I went to the store for two things...

We've all been there.  You stop at the grocery store for one or two things and walk out with several bags which never seem to justify the total on the receipt.  Today was one of those days.  Even though I only needed two things I grabbed one of the small carts "just in case".  I don't know if your store has them but they hold just a smidge more than a basket but you can push it (obviously) instead of having to lug a basket around.  Friends, the grocery store is to me what Toys R Us is to a small child.  I become a cracked out food junkie and this time was no exception.  The wheels started turning.

It was around noon and I realized I hadn't gotten anything out of the freezer at home for dinner tonight and it's a sunny day so my brain whispered, almost ghost like, "Grill."  But I'm feeling lazy today and couldn't think of what I wanted to spend my time checking on periodically.  Then it hit me.  Pulled pork.  That takes almost no supervision.  But being a Yankee and lacking the fancy schmancy smokers you see on Food Network, I do mine a tad differently.  I start the pork in the crock pot until it's falling apart then I throw it on the grill for 1-2 hours with some wood chips to give it that awesome smoked flavor.  I haven't had any complaints yet.

So in addition to my two original items, I walked out with a pork roast (pork butt is my favorite for pulled pork), some beans because what's pulled pork without smokey baked beans on the side, BBQ sauce, and oh yeah, I needed charcoal plus various other unrelated items that apparently we can't live without.  By the time I got to the check out, my little cart was puffing like the Little Engine that Could.  Or it was in my mind at least.  Hey, I hear ghost-like voices telling me what to make for dinner so it's reasonable that my cart can make noises too.  The checker asked if I wanted a bigger cart because they don't allow the small ones outside.  This is where I mentally pull the mother card because after lugging around a super-sized toddler for a few years, I can carry more than my scrawny arms would lead you to believe. 

So out to the car I went with my two reusable bags (which hold the same at 3 plastic bags) draped over one arm and my 18 pound bag of charcoal resting on the opposite hip with my arm loving holding it close.  Just like holding a baby.  No, I didn't forget the wood chips.  I keep those on hand at home for these occasions.  My favorite for pork is apple wood.  Hopefully by around 6:00 tonight we will sit down to a yummily smoked pork roast...it's my blog and I can make up words if I want to...baked beans, and possibly some tater salad.  Can't go wrong with tater salad.  And I like to say tater salad.

Where I Have Been

I know I know. Why am I not cooking and writing about it? You poor neglected blog readers. It turns out I have dozens of magazines around the house that I need to recycle. Remember kids…recycle! I am a rabid recycler so if you need tips, let me know. Sorry, a little side note.

So I have all of these magazines and I know that there maybe a handful of recipes in each that I want to keep. I started going through them a few weeks ago but life is funny. It takes you in different directions and you get distracted. So these few dozen magazines have turned into piles of ‘gone through, tore out recipes, recycle’, ‘keep because there is too much to throw out’, and ‘still need to look through.’

I have learned much about myself through this process (besides knowing I’m a packrat). I’ve learned I have my comfort cooking, my light cooking, and the need to explore cooking. So my newest goal is to start cooking outside of not only my comfort level, but outside of the family’s taste level. More to come on that but…a funny thing happened with veggies…


I love having food brought to me. My office participates in Fruit My Cube. These wonderful souls bring fruit to any of us health lovers who want fruit but are too busy (o.k. lazy) to go to the store and buy it. Now that spring has sprung they have incorporated the Market Crate bringing fresh veggies to my office and inspiring me to make my dinner plate at least 50% veg. It also makes me think about interesting ways to bring veggies to the table. Keep in mind I live with a carnivore and a carbivore. Veggies are good to them but they like corn, peas, green beans, and broccoli. We need more options.


In my latest Market Crate, I received a head of cauliflower. I will eat cauliflower raw even without ranch…who doesn’t love ranch. But I wanted to challenge my family. Turns out those corn, peas, green beans, broccoli loving people love roasted cauliflower. And I have been asked to make it again. Gladly!


I could probably live happily as a sometimes vegetarian with a burger indulgence here and there but that doesn’t fit into my real life. So I cook meat, I devour carbs, and I work on bringing more veggies into my home. Right now I have more veggies than actually fit in the veg drawer of my fridge so they are nipped and, lovingly, tucked. I must find a way to serve them. I will. Happily. And let’s hope the new found cauliflower lovers in the house find that same appreciation for other veggies. Veg out!

Smell-o-Blog

Wouldn't that be nice?  It would be today anyway.  I would love to share with you the smells coming from my kitchen.  It's a long story but I am home from work unexpectedly so I thought why not start dinner at 11:00 a.m.  Seems natural right?  Actually, I had a dinner planned for the slow cooker and simply gave it a little boost. 

