Baking for a friend

I love doing things for people. This is one of the things that continues to annoy me about my son, who resists having things done for him. My daughter is not so reticent, and is perfectly willing to accept help in cash or in kind.

I started doing things for my young friend Kristen, and lo and behold, she started doing things back (really, I wasn't expecting anything, but in case you need to know, I wear a large and I like the color pink). I've been promising her these brownies for a couple of weeks.

Apricot cornmeal brownies
1/2 cup butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs at room temp
2-3 T honey
1/2 cup apricot (or other fruit) compote

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup white flour
1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal

Glaze:
1/2 cup apricot compote
1 teaspoon corn syrup
1/2 cup crushed nuts

Melt chocolate with butter with a double boiler or microwave oven, combine with honey and compote and allow to cool. Beat eggs till foamy, then add to chocolate mixture by hand. Sift flour with cornmeal, salt, and baking powder and fold into the chocolate mixture. Before completely mixed, add nuts if wanted. Turn into a greased cake pan.

Heat the compote and corn syrup for the glaze until pourable, then spread over top of brownies. Cover with the the crushed nuts. Bake 20-25 minutes at 350F, until an inserted knife pulls out clean. Cool completely before cutting.

What to do with Mahlzeit

Mahlzeit started as an online cookbook of family favorites for my kids, and then I discovered that I really like blogging, so I kept it going.

But it's never really found its voice. It's been a cooking blog and a gardening blog. Sustainability, editorializing, this that and the other thing. So I'm permuting again; we're going to try just free associating here. So now this is just about what I do on any given day-- empty nester, working mother, athlete, gardener, artist. Days in the life of a Renaissance woman.

I made the following crackers last week for a friend whom I forgot does not eat land-based meat. So then we had to eat them all ourselves.

Darn.

Bacon Cheese Crackers
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup corn meal
4 oz. of cheese (cheddar, gruyere or Parmesan) grated
6 T (3/4 stick) of unsalted butter, cut into pieces
about 3 T heavy cream
8 slices thick bacon (pastured pigs, please)

Cut the bacon in small pieces and slowly fry it until it is quite crispy. Drain well.

Mix all ingredients except cream in a food processor; run the machine until dough forms a clump, adding the cream a little at a time to get a nice maleable texture. (I only have a 3 cup foot processor, so I have to divide the dough into thirds). Form into logs about 1 1/2 x 8" each, roll in plastic wrap or wax paper and place in freezer until firm (a couple of hours). Slice into 1/4" or thinner rounds. Only have one log out at a time; leave the others in the freezer until you're ready to use them. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Update (thanks barrel-racer) Refrigerate in a closed jar. Don't leave these out, not sure if the bacon will keep.

First and last

I never started preserving in a major way before last year believe it or not (right? I talk like I've been doing it from the cradle).

I have always preserved the food I grow--I made and froze tomato paste, I dabbled a bit in heat canning, I've put away dried beans, and made jam from my raspberries. But pretty much I used to only grow what we could consume fresh.

Then I started realizing that even this basic approach was taking us well into the fall, so I started tweaking the garden to see if I could make it to November. Last year, after joining in on Eat Real Food at Not Dabbling Normal (where I am now also a contributor), I decided to see if I could make it all the way to January on food preserved from my garden. We bought an 8 cf chest freezer and resurrected my son's little dorm fridge. I increased the number of shell beans I was planting, and learned a lot of pickling recipes.

I cheated a little by purchasing farmers market in-season fruit and veggies to preserve (notably eggplants and peppers, since mine did not produce very well last year), but everything in my larder was preserved in-season and guaranteed local and organic, which is important to me.

I'm still somewhat dependent on the grid, inasmuch as most of what I preserved I did by freezing, but there's really nothing like "shopping" in your own basement. What I found was that there was hardly anything you need to buy to eat a varied diet all winter, including all the main vegetable types--tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, heavy greens like kale and chard, legumes, beans, corn--are all easy to grow and to preserve. I didn't grow potatoes or onions so I bought those (I never seem to be able to grow onions), but I made it into December on leeks, and I still have some parsnips.

Yesterday, yes well into April, I made the following Xanish rice (can't call it Spanish rice, since I did not actually refer to any references to find out what that really is). The stock, tomatoes, peppers, corn, and carrots where from my garden.

