I propose a new red carpet, celebrity studded media event: The Cassandra Awards. We could hold it in one of the great world palaces, with world leaders and dignitaries attending with full retinues. It would have real-time world-wide Internet streaming along with all the television and news coverage (blocked by China, of course.) It could capture all the headlines and dominate the airwaves for two or three days at least. Rock stars could have fund-raising concerts for global catastrophes in conjunction with the award ceremonies, and new music, new fashions, and even a new world-wide holiday could highlight the momentous event.
And then we could forget it completely. Because after all, that's what Cassandra is all about.
In the Greek epic, Cassandra was a princess of Troy who had been given the gift of prophesy by the sun-god Apollo. But the gift was also a curse, because no one believed her when she spoke the truth. She saw the fall of Troy, Trojan Horse and all, and urged her countrymen to beware. But they ignored her warnings, and Troy was doomed.
So who will receive our Cassandra Award? Let's make a list.
Al Gore? Absolutely! It was all very fine for the world to present him with a Nobel Prize. But has the world changed its mad rush to melt the polar ice caps or stop clear-cutting the rain forests? Definitely a Cassandra.
How about James Cameron and his amazing movie Avatar? We all long to be ten feet tall and thin as wisps, to leap on the backs of flying lizards and to be intimately linked to the spiritual consciousness of the planet itself. We want to free our Mother Earth from bondage to corporate greed and to heal the ravages of the military-industrial complex. But how many of us have sold our gas-guzzlers and moved into solar-powered tree homes? Cassandra again.
So many names, writing, speaking, persuading and pleading over the course of so many years.
Yes, a few of us have listened. A few farmers manage to produce and sell organic produce. There is a growing supply of ethically raised meat on the market. Alongside the fossil-fuel driven power plants we can feel a trickle of solar power and a breath of wind-power. Cassandra's message has gone forth entirely in vain.
A few have listened, and believed, and made the commitment to change. But will it be enough?
I baked quiche for a crowd yesterday; about twenty people showed up for our Wednesday night potluck, with another dozen arriving later to browse the leftovers and listen to the program.
I know I made at least one woman happy: one of the grandmothers hadn't had quiche for years because of lactose intolerance. When I convinced her that there truly was no milk or cheese in the over-sized pie, she kept coming back for more.
Beginning with the "Quiche Lorraine" recipe from my tattered More With Less Cookbook, I made the crust with lard and rolled it to fit a x rectangle pan. The filling for 2 9" pies filled this pan nicely. Almond milk (original, not vanilla) substituted nicely for dairy milk, and crumbled bacon provided the salty richness of cheese. Onions and corn kernels filled out the dish.
We watched "Food, Inc." last night, because I'd been feeling discouraged and needed a fresh nudge toward making better choices. I'd seen plenty of excerpts from the film and listened to plenty of interviews with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. We've even taken our grandchildren to Joel Salatin's farm in Virginia, to show them healthy cattle, pigs and chickens on an actual family farm.
Even with that much background knowledge, the film is powerful. It's hard to describe the contrast between the popular images of wholesome agriculture promoted by advertisers and food packaging with the reality of industrial farming revealed in the film.
This week I'm making pastries with lard rendered down from pork scraps purchased at a local store. They make a great effort at promoting their meat as "natural," but that only means the animals had no antibiotics or hormones for 6 weeks before slaughter. I have no illusions about happy pigs cavorting in fields of clover. But I am also confident that my pork fat was cut the day I purchased it, in the butcher's space visible behind the meat counter. It was not washed down with ammonia or chlorine and the only processing done was in my own kitchen.
At a different store, we buy almond milk by the half gallon. Until recently, this "big box" discount super-store offered soy as their only alternative to cow's milk. We asked for almond milk, and we kept asking. Within about a month, almond milk began appearing regularly, first in a high-priced specialty brand, but soon as a familiar name brand. Last week they ran a 2/$5 special that sold out; by yesterday they had restocked, still at the sale price.