Right now I have bell peppers stuffed with turkey Italian sausage, minced garlic, diced onions, and diced zucchini cooking away in a tomato sauce.  It's my little riff on sausage and peppers.  If only I could pronounce it as I recall from watching 'The Godfather' - "sahsahge and pehppahs".  But alas, I am but a poor Midwesterner lacking any type of accent whatsoever.  Also, since I'm home, I threw ingredients in the bread machine for an Italian peasant loaf.  I love few smells more than that of baking bread.

An added bonus to my meal, is I'm utilizing tools that won't heat up the kitchen.  You see, it is an atypical 90 degrees in May and out of pure stubbornness, we are not yet using our air-conditioner.  It actually isn't even prepped for the season yet.  So instead of heating a pan on the stove top and using the oven, my kitchen will stay at a moderate temperature.  And I don't have to worry about sweating or looking as red as a tomato as I serve my family.  Oops, I'm a lady so I mean glistening.  We don't sweat, of course.

Considering, I have made neither of these items in this exact way before, I just hope dinner tastes as good as it smells.  For now, I'll just enjoy a good snnniiifffffffffffff

Knife!

Google 'The Annoying Orange' then watch almost any given video and you'll fully understand my title.  You can thank William for the reference.

But speaking of knives, for a long long time, I longed (see what I did there) for a fancy schmancy chef's knife.  I watched chefs on tv chop herbs with the vigor of a teenager expecting her first kiss.  Then, suddenly, the stars aligned and I had an unexpected gift card AND a coupon.  Bed, Bath, and Beyond baby!  Know what?  It took me another year to buy a knife. I was so scared the reality wouldn't live up to my expectations that I couldn't bring myself to do it.  But then the day arrived.  I decided it was time.  I went to BB&B with my gift card and coupon in hand...literally...I think I was too excited to put them in my purse.  I stared and I pondered.  I may have even second guessed myself but then I heard the words that changed everything - "Can I help you find something?"

I think I stood there like the aforementioned teenager expecting her first kiss and managed to spit out, "Uh, if I buy one of these [pointing to the knives], can I return it if I don't like it?" The salesperson gave me much grief "assuring" me they did NOT have a return policy (which is not true) so I relaxed and chose my knife.  He then carefully placed it in my hands...a Zwilling J.A. Henckels Professional "S" 8" Chef's Knife.  No no no, not an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle.  A Zwilling J.A. Henckels Professional "S" 8" Chef's Knife! Come on now, stay with me.  Oh the excitement, the terror, the waiting.  It had come to an end.

I made sure I chose a dinner that night that involved a lot of slicing and chopping.  For the life of me, I can't remember anything beyond slicing a tomato and chopping fresh basil.  I called it a knifegasm.  To this day, I praise my knife.  I think it is the one tool I could not live without now.  Sometimes, we still make blade to eye contact and we both know.  Sure, Knife has hurt me.  I have many times left Knife in the sink without thinking and barely touched that fabulous sharp blade and cut the dickens out of several fingers.  But they are scars of pride and joy.  But Knife's joy has outweighed the hurt.  We have settled into a long and loving relationship.







 

Kids are Strange Part 1 of Many if I Know My Son

At the dinner table that isn't always a bad thing.  Tonight I grilled strip steaks with sides of asparagus and grilled potatoes tossed with a red pepper and caper sauce.  I thought William would balk at the red pepper sauce so I pulled out his serving of potatoes before I tossed them with the sauce.  Little did I know, he was interested in the sauce and found it quite tasty.  But our struggle tonight was asparagus.  Let me point out that William has always been a veggie lover.  At his first birthday party, I offered sandwiches and various sides to our guests but for William, I steamed broccoli because he loves it.  He is a green veggie lover and, for that, I consider myself a million times blessed.  Asparagus has never been a problem but suddenly he thinks it's evil so we were having a mother/son face-off that went something like,


Me: "Eat your asparagus.  You like it."
William: "No I don't."
Me: "You have to eat your asparagus if you want a snack tonight."
William: "Then I just won't eat anything else tonight."
Me: "You need your veggies.  EAT IT!"


Enter the aha moment. 
Me: "William do you like the sauce on the potatoes."
William:  "Yes."
Me: "What if I put some on your asparagus."
William: "Yeah, put a lot on it!"


And before I knew it his asparagus was gone.  So, for the record, a basic veggie is icky to my son but a red pepper and caper sauce is o.k.  I can't explain it but I'll go with it. 


Here is my personal problem - as I mentioned I am working on a cookbook.  I made the aforementioned sauce without measuring.  I need my new mantra to be, "measure measure measure."  But for this evening, we'll call this a victory.  I can measure tomorrow.

