Having time to make mistakes

Today I made croissants.

In general, I've never baked very much. My mother died when I was young, which is like losing your cooking confidence; there are so many things I've never tried because I had no non-judgmental mentor to guide me. I've never made a pot roast or a ham. Angel food cake. Pie crust. These are things that require guidance and confidence and knowledge.

Or at least time and resources to mess it up while you figure out what you're doing.

The time-consuming aspect of not buying things with ingredients (like bread, or fancy cereal, or crackers, or snacks other than fruit) I think is the true challenge of "eating real." Even buying these things from local, owner-operated shops takes more time than simply stopping at the national chain on the way home from work. Right now in our society "eating real" is a privilege of those blessed with the twin resources of time and confidence. (Contrary to popular belief, it does not cost more; in fact I have cut our grocery bill by more than half doing this.)

Fortunately for me, I cooked a lot with my mother until I was 14 and she got ill, at which point I just made all her recipes for the whole family (she would leave me instructions on the 'fridge that I would find when I got home from school: "marinate the chicken in the juice of one lemon and sprinkle with salt, oregano and pepper." Or sometimes, "make spaghetti sauce tonight." Uh, right. How do you make spaghetti sauce?)

You'll cook like your mother cooked. My mother cooked from scratch, and mine may have been the last generation (the early and mid-Boomers) who can say that as a general rule. Our mothers came home from the factory or the base, and spent the next 20 years cooking. The generation after ours have had to figure it out largely on their own. I rarely read a cooking blog that says "my mother never cooked." How do you learn to cook if your mother doesn't cook?

If you don't have the time and confidence to make mistakes, and to try again, then you're eating out and eating out of boxes.

I've never really had the time or confidence to bake before, and this family's baking knowledge died with my mother and grandmother. There are no aunts. My obliging boss recently gave me the time by cutting my job (and my salary) by half. Writing about cooking on line, and the Eat Real Food challenge have upped my confidence. All I need is knowledge, so I pulled out my mother's trusty Joy of Cooking (no stains on this page, so if Mom ever made these, it wasn't from this book).

Maybe next I'll try a pie.

Croissants, from Joy of Cooking
About 18 Crescents

7/8 cup milk
1 tablespoon lard or vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 package active dry yeast
2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Scald the milk (about 3 1/2 minutes on high in the microwave, or until just before it boils on the stovetop), then stir into it, until melted and dissolved, the lard, sugar and salt. Cool until lukewarm. Activate the yeast in 1/3 cup 105°-115° water and add it to the liquid. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. Stir in or knead in the flour to make a soft slightly sticky dough (you have to guess the amount of flour by the quality of the dough, which should be smooth and elastic.

Knead on a lightly floured surface, using a pastry scraper to flip the soft dough end over end 10
times. The dough should now hold together. Place it in an ungreased bowl. Cover with a cloth and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 11/2 hours. Then cover the dough with a lid and place m the refrigerator until thoroughly chilled, at least 20 minutes.

Roll or pat it out on a floured surface into an oblong 1/4* inch thick. Whip 1 cup of unsalted butter. Spread 1/4 of the butter over two-thirds the surface of the dough, leaving an unbuttered border 1 inch wide. Fold the unbuttered third over the center third. Then, fold the remaining third over the doubled portion. The dough is now in 3 layers. Swing the layered dough a quarter turn—or, directionally speaking, bring east to south.

Roll it again into an oblong 1/4 inch thick. Dot the center third with 1/4 cup of the whipped butter, and again fold it one-third over one third, turn and roll out to 1/4 inch. Repeat this two more times. (NB: The dough will start becoming more springy and elastic, so you have to roll it quite thin for it to retain that thickness.) Now, cut off any folded edges, which might keep the dough from expanding. Cut the dough into 3-inch squares, and cut the squares on the bias (i.e. into triangles) Roll the triangular pieces, beginning with the wide side and stretching them slightly as you roll. Shape the rolls into crescents. Chill for 20 minutes, not allowing it to rise again.

Preheat oven to 400°. Bake the crescents 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350° and bake until done—10 to 15 minutes longer.

Project Grow post

I was starting to worry about the indoor starts on the Spitfires. Growing something so publicly makes me feel a little vulnerable. If it doesn't work, everyone will know I'm not a "real" gardener--I stuck a seed in dirt and it didn't grow.

But like the little boy and the carrot, in fact, I planted it, and watered it, and patted it, and on Thursday they just BURST through the seed starting medium (Ferry Morse organic seed starting mix). In the morning- nothing. In the afternoon 3" tall, with two leaves on each. I've never seen anything like it. Haven't checked the wintersown ones, because it's suddenly winter again (March-in like a lion, out like polar bear), and I'm not going outside except under duress.



