The boy got in

Oh, I know I shouldn’t be writing a post at 4:49 a.m. But I’ve got my Christmas cold, hacking away, and my boy just got into Loyola. Here’s how life has changed. In my day (oh, I HATE to say that), you applied to college and you got an acceptance letter. Now you get a text message. Noah got his text this afternoon.

I told him that we have to figure out financing. I told him that it’s really cold in Chicago. I didn’t tell him that when I drop him off at his dorm there I will walk away bravely and then cry uncontrollably.

What’s happened to me? I used to be self-sufficient. I used to be self-directed. Until I let all these people in my life. Now I have to worry about how they are all turning out. I’m pretty proud of Noah. He’s come a long way and he’s a great kid. My mom used to call Louise and me rotten kids. She meant it as a complement. I wish she was here. She’d love the grandson she never knew.

We are a salad

I spend all my time in the car listening to food podcasts. Mark gave me an I-Pod for Christmas last year, even though I told him I would never use it. Now, I can’t walk ten feet without it. Does that make me technologically savvy? I sure hope so.

At any rate, I was listening to the Splendid Table and Lynne Rossetto Kasper was interviewing Marcus Samuelsson (who was born in Ethiopia, raised in  Sweden and now cooks in the United States) and talked about America being a melting pot. Oh, no, Samuelsson said. We are a salad. We are a salad because everyone can bring their own food traditions to this country and not have to dilute them to blend in. Every part of a salad is separate and distinct and equally enjoyed (unless you’re Bunny and you don’t like red onions).

That got me to thinking about how things have improved around here over the last few years. When we moved to Brentwood, which is just outside Nashville, 16 years ago there was a Red Lobster, a J. Alexander’s (kind of like Ruby Tuesday’s) and a few meat n’ threes. We were not excited. But one by one, immigrants crept in. How they found Nashville I’m not quite sure, but I’m glad they did. All those people who want to put fences up around the U.S. borders so no one can get in (or out) must not have eaten at a Thai restaurant lately.

Now our dining decisions go something like this. We can go to the Thai restaurant and get my favorite thing in the world to eat: larb. It’s ground up chicken with spices and lime juice that you eat in iceberg lettuce leaves. Or we can go to the Vietnamese place and get this really terrific pork with rice noodles, cilantro and fish sauce. How about roasted goat? The Indian buffet we went to on Sunday had it. Yummy.

Or my go-to dish when I’m feeling good about being bad: chorizo and eggs. The Mexican kind of chorizo that you take out of the casing. We can now find this at several authentic Mexican restaurants, but you can also easily make it at home.

Here’s what you do (more of a procedure than a recipe!). Take the chorizo out of the casing and fry it in a skillet until it’s kind of crispy. Add in some beaten eggs. You don’t need any other seasoning because the chorizo is spicy. When the eggs are soft-set scrambled, cut off the heat. Nuke a few tortillas, hopefully from a Mexican grocery store where they make them by hand. Fill the tortillas with the egg and chorizo mixture and roll them up like a burrito.

I am thankful to Armando Durazo for this recipe. He and I worked in Reno together and he brought back homemade tortillas from his ancestral home in Tuscon. He’d share them with us, along with this recipe.

Salad is good. I don’t think there can be a big enough bowl.

It’s not over yet

For the last few months, every time I cook for Noah I think how close it is to the end of this chapter. He’s heading off to college next fall and his voracious appetite will leave with him. BUT, last night he happened to mention that college dorms these days have “common kitchens” – places where students can actually cook. Aha!  There’s life in the old girl yet.

Here’s a picture of a common university kitchen. I can work with this. I must pause here to say that I will diligentlyattempt not to be a helicopter. That’s what overly attentive parents of college students are called because they hover. I will not visit Noah every weekend to cook for him. I will not send him casseroles through the mail. But now I know that I can teach him how to make something to eat that doesn’t come in a paper cup or a Styrofoam container.

My own college cuisine was pretty pathetic. My roommate and I invested in a popcorn popper and used it to make macaroni and cheese. I was relating this to my favorite clerk at the convenience store the other day when she gently allowed as how by the time she got to college, the microwave had been invented. Ouch.

