the kids learning, anyway? For starters, that you learn stuff to pass the test, and afterward you get to hit auto-erase and goof off for the rest of the year. That tests come fast and furious, all in one week, and nothing else really counts. That material and ideas don't matter unless they might appear on the tests.

Most curiously, they learn that the reward for a job well done is - sugar! Nothing against rewards or sweets - I like 'em both - but in moderation, please. All year long, the school tries to promote healthy eating. And then, during testing week, the school bombards them with sweets after their exams - and even during. Both second-grade classes get to suck on lollipops or hard candies. According to the Bear, who's usually a reliable reporter on such things, there are studies showing that pressure on the roof of one's mouth helps people perform better on exams. I haven't tried to verify it. The kids, in any event, think it's a sweet deal.

Safe School Lunches? Good Luck with That

My kids get to have breakfast for dinner tonight. Their dad has been out of town for two days and won't be back until tomorrow night. The Tiger is running a high fever (just south of 103 this morning). So we're breaking out the "magically delicious" multicolored marshmallow pseudo-food as a rare treat.

Golden tofu in peanut sauce with green veggies will be served sometime next week when we're at full strength again.

In the meantime? Yes, I'm pandering. Shamelessly. Unapologetically.

And you know what? Even taking into account the yellow dyes, which my chemist friend assures me are the devil's own nutrient, our dinner will be a heck of a lot healthier than some of the staples of the school lunch program.

Brilliant at Breakfast has some smart and biting commentary on recent revelations that a California slaughterhouse was routinely abusing sick cows (and not treating its workers so great, either) while allowing meat from downer cattle into the foodstream in a move that Melina likens to Soylent Green. Jill at BaB points out that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, aka mad cow disease, has an incubation period of up to 30 years - and that much of this meat went straight to the school lunch program:

I guess this is what "No Child Left Behind" means. It means that when the Bush Administration gets done with its virtual elimination of oversight over the pharmaceutical and food industries, there will be no children left. They'll all be dead from tainted food and drugs.

But at least the embryos will be saved.

Salon reported yesterday that the resulting recall affects

143 million pounds of beef products, most of which has already been consumed. About 40 percent of that meat went to the National School Lunch Program and other federal nutrition programs.

The really scary thing, again according to Salon, is that the Humane Society sting that uncovered these abuses had no reason to single out the offending slaughterhouse, Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in Chino, California. They picked the plant at random. What are the odds that this is the only rogue plant in the bunch? And why did federal inspectors, who were present in the plant, do nothing?

Only one of my children is old enough for school lunches. And the Bear is a vegetarian by his own choice, an outgrowth of his involvement in kid-initiated animal welfare clubs. (The first group raised $100 for the local dog shelter through lemonade stands and donation jars. The second has decorated the elementary school with posters of hand-drawn bears and other critters begging "don't kill me!" in speech bubbles.) I'm happy to cook veggie because I learned cooking from the Moosewood Cookbook while living in a large co-op house in the mid-1980s, and even now I eat very little meat: poultry a few times a year, seafood as often as I can, and that's pretty much it. So while the Bear made his own decision, his dad and I have happily supported it. He does make a couple of exceptions; gummi bears and marshmallows (see above) are still on the menu.

But that's just one kid who's not at risk from potentially contaminated meat. There are millions of others whose parents can't be sure of their safety. Shouldn't they be able to depend on government regulations and inspections? Or must they rely on luck and charms?

Magically delicious image from General Mills, which holds the copyright. I use it here under fair use provisions that permit reproduction for purposes of non-commercial critical scholarship and journalism.