I’m growing Nasturtium “Spitfire” for the GROW project, thanks to Renee’s Garden for the seeds.

I read it somewhere

How do you learn to garden?

I feel like it's so easy these days. There is so much information a few keystrokes away, in fact it's almost discouraging. Sometimes when I'm trying a new plant, I actually STOP reading about it to see what works for me. And then I'll go back and look it up, and discover what I did wrong, and what I did right. Last year I put in Brussels Sprouts for the first time. They weren't looking too good, so I thought "peat! Peat is great in the garden, right?" Wrong. Brussels like high pH, and peat will lower it. Oops. So I just scraped all the peat off where I could, went to the garden center and started reading labels, and put something or other organic on there that would raise the pH back up. Brussels were fine. They'd probably have been even better if I'd just left them alone. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

No one in the family can remember when I started to grow vegetables. The garden itself started as a patio and an ornamental border, with every single plant free- picked up at neighborhood swaps, or dug out of the verge at my father's downstate home, or scavenged out of the alley from escapees from other people's yards.

I made a LOT of mistakes. I put in what turned out to be invasive, and apparently immortal, wild phlox. Still fighting that stuff back. I put in loosestrife. (I know I know.) It's so pretty! Oops. I found what turned out to be oriental bittersweet, a gorgeous plant, but fortunately posted a picture on MyFolia and asked what it was. (This was recently; the difference between a newbie and a pro is that now I know to ask.)

I have made every mistake there is to make. I've forgotten to put in paths. I planted tomatoes in the shade. I didn't put the peas in until June. I walked on the carrot sprouts (by the way, they can take it). I pulled up perennials, not knowing what that was (oh, you mean it comes back? Like a tree?). I left weeds. I yanked weeds. I watered too much. I watered too little.

Somewhere along the way, I ended up with a garden. How do I know? My college-age son brought a friend over, and they walked out onto the back porch. Friend stops in his tracks and says "Whoah, that's gorgeous." Son says, "I told you." Best. Garden. Moment. Ever.

I can't wait to see what I do wrong this year.

Brussels sprouts slaw (originally posted October 14, 2009)
1 1/2 cups fresh brussels sprouts, blanched and sliced
1 cup cabbage, sliced (I had a very tiny head from the garden. Don't use too much or it will overwhelm the flavor of the brussels sprouts)
small onion, sliced very very thin
1/2 small green pepper, sliced thin
2-3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped roughly

3 tablespoons each, lime juice and real mayonnaise
2-3 teaspoons hot or brown mustard
white pepper, salt to taste

Whip the dressing ingredients together (make sure you whip or blend it really well so that the lime juice doesn't separate the mayo. This has to do with emulsion or acid or something. What, you thought I knew what I was doing?) Mix it all up in a bowl, let it sit for a couple of hours.

So I want to know-- how did you start gardening?

Who are we?

I just read through the entire list of blogs participating in the Eat Real Food challenge at Not Dabbling in Normal, and found only 2 people who appear to have full time jobs, and none whom I could identify as older empty-nesters like me. (Granted, this information is not readily gleanable from the info available on many blogs, but I saw an awful lot of pictures of adorable youngsters planting things.)

While the challenge is expanding my definition of home cooking, I've always cooked from scratch for my family, and had a garden since my own kids were adorable youngsters planting things (they actually remember it as "forced labor"). I still recall the disbelief I encountered at the entry interview for the private school my kids attended, when we said that we ate home-cooked meals at home, together as a family, with both parents present, 5 to 6 days a week. (I've asked the kids to reconstruct a family food timeline, with special instructions to help me remember when I fell off the wagon and started feeding them Kraft Mac n Cheese.)

It is my former, young mother self that I am seeing on the Real Food blogs. Maybe us old women just don't blog, or maybe we feel it's pointless because we've always cooked like this, why make a fuss? (Remember Michael Pollan "don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize?" Basically, that's me, a decade or so too young.) I also am not seeing the working women doing this. Or the dads. I'm not sure I'd be doing this myself if my own job hadn't been cut in half in November, giving me an extra 20 or so hours per week, and a huge cut in salary, which is highly motivating in trying to cut costs. (Surely it was when I went back to work that I started slipping on the home cooking thing.)

So where are you, people with no time? How do you, or do you at all, manage to feed your family locally sourced, home-cooked meals?