Xanish rice
1 cup white, brown or basmati rice
cups broth or stock per package directions, less 1/4 cup
1 quart bag whole peeled tomatoes (about 3 medium tomatoes, equivalent to a can)
3 chopped shishito or other hot pepper (to taste)
handful of frozen peas
handful of frozen corn
1 cup dry beans

Tomatoes should be room temperature, or even hot. Boil the beans in a small sauce pan for about 30 minutes, or until tender. Cook the rice in the stock according to package instructions, cutting the water by about a quarter cup (the tomatoes will add the additional water). When the rice is about half-way cooked, add the tomatoes and peppers and continue cooking. Before serving mix in the beans, corn, and peas. If the corn and peas are frozen, no need to cook them, just throw them in. The hot rice will warm them sufficiently.

The means of production

We think of sustainability as going "back to the land," and "real" as attaining the rural ideal that is so central to our American mythos.

But in fact, what differentiated us from our uncivilized origins was our invention of the city--a settled collection of people, working together for the common purpose of survival. In many ways, cities and towns are more "natural" places for us to live-- after all we are social creatures, suited by biology to living in groups. City dwellers are just as real as anyone else, and there are a lot more of us. And it's going to stay that way, whether you like it or not. It used to be that you lived on a farm, or in a small town. And then it was your parents who lived there. Then a generation came where they would just visit their grandparents on the farm. Now there's been a couple of generations for whom the farming past is out of living memory, and the family farm is a trip down an unfamiliar country road "I think it's around here somewhere."

Cities are where we live. And cities do a lot of things better-- diversity, economies of scale, specialization, cultural life. What we don't do, what we can't do, is grow things in concentrated farms. Based on our current food system, cities need to import their food. The very things that make cities attractive make food production expensive and cumbersome. In our current food system, cities have to import their food.

During and after the Great Migration when rural southerners moved to northern cities, during the waves of European and Chinese migration, and after the Dust Bowl which displaced hundreds of thousands of farm families, new city migrants brought their farming and gardening traditions with them. Unfortunately, as noted, that rural past is now so far past that it's barely even family story anymore, and the practical knowledge is lost in many families.

About 15% of any given city's land is "vacant." In cities suffering depression this number may be higher (hence the Urban Farm movement in Detroit). As far as I can find out about 16% of urban dwellers have access to enough yard to put in a garden. Doesn't sound like enough space to grow food for a million people, does it?

But in 1943, Chicagoans grew all the produce they needed, in vacant lots and backyards, as did many other large urban centers, through the Victory Garden movement.

We don't need to put in farms to be able to grow food in cities, of course. Everyone with a yard can have a garden. It doesn't even need to be your own. Lots of people join community gardens, although there is way more interest than there is land for this use and new regulations are starting to discourage the start of new ones on public land in some places. But while there are lots of gardeners with no land, there are even more private landholders with no gardens. There is a small but growing local industry in hiring out your gardening--someone else puts a garden in your yard. In exchange for the land, you get some of the harvest. Or do what The Peterson Garden Project in Chicago did-- find some vacant, privately-owned land, and talk the landowner into letting you put in a garden, even if just for a couple of years until the land sells.

Everyone should grow at least some of their own food. I come from five generations of city dwellers myself-- not a gardener in the bunch. If I can learn to garden, anyone can. Taking back control of this most basic need, even if it's just tomatoes or blueberries in a pot on a porch, is reconnecting urban Americans with the land that is so important to our psyches. And it's giving us back the means of production, giving ordinary people control of this most basic need.

Cucumber-corn chowder
1 quart cucumber, cubed
2 cups corn
1 large carrot, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
10 small new potatoes, halved (or equivalent red or yukon)
2 cloves garlic
1 T chopped fresh parsley
4 T butter
2T flour
2 cups stock (chicken or vegetable; make sure it's a "white" stock or the soup will be ugly!)
>1 cup milk
1 cup half-half
2 yolks eggs
pepper and salt to taste

Cook the potatoes separately in water or the microwave, until al dente (a little underdone; they'll finish cooking in the soup). I used frozen cukes, but if you have fresh, peel, seed and dice. Dice onions and garlic (or use a garlic press) and saute in 2 T butter with the parsley and dill seeds in the soup pot about 5 minutes (the cukes will turn a bright light green). Heat the stock to a simmer. While it's heating, add the additional butter to the vegetables, melt, then dredge with the flour, letting it simmer, but not brown, about 2 minutes. Add half the stock about a quarter cup at a time, allowing mixing it well with the dredged vegetables. It should thicken each time. Add the rest of the stock, simmer 20 minutes. Add the potatoes, carrots, corn and milk, bring to a light simmer. Continue to simmer until it thickens slightly. Allow to cool to just a little too hot to eat.