This little experience demonstrates the power we have as consumers. Clearly, we aren't the only consumers interested in alternatives to dairy products, and the industry is paying attention. If we ask - and keep asking - for unprocessed pig fat to render into lard, the merchants will supply unprocessed pig fat. If we insist on real food, the market will give us what we want, because above all, the market wants our business.
Who is to blame for the horrendous system of industrial agriculture in our nation? Certainly plenty of blame lies with multinational corporations who view living creatures as products. Without question, blame lies with our government who failed miserably at its duty to protect us. But ultimately, the blame is our own, for blithely swallowing the tempter's bait, hook, line and sinker. We have been, literally, consumers, without any thought about what we suck down our gullet.
And look what we've done.
Watch "Food, Inc." Then think carefully about your choices.
My January blues just dipped down into a dreary shade of gray. So how about some tips from the rest of you? How do you keep things interesting in the kitchen when the January soup pot just seems a bit too boring?
When the art of cooking turns into the chore of making everyday meals, we could all use two or three tips to keep things interesting. None of these ideas are new to the world of cookery, but they all tend to be overlooked by those of us who learned from our mothers, rather than from the Culinary Institute.
Tip #1: Caramelize those onions. I thought that's what I was doing by browning onions in oil over medium high to high heat, until they are transparent and beginning to brown. No, that is sauteing. Caramelizing is done over low to medium heat and takes about three times as long to get the onions nicely browned. But, oh, the difference! Caramelized onions are not just browned at the edges, but all the way through, without a hint of scorching. The fragrance tells you something has changed before you ever get the onions near your mouth. Trust me, caramelized onions can transform any dish.
Method: Peel and slice the onions. Don't get hung up at this stage, just slice the onions without cutting your fingers. Heat a small amount of oil in a heavy skillet until the oil shimmers. I prefer olive oil in a cast iron skillet, but a good quality stainless steel will do the job. I don't recommend skillets with non-stick coatings. That's what oil is for. Olive oil combined with a bit of butter or bacon grease is good, too.
Toss the sliced onions in the hot oil until they are well-coated, then lower the heat to medium or medium low and busy yourself with the rest of the meal. Check back on the onions when they begin to smell yummy; they will have lost a lot of their water and become limp. If they are beginning to stick, that's okay, just give them a stir, add a dash of salt, lower the heat a bit, then leave them alone again. Just let them cook slowly this way for 20 minutes or more. Keep the heat low enough so the onions don't become crisp. The longer they cook this way, the sweeter and more deeply colored they will become.
Use caramelized onions on hot sandwiches or to top off steak or chops, or use them as the basis for soups, stews or casseroles. Make a big pan and keep extra in the refrigerator for evenings when you don't have an extra half hour at the stove. Caramelized onions need not completely replace sauteed and browned onions in every dish. But it's a great technique to add to your culinary repertoire.
Tip #2: Add an Anchovy. Yes, seriously, it will be good. I know anchovies are little salty fish, but I promise they will NOT make your dish taste like little salty fish. Be brave. Try it. At worst, you'll lose a couple of bucks on the experiment. At best, you'll discover a new path to deliciousness.
For my first effort, I bought the smallest reclosable jar of imported anchovies I could find. A Spanish brand had been recommended, but I had to make do with Morrocan, packed in olive oil. (If it's in olive oil, how bad could it be?) As I used a pickle fork to pull one of the bony little fillets out of the jar, I almost lost my nerve, but I went ahead and tossed the thing into a skillet of simmering meat and veggies. Sure enough, the nasty little critter melted away into the broth, leaving no evidence of its passing. Until I tasted the dish.
The only word that describes the effect of the anchovy is the Japanese word umami. English has no equivalent, although "savory" might come close. Perhaps it is similar to the effect of monosodium glutamate (MSG) without the toxicity. Or, with King Lear, one could compare unsalted meat with salted.