Are you feeling lucky?

If you need a reason to feel lucky, watch this. Over the weekend, Food Network aired a special called “Hunger Hits Home.” I think all Americans are aware of food stamps and aid for needy families but how often to we take the time to truly wonder and try to relate to what these families face every day. And this special barely mentions food stamps. It’s about families who are facing hard times for one reason or another. People who are going to work every day just like you and me but their kids aren’t sure if there will be enough food for dinner. People who have lost jobs and find themselves suddenly in dire straights. Many of us could be a paycheck or two away from being these families and no one has absolute job security these days.

I simply cannot imagine having to feed my son Ramen Noodles every night because there is nothing else in the cupboard. How would I ever tell my broccoli loving, corn eating, salad gobbling little boy that there simply isn’t money to buy vegetables? Fortunately, I don’t have to. I can shop freely and often and, frankly, we are rather spoiled in our household with the foods we eat. I can imagine that I work with people who think it’s crazy that I offer my son steak. It’s because I am one of the lucky ones who has the means to give my family whatever foods we want.

I can buy ingredients and play around and if we don’t like it, well, better luck next time but let’s order a pizza. I’m like every one of you who takes the time to read this. I know there are hungry kids in our country but it hasn’t affected me so did I really care before? William has taken food to school to offer for food drives in the past. We talked about why this is important but I’m not sure either of us really got it. He’s 7 so I can cut him some slack. In his world, parents simply take care of their kids and that’s that. But I’m older and should know better. This special really did hit home.

Is this a call to action? No. I know I have many wonderful and generous friends and if they heard that their child had a classmate without enough to eat, would probably invite the entire family over for dinner and send them out the door with a bag of food. We all do what we can. But as I get back to blogging and think about things I cook or what to write about, I couldn’t let this go without bringing it to a wider audience. I could have shared that we had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn for dinner tonight. Instead of trying to peak your interesting is what I had to eat, I am using this forum to peak your interest in what you had to eat.

Count your blessings as you eat well tonight, tomorrow, and in the days that follow.

Succeeding at Disaster

Next weekend William has Easter break so we will be home for five days. I haven’t yet asked him if he wants to dye Easter eggs. It’s a mother’s job to allow her child to grow up and stop needing her but every time we let go of one of these childhood traditions, I feel a small tug of sadness that childhood is so fleeting. However, there may be one way to convince William to dye eggs. I simply must promise to turn them into deviled eggs after Easter. He is crazy for them.

Unfortunately, for William and the rest of our family, my last experience with deviled eggs was less than successful. The word disaster really is fitting. We were planning for a large group of family for Christmas day dinner and I boiled two dozen eggs in anticipation so I would have plenty. On Christmas morning I settled in to start taking the shells off of the eggs but when I cracked into the first egg I noticed it was a little soft and the yolk wasn’t quite set but it’s not uncommon to have one bad egg in the bunch. By the sixth egg, I was starting to suspect our deviled egg supply would be lower than I planned but I forged on. After all, I have never in my life under-boiled an egg. I reached the end and was left with a trash can full of shells, shredded whites, and a bowl filled with yolks that were perfectly over easy. Except I didn't want over easy. Besides, boiling eggs should not come close to producing over easy.

I sat there holding back tears of frustration wondering why, after the first few, I didn’t just try to boil them a little longer. But I summoned my determination and brainstormed for a plan b. Perhaps the microwave would help solidify the yolks a bit and who cares what the whites look like. I tried a small amount and it worked o.k. Not perfect but I thought if I could save these eggs; by golly, I’d move ahead. So I put the entire batch of yolks in the microwave. I think on that splendid Christmas day, I discovered a suitable alternate. For Silly Putty.

Those that know me, understand how important the holidays and Christmas dinner are to me. I spend months planning food and fun for the entire holiday season. So you know what I did next? I took a deep breath, pulled the trash can closer, ignoring the words that any guilt-inducing parent would say to their child, “You know there are starving people in…” and I dumped the entire mess.

Then I moved on and became a honey badger. If you are not familiar with the honey badger, I will give you a couple of warnings. One, don’t watch this with your children and, two; don’t watch if you do not have a foul sense of humor. To anyone that came into the kitchen that day, I announced there would be no deviled eggs and honey badger don’t care. And you know what else, it was probably the most relaxed Christmas dinner I have ever prepared and I think everyone else was relaxed too.

So will I try making deviled eggs again this Easter season to make my son happy? Well, it is a time of new starts and rebirth. And, darn it, if it gets him to color eggs that’s a bonus.