Lightly beat the half-half and egg yolks, pour a little boiling soup on to them, stirring at same time, then return it to the hot soup, stirring constantly; it must not boil again or it will curdle. Season to taste with white pepper and salt. Thin with a little half-and-half just before serving.

You can add a little sauteed andouille sausage to this for the carnivores among you.

The things we carry

At Earth Hour dinner the other night, my hostess Holly sent us all home with slices of chocolate chip date cake. I didn't realize how deeply I had internalized the idea of avoiding one-use plastic until I felt myself cringe as she casually pulled out a ziplock bag to wrap it in. I didn't say anything, but that ziplock bag is sitting on my counter still, several days later, like Banquo's ghost.

Holly is about as green as they come--active on the American Institute of Architect green design committees, spearheads construction debris reuse for a department of the city of Chicago, an avid cook. But she didn't think twice about pulling out that ziplock bag.

We pack a lot of things in throwaway wrappers that we ought to be reusing. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and left your 14 canvas bags in the car? And you get to the check out, and just say, oh they're in the car I'll just use plastic today. But why not go back out to the car and get the bags? Or put the groceries back into the cart and bag them when you get to the car. I shake my head in wonder every time I see some young mother, of a generation who should know better, and in affluent areas of the city where one assumes a degree of awareness and buy-in, leaving the grocery store with groceries stuffed into 20 or 30 petroleum-based plastic bags. What will it take to create awareness and a willingness to act when mothers like that don't even understand that what they're doing is wrong.

Doggie bags made of styrofoam. Lunchboxes made of plastic. When will we learn that avoiding these things is easy, cheap and necessary. We simply cannot keep casually wrapping in plastic a piece of cake that's going to be consumed 10 minutes later.

We need to teach our children to be thoughtful and planning-oriented. We need to train ourselves to stewardship; to bring the bags in from the car, or go back out for them if we forget. We need to pack our fruit in paper bags, and never buy another ziplock again. Or at the very least, to wash them.

Green isn't just reading the proper blogs and donating to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Green is getting to the point where you cannot bring yourself to use plastic when there's an alternative, and to have the courage to tell your friend, "just wrap it in wax paper."

Another risotto
1 cup Arborio rice
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup raisins (they can be crusty old dry ones, which is what actually inspired this)
1 medium onion, diced
1 eggplant, roasted (or from frozen preserved)
2-3 cups broth
salt and pepper to taste
grated hard cheese

Remember, you cannot leave risotto for even a minute--keep stirring or you'll be scrubbing a burnt pot later.

Heat the broth to a simmer, and keep it there. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the raisins and saute about a minute, add the onions and saute until they just start to go transparent. Add the rice and saute about 5 minutes, until they start to look a little toasted (not burnt).

Start adding the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time. It's important to add the broth in small amount and allow it to absorb into the rice completely before you add more. When the first 1/2 cup is absorbed, add another, and allow it to be absorbed. When you've used half the broth, add the eggplant, stirring thoroughly. The eggplant adds a lot of moisture, so allow that moisture to be absorbed as well.

Continue to add the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time, until the dish is sticky but not glutinous. I've never used all the broth, the one I made last night used only 2 cups because of all the moisture in the eggplant.

Serve hot, sprinkle with grated cheese. This dish does not keep well.

How did Earth Hour go untweeted?

or How I almost missed Earth Hour and made friends with a scary dog

Holly, owner of Skye the Corn Dog called me last week to come over for an Earth Hour meal. Right. Earth Hour, whatever happened to that?

I believe this happens the last Saturday of March each year, and was started in 2007 in Australia. Last year there were ads on buses, and blogs and billboards. This year, nothing. If Holly hadn't called I'd never have even noticed.

Then on the day, Saturday the 26th, here's what happened:
I borrowed Bill's car, only to discover that the clutch is a mess. I couldn't put it into reverse. Unfortunately, I did not discover this until I needed to get out of a parallel parking place (it hadn't been parallel when I parked there-- I just pulled up to the curb. Then a car parked in front and another behind me.) Had to reverse by taking it out of gear and rolling it with one foot sticking out the driver's side door.

Once I did manage to get home, I wrote one of those wonderful blog posts which apparently had some hinky code in it, because when I hit "publish," instead it "wiped out entire post."