When and where to add an anchovy or two? You could let the term "savory" be your guide. When a salad dressing needs "a little something," or when a pasta dish seems a little too dull. Perhaps when you're weary of the same old cheese sauce, or when you don't want the leftover stew to taste exactly like last Thursday's stew. Experiment. I think you'll like it.
Tip #3: Toast It. Lots of stuff besides stale bread is better when toasted. Just about any type of nut or seed is more flavorful when toasted before stirring into a batter or sprinkled over a dish. Almonds, walnuts, cashews and pecans are all improved by a few minutes in a hot dry skillet. Simply toast until you notice the nuts beginning to brown, then tip them from the skillet into the rest of the ingredients. When used as toppings or in salads, toasting in butter and salt is well worth the extra minutes. A touch of sweet, whether white or brown sugar or honey, is also a fine idea. All of this also applies to sunflower, sesame and flax seeds.
Quite a few herbs and spices benefit from toasting or "sweating" as it is sometimes called. Cumin seeds, coriander, caraway and fennel seeds can be toasted until they release their aroma. The flavors of curry powder, cloves, ground nutmeg and even rosemary can be intensified by brief heating in a dry pan before being ground and added to any sauce.
Having said this, I want to be careful by saying this technique is for hard seeds or bark spices. It does not extend to the leafy herbs such as basil, oregano, thyme and other fresh green herbs. But that could be Tip #4 to improve any everyday meal: use fresh green leafy herbs - you'll be glad you did.
Now, how do you keep things interesting in the kitchen? Got any tips of your own for everyday meals?
The good egg - soft or hard cooked in the shell - ought to be the simplest thing in the world: boil water, add an egg, count down the desired number of minutes, remove egg, eat. Simple, right?
Well, not exactly. If you've been frustrated trying to get boiled eggs to come out the way you like them, don't be too hard on yourself. There are a few secrets.
Let's start with the basics, which any cookbook will tell you: 3-5 minutes for soft cooked, 5-10 minutes for medium, 10-15 minutes for hard cooked. Now, for the stuff the cookbooks DON'T tell you:
First, take the eggs out of the refrigerator early enough so that they come to room temperature before cooking. If you didn't think of that and the troops are clambering to be fed, put them in a bowl with hot tap water for a few minutes. I'll explain why below.
Poke a hole in each egg. No, I'm not kidding. An egg has a bubble of air inside the shell, and when heated, that air expands and often results in a cracked egg. You can solve that problem by piercing the rounded end of each egg before cooking. I use a large safety pin, which gives my thumb something to push against when slowly piercing the shell. It's easier than you might expect. Hold the egg securely in your off hand and apply slow steady pressure with the point of the pin. Now the air can escape into the hot water, sometimes with a little thread of albumin, but that hardly makes any difference.
Next, before putting the eggs into the boiling water, add a glug of vinegar and a good pinch of salt. If you like to measure, a glug might be a tablespoon and a good pinch anywhere from a quarter to half a teaspoon, depending on how much water you have in your pot. The salt, I'm told, makes the water boil at a higher temperature, and the vinegar acts on the eggshells to prevent cracking. But don't quote me as gospel.
When you put the eggs into the water, reduce the heat. This might seem counter-intuitive, since the water stopped boiling as soon as you dropped the eggs into it, and you might think you should raise the heat to bring it back to a boil. No. The water should be just below boiling while the eggs cook. So now you know why it's good not to have the eggs icy cold from the fridge when they go into the water.
Almost done. Time your eggs as you like them, then, when the egg timer rings, remove the eggs from the pot with a slotted spoon and drop them gently into a bowl of cold water. That stops the cooking and insures your 4-minute eggs don't arrive at the table hard boiled.
There you go. By the way, the photos in this article were found on the Internet - I didn't really cook hundreds of eggs for this article! Now, if you have a dependable method for peeling hard-cooked eggs - without the shells sticking to them like chipped nail polish - be a good egg and let the rest of us in on the secret.