So tonight I was making supper when it occurred to me that one of the dishes I make all the time would be a great common kitchen recipe. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s healthy. As usual, it’s a procedure more than a recipe, which will be perfect for college-aged boys whose brains have not completely formed yet.

Sauteed Green Beans: Take a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and throw it in a skillet. (I know college boys will not have extra virgin olive oil, but I’m going to teach Noah about this and send some with him). Add some frozen green beans. That’s right, frozen. Salt and pepper. Add the juice of one half lemon (I’m sending lemons with Noah as well – you don’t suppose his new friends will make fun of him, do you?). Now just let those beans thaw and cook over medium heat. It takes about five minutes.

I am now on a new mission to think up all the recipes I can that college kids would actually cook in a common kitchen. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. This is only the beginning.

I hate turkey soup

I don’t like turkey soup.  Every food magazine in America writes about Thanksgiving leftovers and always has a turkey soup recipe. That’s just lame. If I were going to make something with leftover turkey, it would involve cream of mushroom soup and sour cream. But I never do. I always make turkey sandwiches. The proper way: soft white bread, turkey breast, mayonnaise (Duke’s naturally), salt and pepper, iceberg lettuce. It is the sandwich of my forefathers. Or at least my father. He taught me to make them this way and I have never deviated. I don’t like change. Oh, I say I do. But I don’t mean it.

It’s three days after Thanksgiving. As much as I love Thanksgiving food, which I take home in huge Tupperware containers from Bunny’s, it’s starting to look a little sad  in the fridge. I have already eaten a lot of Mike Ramsey’s fabulous cornbread dressing. The broccoli, rice and cheese casserole has ridden on several trips through the microwave. Cranberry sauce – the boys always say they’ll eat some, but they never do. I’ve consumed almost all of it.

So this afternoon, I improvised.

Since it’s Sunday afternoon and another school week looms, I started thinking of different things to do with the leftovers to feed Noah for at least a day and a half. I had a container of deviled eggs. Very good deviled eggs, but how many can you eat? Actually, I’ve found out you can eat a lot but now I’m over them. So I make egg salad. Mash the eggs up with a fork and add mayonnaise. Serve with Triskets. If egg salad is traveling to school, put it in a plastic container and label it “bring me home”. You wouldn’t believe how many plastic containers I lose in a month.

Ham. Bunny makes great ham with this sweet glaze that’s just irresistible. It’s perfect for ham biscuits. Bake some Pillsbury Southern-style biscuits (I am not endorsing any product, but these really are the best). Top with ham and some of the glaze. Put in baggies. Ready to go in the morning.

Mashed potato casserole. Is there anything better? Well, yes there is. You take the potatoes, which are already seasoned with all the good stuff, and form them into patties. Then you melt some butter in a skillet and fry them. (I have to tell you that Max, one of my cats, is sitting on my lap right now as I’m typing this as if he is extremely interested in what I have to say.)

So those are my Thanksgiving leftover ideas. I’m pretty proud of myself. No turkey soup. Not allowed.

Oysters

Who knows how some family traditions get started. I think the tradition of eating oysters on the half shell Thanksgiving Day got started when I brought a couple pints of already shucked oysters to Bunny’s to make scalloped oysters. Mark and Granddaddy started fishing them out of the container and I had to bat them away.  So to protect my precious scalloped oysters, I bought a couple dozen fresh oysters and a shucking knife one year.

That was at least five years ago. This is how the oyster shucking session goes. It has to be at least below 50 degrees, of course. Coats are required and mittens would be, too, if we weren’t afraid of getting fuzz all over our bivalves. We always eat oysters outside because Bunny just can’t abide them. Mark starts out shucking them, using one of Bunny’s dish towels (we don’t tell her an oyster-juice-soaked dish towel is thrown in with the rest of her laundry). It can take a lot of muscle to shuck an oyster, which is why I hurry back and forth getting crackers and paper towels, so as not to actually have to shuck one. Granddaddy busies himself raking leaves in the front yard, so as not to actually have to shuck one. Noah has to be dragged away from a computer game. He always arrives after almost all the oysters are shucked. So, as you may surmise, Mark not only starts the shucking but finishes it.