Recipes today, 140 character "recitweets" (my coinage, I think)

from Gilfeather (who came up with the idea): Mix 2 T.Frangelica w/1/2 lb.hulled and sliced strawberries+1&1/2Tsugar & allow to macerate.Mix 1/2C yogurt & 2tsp.honey. Layer w/ Poundcake

from MarieMonDieu: Oyster crackers baked on 250 for 15-20 mins. Covered in oil, Hidden Val Ranch pwdr, garlic pwdr, dillweed. Awesome snackiness!

And mine: Saute brussels, grn onions in olive oil w 1.5 c orzo. Add 3 c veg stock simmer til orzo done, 1/4 c cream, simmer; srve w grated romano.

In defense of imports

Over at Not Dabbling in Normal, there's been a long discussion of "Things I'll never give up" vis a vis Eat Real Food.

But I'd like to go at that from a more positive framework, and defend the import of things that can't be grown in my climate.

Coffee. Chocolate. Cumin. Raisins (although jury's out on that one, as there's Illinois wine, so why not raisins?) Cinnamon. Pepper. Whatever is in Garam Masalla. Mahlepi (okay, that one can be grown here, but do you know how to process cherry pits for grinding? Not on my "things to learn" list.) Clementines and oranges. Avocados.

Every since Oog discovered that he had seashells and no copper, and Mook discovered that she had copper but no seashells, human beings have traded over long distances. There is archeological evidence of trade roots thousands of miles long well back in prehistory.

So while I am making every effort to buy locally those things that I can, and to stay seasonal (I've pretty much always been seasonal, it used to drive my kids crazy-- "Why can't we buy fresh strawberries in October again?") I'm not going to knock myself out trying to recreate an idyllic human past that never existed. I'll buy these things from local merchants, and fair trade where I can, but some things you just don't have to live without.

We live in a marvelously interconnected, technological world. Let's use that interconnectedness intelligently and still be able to eat cinnamon scones in northern Illinois.

Cinnamon scones
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
>1/4 cup white sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1T cinnamon
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup half-half or milk
1/2 cup sour cream, plain or vanilla yogurt
½ cup cinnamon raisins

For glaze:
¼ cup yogurt
2 teaspoons cinnamon sugar

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C.

Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, and salt into a large bowl. Cut in butter using a pastry blender or rubbing between your fingers until it has the consistency of corn meal. Mix together milk and sour cream in a measuring cup. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently until well blended. (Overworking the dough results in terrible scones!)

To prepare raisins, plump raisins. Place in a microwaveable container, just cover with water and heat them in the microwave on medium for about 3 minutes. Drain and pat dry, then coat with about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon suger. Mix these into the scone batter.

Glaze with yogurt mixed with cinnamon

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop batter by generous spoonfuls. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are golden brown, not deep brown.

Clementine-Mint Marmalade, and clementine syrup
1 cup thin strips Clementine peel (about 4-6 fruits)
4 cups cold water
Pulp and juice of 10-12 clementines
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 cups boiling water
2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon mint extract

Peel the clementines, slice 4-6 peels into narrow strips (until you have about a cup). Hold onto the extra peels for the syrup. Remove seeds and white membrane from all the peeled fruit, dice. Set aside the diced pulp. (Again, conserve any leftovers for the syrup.) In a heavy saucepan, combine the sliced Clementine peel and cold water. Bring to a simmer, covered, over moderate heat; continue to simmer until peel is tender, about 30 minutes. Drain the water into the saucepan with the membrane and other extras.

Combine cooked peel, diced fruit, lemon juice and boiling water. Add sugar and blend thoroughly. Quickly bring to a boil and cook until mixture is thick and reaches 220 degrees F on a candy thermometer, about 20 minutes. Decant into sterilized jars.

For the syrup, add 1 1/2 cups of sugar to the extra peel, pulp and water. Bring to a boil and keep it on a high simmer for ten minutes. Drain the liquid into a separate pot, then strain or mill the solids into it to wring every bit of yummy liquid out of it. Bring this back to a high simmer, reducing it to 2 cups (about 10-15 more minutes).

What I don't need to buy

As people who read this blog know (both of you), I've been following the Eat Real Food challenge from the food and homemaking blog Not Dabbling in Normal. I've been going back and forth on how meeting the challenge works for this family. I was feeling quite discouraged that I couldn't seem to meet both forks of the challenge-- to source food locally, and to eschew packaging--without adding huge time and inconvenience and also while staying within the food budget.