What do you do with your old coffee grounds? Our grounds become fresh herbs. Here's how:
First I should say that I really love my little espresso maker, and therefore produce a LOT of used coffee grounds. We grind the beans immediately before brewing (and after sweeping them off the floor because we forget to replace the hopper.) It never occurred to me that the grounds had any value beyond producing the blessed beverage that keeps me human until I noticed a bushel basket filled with fat packets of used grounds at our local Starbucks. Watching customers happily snatching up this treasure for their gardens I thought perhaps I should change my ways.
From that day forward, I've kept a plastic container on the side of my sink for our own soil enhancers.
Because we live in the Sonoran Desert, we really don't have a garden as such, and anyone who plans to do any digging rents a jackhammer, not a shovel. So instead of tipping the used coffee grounds directly onto the base of the prickly pear cactus, I dump them, along with miscellaneous vegetable peels, wilted greens and just about any other sort of food scraps (except meat) into a big plastic bin at the side of the house. The bin also gets regular contributions of peat moss and potting soil, usually from dead or dying house plants our neighbors considerately contribute. Because, as mentioned before, we live in a desert, the bin gets regular doses of water as well.
Within a surprisingly short time, the coffee grounds, carrot parings and onion skins disappear into a rich, sweet-smelling black mulch. This, then, goes into nifty little pots and planters where Sage, Thyme, Marjoram, Oregano and lots and lots of Basil grow most of the year.
Want fresh herbs to brighten up dinner? Put your grounds into the ground.
Remember the old song from the 70s, "Junk Food Junkie? Here's a video version from the old "Jackson Five" variety show you will definitely enjoy.
In the daytime I'm Mr Natural
Just as healthy as I can be
But at night I'm a junk food junkie
Good lord have pity on me!
Oh, folks but lately I have been spotted
With a Big Mac on my breath
Stumbling into a Colonel Sanders
With a face as white as death
I'm afraid someday they'll find me
Just stretched out on my bed
With a handful of Pringles potato chips
And a Ding Dong by my head
You can find the rest of the lyrics at lyrics.time.
This silly song emphasizes the fact that efforts toward eating natural foods have been going on for a long time. The song was released in 1976 - it's over 30 years old, and the natural food movement had been around long enough for the lyrics to be funny. Weren't we eating Dannon yogurt and Crunchy Granola in the 60s?
We could go back a lot further than that, at least to the late 19th Century when W. K. Kellogg and C. W. Post began making breakfast cereals as part of the vegetarianism of that time.
In all this time, have we made progress? We certainly know much more about the human metabolism and the nutritional value of specific foods than we did several generations ago. We also know that certain things are not going to change: most people will eat food that tastes good and that makes them feel good emotionally. Whether the food that make them feel good physically is almost irrelevant. Many will eat food that makes them physically sick as long as it makes them feel good emotionally. I'm an old hippie, so the thought of Dannon yogurt (in a cardboard cup, please) and Crunchy Granola makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. But that's not going to work for my friend whose warm fuzzies come from cheese fries and KFC. If we're going to win the appetites of our world, we have to do more than make good food. We have to make great food and serve it up with plenty of the stuff warm fuzzies are made of: close family, close friends and happy hospitality.
Then we might have a chance of truly converting those Junk Food Junkies.
The name "Muffin Rolls" nicely describes these yeasty little quick breads. Halfway between a muffin and a dinner roll, the batter includes both yeast and baking powder, but puts few demands on the busy cook. Neither kneading nor rising is required, and you can bake them in any interesting little pans you might have in the kitchen.
I came across the inspiration in an old issue of "Southern Living," one of my favorite recipe sources. Their recipe was titled "Spoon Rolls, which brings to mind southern Spoon Bread, to which their rolls have not the slightest resemblance in appearance or taste.