The cocktail sauce is homemade, of course: Ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice and Worchestershire sauce. If you want to make your own, start out with about a cup of ketchup and add two teaspoons of horseradish. Add about a 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and a couple shots of Worchestershire sauce. Now taste it and adjust to your liking.

We always eat our oysters the same way: Saltine cracker topped with an oyster and a dollop of sauce. Noah says some foods just make your stomach dance. Fresh shucked oysters on Thanksgiving. We are doing the hokey-pokey all over the yard.

Bunny’s house

So here I am at Bunny’s house. It’s almost 10 p.m. and we have had a full-on Bunny day. First of all, by the time we get to Knoxville, Bunny is over getting ready for Thanksgiving. I don’t mean she’s done. I mean she’s over it. She’s been peeling apples all morning for the Waldorf salad, she’s made 48 deviled eggs, the rest of the casseroles are in the icebox but she’s reached her limit.

We head for a sports bar, where we can both eat lunch and smoke. Between bites of her club sandwich wrap, she’s on the phone with umpteen real estate people concerning a deal that is just a giant pain in the butt. We eat homemade potato chips. They are good.

Then we head to the Kroger for last-minute Thanksgiving supplies. What a mistake. There are people in there who haven’t been in a grocery store in five years and it shows. They wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, blocking everyone else from shopping. The Kroger has run out of chopped brocolli, pumpkin puree and Mrs. Smith’s pies. There are desperate people and it’s not a pretty sight.

We head back home to find Bunny’s sister, Brenda, and her husband installing a toilet. It is Bunny’s birthday present. It is a very high-end toilet. I think it is just a fine testiment to Bunny that she is getting a toilet right before Thanksgiving.

In the midst of all this chaos, Bunny makes spaghetti sauce for supper for nine. It’s too late at night for a recipe, but here’s her secret. She doesn’t drain the fat off the ground beef. It’s good. Then, we make green bean bundles. You will get the recipe for this after Thanksgiving when I get home. But now, it’s time for bed.  We have to get the dressing, turkey and gravy at Ramsey’s tomorrow. And we have to eat oysters on the half shell, another tradition. And then there’s Thanksgiving itself. I love this holiday above all else. And not the least because it’s at Bunny’s.

Pies for the Thankgiving Table

I am on a pie high right now, and I just thought I’d share the two recipes for pie that I’ve fallen in love with. Neither of them are mine, but I’ve made them both and I love them more than color TV.

The first one is Tyler Florence’s Ultimate Pumpkin Pie with Crunchy Cranberry Topping. Of course, I can’t follow anyone’s recipe to the letter. I use the Crisco pie dough recipe. And I leave off the cranberry topping. The pumpkin filling is creamy and just yummy. And it’s a one-crust pie, so easy peesy. This is the actual pie I baked. And I’ll admit this to you – it was my first pie ever! So you should take courage from that.

The second is a cherry pie. I am not a sweet filling person so I looked for a way not to use the canned cherry pie filling you see in the supermarket. Instead, I found a brand of tart cherries from Oregon (that’s the company’s name). On the label, it claims to have a recipe for the best cherry pie you’ll ever eat. I am buying stock in this company. This is also the actual pie I baked. I know I’m making much of this, but I suffered for years from pie-phobia.

I am shocked to tell you that when I went to the Oregon website to link to the recipe, they’ve changed it from the one on the can. The one on the website has way more sugar in it. So, if you like really sweet, here it is. If not, here’s the recipe on the inside of the Oregon label.

Cherry Pie

1/2 – 3/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cans Oregon Red Tart Cherries

1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

1 tablespoon butter

2 crusts for a 9-inch pie

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drain the cherries and reserve the juice from only one can. In a saucepan, stir the cherry juice into the combined mixture of the cornstarch and sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened. Remove from heat. Gently stir in the cherries and extract. Pour filling into pastry lined pie pan. Dot with butter. Adjust top crust, seal and vent. Bake 30-40 minutes or until crust browns and filling begins to bubble. If necessary, cover edges with foil during the last 15 minutes of baking to prevent over-browning. Cool pie several hours to allow filling to thicken before slicing.