Since taking the bus seemed in keeping with the spirit of the day anyway, at the appointed time I walked the 5 blocks to the nearest bus stop, only to discover that I didn't have enough money on my bus card. You can't use cash on the bus, so I thought, okay, I'll just turn around and walk to the train. It'll mean a transfer, but her house is only 2 blocks from the station at the other end.

I didn't make it to the train, stopping off at home first, which was good because I discovered that I didn't have any cash anyway, and you can't use plastic to fill the public transit card in Chicago (not kidding).

Since I also had had a rather awful week at work I almost pooped on Earth Hour. Fortunately, I came to my senses, Holly came and picked me up, and Skye the Corn Dog was so excited to see me that she pee'd. Since we had anticipated this, we had the greeting take place outside.

I met Holly's delightful tenant. We cooked shrimp creole with cornbread, which we ate with steamed green beans and the following salad.

And I put Earth Hour in my calendar tickler for next year.


Spicy salad with early greens and late apples
any early greens
small endive
onions, cut in rings
2 T sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
1-2 apples , peeled and sliced thin
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 cup frozen peas, uncooked (just let them thaw)
optional: wasabi peas, crushed

Dressing
Juice of 1 1/2 limes
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sesame oil
1 T wasabi paste

Toss the apples in lime juice, add the endive (slightly crushed, so it doesn't "spoon" together). Caramelize the onions in sesame oil and honey (cook about 10 minutes over low heat, until onions are very limp and golden in color). Toss all with the greens and frozen peas. Don't forget to zest the limes and reserve the zest for the larder (dry it in the microwave- place on paper towel and zap on high in 30 second bursts until dry).

For dressing, add all ingredients and emulsify in a blender, or with a hand-held blender. Dribble a couple of tablespoons over the greens mix and let sit a couple of hours. Add the crushed wasabi peas and additional dressing (if desired) just before serving.

Changing the value equation

I heard the phrase "changing the value equation" last week at the Family Farmed Expo, a local food and sustainable agriculture event. I'm apparently the last person in America to hear this phrase, as it pops up on Google in all sorts of contexts (I'm just not up on my jargon), but I think it's particularly apt when it comes to our food choices. Is it really cheaper, in dollars and time, to purchase packaged, processed poison compared to what we lose?

Cost + Convenience ≠ Health + Heritage + Hospitality.

In fact, Cost + Convenience < Health + Heritage + Hospitality.

Our myths of origin are full of parables about food. Philemon and Baucis achieve immortality because they feed the disguised god Zeus. Jason learns the route to the golden fleece because he saves blind Phineaus from the monsters who are stealing his food. Hospitality centered on food rituals is part of every culture. Do we really want a culture whose food rituals are invented by a creative team at an ad agency?

The mythos of food preceeds the meal itself. Preparation is a powerful binder of souls--setting small fingers to shelling peas, or measuring ingredients, or mixing batter not only puts families in community with each other, it's how we pass the heritage of our food traditions. How many of us have strong, fond memories of cooking with a mother or grandmother? I can't imagine that it's the same to remember your mother pulling a frozen entree out of the fridge and plunking it into the microwave. Children shouldn't to learn to cook by reading the edge of the box.

The idea that our time and our intellect is too valuable to "waste" on cooking is presumptuous, misogynist, and anti-historical. It's also wrong. It is not less time consuming to drive through MacDonald's than it is to cook the recipe below from scratch.

Many creative pursuits have been described as the "first art"; I've heard both dance and communal singing (Glee for Ug The Cavedweller, anyone?) referred to this way. But I would suggest that our earliest rituals and arts centered around food--identifying it, following it, gathering it, preparing it. We're replacing a rich heritage with a pursuit of perpetual toddlerdom--want it NOW. YOU fix it.

Much has been written, better, elsewhere on the health costs we are paying for our processed diet. But it's not just about how it's affecting the health of our individual bodies. Replacing humanity's rich and millennially ancient food cultures with the simplistic ideas of "cheaper" and "more convenient" is costing us in the health of our cultures and our relationships.

Spicy dirty rice
1 cup butternut squash, cubed
1 red onion, sliced
2-3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon honey
2-3 chorizo links
Any green vegetable like peas, green beans, snow peas, broccoli, or chard
1 cup white or brown rice

Cook the rice according to package instructions. In a large frying pan, caramelize the squash and onion in the butter and honey. Remove the chorizo from the casing, break into small chunks and sautee with the caramelized vegetables. Cook til the chorizo is thoroughly done. When rice is cooked, add it to the meat mixture. Stir thoroughly, then add the green vegetables (these can be frozen or fresh, no need to pre-cook them).