But when you long for home-baked bread to go with a hearty soup, stew or pot-roast, and corn bread isn't quite what you want, these little Yeasty Muffin Rolls really fit the bill. As always, I've tweaked the original formula to incorporate whole grains and other real ingredients.
Recipe: Yeasty Muffin Rolls
Makes about 24 regular muffins.
Oil or grease muffin tins, iron muffin pan, drop biscuit pan or aebleskiver pan.
Combine in small bowl, and let sit 5 minutes, until foamy:
1 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
1/2 tsp. raw sugar
2 c. warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
Combine in large mixing bowl:
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 c. whole wheat or spelt flour
2 Tbs. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. melted butter or canola oil
Add yeast mixture to other ingredients. Beat on low speed to moisten the dry ingredients, then increase speed to medium and beat (with paddle attachment, not bread hook) three minutes.
Fill muffin pans 3/4 full. Bake about 20 minutes, or until a probe thermometer reads 200 degrees.
Let muffin rolls cool 3-5 minutes before removing from pans to cooling racks.
Option: when serving with pork or chicken, add the following herbs to the batter:
2 tsp. rubbed sage
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. rosemary
January 6th is Epiphany and tonight is "Twelfth Night," the 12th of the 12 Days of Christmas when the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child is celebrated.
Our American commercial culture has completely overlooked this holiday, which is particularly odd, considering the celebration is all about gift-giving. We're missing out on a fine excuse for good parties and great food, including Kings' Cake, baked and decorated to look like a crown. The lucky guest who receives the slice of cake containing a hidden token is crowned King or Queen of the feast, or, in Britain, "Lord of Misrule" for the rest of the celebration.
If you didn't set out a bowl of Wassail on Christmas Eve, you can still heat some for this evening and tomorrow. And although it can hardly be called a recipe, I'll list the basic instructions below.
Recipe: 12th Night Wassail
Apple Cider
Cranberry Juice (cocktail)
Pineapple Juice
Orange Juice
brown sugar
whole spices tied in a coffee filter:
cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves
Lemon Juice to taste
Bring everything to a boil, then reduce heat to the lowest possible setting and simmer for at least 2 hours.
After pouring the hot Wassail into the punch bowl, you may add whatever spirits you prefer. Rum is traditional, but brandy or a sweet whiskey such as Jack Daniels would be perfectly acceptable.
If you sincerely do NOT want spirits in your Wassail, you would be wise to assign a guard to watch over the bowl. Because, after all, it's Twelfth Night.
In the Pittsburgh area where I grew up, eating pork and cabbage for the New Year was an important family tradition. Sometimes we would be invited to another family's home on New Year's Day to share "Pigs In A Blanket," spiced ground pork rolled in cabbage leaves, then baked in tomato sauce. More often I remember caging an invitation to lunch with friends, when they would have warmed-over sauerkraut and pork from the night before.
Those might be Polish or Slovakian customs. I don't remember any special New Year's meals with my Italian grandparents, unless it was the nasty white rice with sugar and butter Gramma tried to feed me for breakfast! For a kid raised on cold cereal, any rice appearing before noon needed a Snap! Crackle! and Pop!
So what foods do you traditionally share with your family, to celebrate the New Year?
Baking bread from scratch? Making your own sausage or rendering lard? Why would anyone go to all that trouble? There is convenient food in nice little packages, ready to cook or reheat right in the store!
True, sometimes our own families think we're crazy for passing up convenience in favor of cooking from scratch. That is, until they taste the sausage or bite into the pie crust.
Health and safety are two big concerns here, along with adapting recipes for family members with food allergies. But beyond all that, we're determined that food should taste wonderful. Food is meant to be gathered and prepared and shared and eaten with great joy.
"You are what you eat." If that is true, what have we become? What do we want to be?
We'll have to include Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Morgan Spurlock, and Food, Inc.'s filmmaker Robert Kenner. Then there is Frances Moore Lappé, and we certainly have to include our first Cassandra, Rachel Carson.