Whatever your Thanksgiving traditions are, I hope you all have a safe and comforting Thanksgiving Day and celebrate your loved ones with good food and warm hearts.

Pie dough

I cannot tell you how proud I am of myself. I have learned to make pie dough. After almost 40 years of trying. The Mayhews are at the Harbins’ house in Knoxville a few weeks ago so Noah can visit UT. We are joined for supper by Noah’s friend, Buehler (his first name is Chris but nobody calls him that) and his girlfriend, Sarah, who just happens to be in pastry school. Making polite conversation with Sarah, I ask her about how to make pie dough.

“Are you opposed to shortening?” she asks. “Hell, no,” I answer. This is the secret to a good pie crust. A few days later, I’m listening to an NPR interview with Alton Brown. He admits on national public radio that the secret to a good pie crust isn’t taste (as in using butter, which all of his recipes do) but texture, which is why shortening is the preferred ingredient. This has been my downfall all these years.

About a million famous cooks have posted the directions on how to make pie dough. But my instructions will actually get you there because I’m an idiot and until two weeks ago I couldn’t make pie crust to save my life. But I’ve done it five times now and it’s turned out perfect every time. As Mark says, every blind hog finds an acorn every now and again.

Here’s the first thing. The recipe I use is the official Crisco recipe. Just print it out. The recipe says to put the Crisco in the refrigerator to get really cold, but I put it in the freezer for about half an hour. The next thing, and I learned this from some cooking show somewhere, is not to pack the flour into the measuring cup but to dump it in a bowl and measure it out, using a knife to level it at the top of the measuring cup (dry cup, not wet). I am not buying a kitchen scale to measure flour, as many experts suggest. Mark’s Grannie Belle made pie dough all her life without a measuring scale and I think she had the right idea.

Now, put the flour and salt into a food processor. Give it one pulse to blend it. Cut up the Crisco into half inch pieces (more or less – don’t go insane measuring them) and add them to the bowl. Pulse 3-4 times max for a second each pulse. Have your ice water ready in a bowl (you are going by the recipe so I don’t have to type it out, right?). Add 3 tablespoons of water and pulse once or twice. See if the dough holds together when you pinch off a piece. I always need 4 tablespoons of water. Once that dough holds together, STOP.

Dump the dough out onto a cutting board and gently shape it into a disk. Wrap it in Saran wrap and put it in the icebox for at least an hour. The next trick is rolling out it. This freaked me out, too. But the best way is to put the dough between a sheet of waxed paper, flour the dough just a little and then roll out it.

Once the dough reaches the ends of the waxed paper, it’s ready to put in the pie pan. Just peel back one side of the waxed paper, put your rolling pin at the beginning of the dough disk and carefully roll the dough onto the pin, peeling away the waxed paper as you go. Once you get the dough in the pan, use the thumb and index finger of one and and the index finger of the other hand to make little pleats.

Now, then, I’m going to give you the recipe for mincemeat pie so you have something to fill this thing with. It is Mark’s favorite childhood memory. Grannie Belle would make it for him every Thanksgiving. Mincemeat used to actually have meat in it, but it doesn’t anymore for the most part. It’s basically a spiced fruit filling.  Grannie used None Such jarred filling and it’s still out there to buy. Here’s the recipe for the filling.

When you’re baking the pie, if the outer edges of the crust get too brown, just stick some foil around the pan until the rest of the pie is done. Here’s another thing I learned from national public radio. The pie is done when the filling boils in a thick and syrupy way.

So, here’s the end result. Now doesn’t that look good? I have to tell you that I made this pie yesterday and there is exactly one piece left today. Mark has eaten at least half of it. Noah’s eaten a fourth of it. And I have had just a touch of pie, myself. You know the best thing about pie? It’s not supposed to look perfect. The more homemade it is, the less perfect it looks. I can get behind a concept like that.

 

Scalloped oysters

You are either an oyster person or you’re not. Most people are not oyster people and that’s just fine – more for me.