I'm happy to report that at the Family Farmed Expo on Sunday I found a grocery delivery service called Fresh Picks where I can choose my food (unlike a CSA, which I don't use because I grow all my vegetables), that delivers to my door, and where the prices are comparable to, and sometimes cheaper than, the grocery store brands. Further, they have everything except dry goods (flour, noodles, etc. Still trying to find local flour that I can actually both get to and afford.)

So what I've done with the challenge is to make it mainly avoiding things with ingredients (vis. Michael Pollan's Food Rules) and packaged goods. I'm also walking to the grocery store, which will discourage buying stuff that I don't need.

Since Monday is a day off, I'm dedicating it to making the things I usually buy, which this week was scones for breakfast and snacks, hummus, and pita bread. (I really wanted peach scones, but since they're not in season that seems out of the spirit of the challenge. Maybe I'll do it and not tell anyone, heh-heh. Right. The goddess will know.) Adding in the crackers that I made on Friday, my time investment was about 4-5 hours. Not counting the cost of the ingredients (negligible) my savings was about $20! In other words, making just these things, which are fun and easy to make, that I buy regularly, will save me something on the order of $1,000 a year.

Hummus

1 (16 ounce) can garbanzo beans, half the liquid reserved
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 heaping teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil

Put all ingredients, except the reserved water, in a food processor and blend until creamy. If it's too dry, add a little of the water. Any water you don't use, throw it in the jar of vegetable stock that I just know you have in your freezer. You can add different herbs or vegetables for flavored hummus, such as chopped roasted red peppers, basil, sundried tomatoes, etc. We ate this with the homemade crackers. Yum.

If you're a real sucker for punishment, um I mean if you want to lower your carbon footprint even more, you can make a creamy hummus grinding it by hand in a large mortar, and tone your tricepts and delts at the same time.

Pita recipe here.

Apostate

When I was a child, in the late 50s and 60s, there was widespread famine in India, Africa, and Asia, and serious hunger in the eastern US and Mexico. This wasn't like today, when famines are caused by religious and political upheaval, and climate issues.

These famines were caused because the world was not growing enough food. We couldn't feed ourselves. My childhood was spent anticipating a Malthusian nightmare where the population outstripped the food supply.

Of course, it didn't happen. And it didn't happen because of Norman Borlaug who engineered high-yield grains and introduced modern agriculture to those parts of the world that were in deep trouble. At the same time, to oversimplify, large areas of US and Canadian farmland were being converted to other uses, industrial, recreational, and domestic, because of those same food production innovations. It's why there is no farmland within spitting distance of most major metro areas anymore. Cheap fuel and government subsidized highways and shipping completed the equation. All over the world, the middle classes eat food grown far away, by someone else.

Enter the local food movement. I spent the afternoon at the Family Farmed Expo, talking to exhibitors and listening to panels discuss buying local, knowing your farmer, preserving food yourself and organic farming.

The overwhelmingly young, white, middle-class, educated crowd were sincere and enthusiastic, and I think misguided.

There are six and a half million people along the Wisconsin-Illinois-Michigan shoreline. Do we really want "local" farms (and I use the term loosely, as did the Expo, with exhibitors from as far as southern Indiana). Do we have that farm capacity, or do we want to? I wonder if it is better to let land go back to its ur-natural state, than to a pre-industrial local subsistence model.

Food preservation, also, struck me as naive in its economy of scale. Is it really better for a million local households to each have a dehydrator ($80) and a couple of freezers ($200 to $350 each), and a pressure canner ($200 to $600), and a vacuum sealer ($150)? One panelist had all of these so that her children can only eat fruit "in season" because they've frozen strawberries themselves (purchased at considerable expense from a "local" grower at a Farmers Market). Left out of the calculation were the south Asian factories where all that stuff is being made so that well-off midwestern housewives can go back to the land.

I would like to posit that a better direction for our political energies is toward a sustainable agriculture, both organic and chemical, some local, some distance, with carbon neutral shipping and real pricing, and the rethinking of tax subsidies to support the farmer and not the chemical multinationals. We need to insist on labeling that allows us to know what goes into our food. We need to make more food ourselves, whether from locally milled flour, or wheat shipped in from India. We need to spend the few extra pennies it costs to support what Michael Pollan calls "industrial organic" that uses economies of scale intelligently to replenish and nurture the land.

It's a worthy effort, and I'll support these vendors when I can. I grow a garden, and I do a lot of preserving (without all the expensive equipment). But what I took away from the Expo was a desire to worry less about where my food comes from, and more about how it was grown.

For a fantastic conversation about this issue, visit MyFolia, where I posted the same essay to my journal.