Every Thanksgiving since time began, our family has had scalloped oysters at the table. And I have always found this curious because both sides of my family came from rural southern Illinois, not particularly known for its seafaring ways. I think what probably happened is that the recipe traveled, and since the Chapins threw nothing away – ever – scalloped oysters came with them across country. My people started out on the Mayflower. A lot of people are very proud of this fact but I have to point out that a lot of those folks were crooks who got out of town just ahead of the hangman. I prefer to think of them as my ancestors.

We ended up in Massachusetts, where I’m sure we acquired the recipe. This was in the 1700s. Now, the only faulty logic in my assumption is that the recipe calls for saltines, which weren’t actually invented until 1876. But I never let facts get in the way of a good story. Here’s an interesting fact that I can conjecture about. Abraham Lincoln used to throw parties in his home where only oysters were eaten. Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield, Illinois, which is only forty miles away from Jacksonville, where my people lived. I am now going to take a great leap and say that my people were invited to Lincoln’s house for oysters and he gave us the recipe! Well, that’s not right, either. As we all know, poor Mr. Lincoln passed in 1865, eleven years before saltines were invented.

Well, I don’t know how the hell we got this recipe, but here it is:

Scalloped Oysters

Two sleeves of crushed saltine crackers

3-4 slices bread,  set out the night before you make the casserole so they get stale and then crumbled

1 stick of melted butter

2 pints oysters

Salt and pepper

4-5 tablespoons of heavy cream

Mix the cracker and bread crumbs together. Mix in the melted butter. Put a layer of the crumbs in a baking dish and add a layer of oysters (my dad used to say layer the oysters “shoulder to shoulder”). Salt and pepper. Add another layer of crumbs and then oysters, salt and pepper. End with a layer of crumbs. Spoon the heavy cream over the top.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving is saved

There are certain things Bunny and I require for Thanksgiving, which is always at her house in Knoxville. We require green bean bundles. We require Waldorf salad. We require broccoli-cheese-rice casserole, mashed potato casserole and banana pudding. But we have always relied on Ramsey’s for the cornbread dressing, gravy and turkey. Partly it’s a matter of oven space and partly it’s the fact that Mike Ramsey just makes those three things better then we do.

So I can’t tell you the horror I felt a few weeks ago when Bunny called to say Ramsey’s was closing. We have been feasting on Mike’s dressing, gravy and turkey for years, and I mean decades. It was partly a matter of leases gone wrong and a move to a less-than-perfect location, but the quality of Mike’s food was never at issue. Households throughout the greater Knoxville area were despondent at the news.

Bunny bought a 19-pound turkey, which was going to take up enormous oven space. I volunteered to make the dressing and gravy (Bunny is not allowed to make gravy after the Rocco DiSpirito jarred pork gravy fiasco. And I worried over this. I consulted more than 12 cookbooks as to the most delicious cornbread dressing. I had never considered making my own because Mike’s is so good. I made a shopping list for turkey wings and other necessities for making turkey stock for the gravy. I had never considered making the gravy because Mike’s is so good.

Well, thank goodness for Facebook. I logged on the other day and there was a post from Bunny that Mike is still catering Thanksgiving. And he even agreed to cook the 19-pound turkey for her. I am so relieved. Bunny has ordered two pans of dressing, four quarts of gravy and the turkey will arrive already sliced. All I have to do is make a few pies and the scalloped oysters (Bunny hates oysters, but it’s a tradition from my dad’s side of the family and, as we’ve just seen, tradition dies hard.

I am now officially relieved. I don’t know Mike’s recipe for dressing and gravy, but I am going to give you Bunny’s official recipe for broccoli, rice and cheese casserole. It’s always the first thing to go.

Broccoli, Rice and Cheese Casserole

1 10-ounce package frozen chopped broccoli

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup butter

1 1/3 cup cooked rice

1 8-ounce jar processed cheese spread (that’s Cheez Whiz, of course. God bless Bunny)

1 can cream of mushroom soup

Combine broccoli and onion. Cook according to the package directions. Drain and add remaining ingredients. Pour into greased two-quart casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.