Blog Resurrection--Bridging the Gap with Food

Lately I’ve felt a bit down.

The world has been shaken up, rattled, thrown on its ear. And it seems like people with differing opinions and ideologies are being nastier to each other than ever before. People I thought I knew as sweet and loving are coming out on social media or in person and being openly hostile to those they disagree with. Now, me, I’ve got some strong opinions, and I’m not afraid to talk about them. And I welcome dialogue, as long as it doesn’t become a personal attack. But attack seems to be the plat du jour, and it’s cooked rare:  folks are out for blood.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. As I consider the political landscape, and the fear of the future that is there, I’ve been wondering what my part is to play, what my lasting contribution to the world should be. So far, to my name I’ve got:  a jettisoned career in international education, a surly teenage son, two sadly abandoned blogs (make that four, but two never really got off the ground in the first place), a wilted and incomplete draft of a book-length memoir, a dusty and moldy first draft of a novel (could I still even find that file on my hard drive?), and almost equally moldy vegetables in my refrigerator drawer. If I were taken away by a sudden aneurism or a bad fall on the ice, what would be my legacy right now?

I know I have a talent for bringing people together, or so I’ve been told. And although people are divided and angry and resentful these days (and some for good reason), there is one thing that will always bring them together:  food. Food is offered at almost every gathering of religious groups. Food is always offered at holiday times. We all need food, and we all appreciate delicious food; it is the great equalizer, the great unifier.

So it is with that thought, and that thought alone that I am resurrecting this blog from the ashes. I still see the value of bringing people together with food. In the same way that local food is the best for your health, well-being, and the local community’s economy, healing differences of opinion is best done at the local level. With your neighbors, your acquaintances on Facebook, your barista, the cashier at the grocery store….you find connection, love, support, and you remember what’s important. To love your neighbor, even as you love yourself. (Even if you must love them from afar.)

And, to love local food.

Being a locavore still plays a huge part in my life, and it has become ingrained in me to look first for local sources of the goods I buy. I leave you today with a little sweetness from local honey, imbued with almost magical powers, helping strengthen the immune system and fight off all the ills of winter. Pure. Local. Raw. (Kind of like our nerves right now.)

I hope to be exploring local honey in depth more in the coming posts. In the meantime, may I suggest that you make a meal and come together with others? Give out cookies for the holidays. Pay for another family’s meal, especially if they are in need. Let's all make food a way to come together for good during this divisive time.

Local...Salmon?!

I’ll be the first to admit, I have trouble getting in my Omega-3s.  I take a daily supplement, but we all know very well that real food is the best medicine. Sure, I could add a scoop of ground flaxseed to everything, but who wants all that grittiness?  So, despite being almost as far away from an ocean as one can possibly get, I welcome the opportunity to get wild-caught, ethically and responsibly harvested fish and seafood.  Tricky, that; most seafood and fish in grocery stores is what’s contributing to over-fishing our finite supply and farming using a variety of questionable and unhealthy methods. 

So…what to do?

I was presented with a solution from an unlikely corner.

My fair twin cities hosts a fantastic weekly farmer’s market every Saturday morning in the temperate months, The Urbana Market at the Square.  Trouble is, that leaves me with fewer options during the week.  The answer?  Tah-dahh!  Enter the new Land Connection Champaign Farmers’ Market!  The first market, from 4-7 p.m. on Tuesdays, was held right in the center of town.  I saw some familiar faces and products, such as Prairie Fruits Farm’s goat cheeses and Pekara’s bakery temptations; I also saw some new names that I hadn’t seen before.  The most surprising, of course, was to see a picture of a fish introducing Sitka Salmon Shares.  Now, before you start scratching your head and consulting Google maps to find out if Illinois has somehow moved closer to Alaska, I will assure you that salmon is not a local product.  But Sitka Salmon Shares operates in the manner of a local CSA; you buy a share up front, and Sitka will deliver extraordinary fish, frozen at its peak of freshness, to your door; or, in this case, to your local market.  Yes, this fish has traveled thousands of miles, but the spirit of a CSA is in the minds of the company, in the form of a “CSF,” a community-supported fishery.  As quoted from their website, “In the last 20 years, there has been a growing consensus that there's something valuable about reestablishing the connections between eaters and the land for the benefit of both the consumer and the producer. We do the same for salmon.  At Sitka Salmon Shares, all salmon travel from small boat family fishermen and their cooperatives in Southeast Alaska to your door.

“As important, these small boat family fishermen take great care of your fish. Every fish is processed on board the boat, and as soon as it is processed it is down in the boat's hold on ice. Within hours, the fish is down to 32 degrees, locking in your salmon's freshness and quality, before it's brought on shore, turned into 1-pound, portion-sized fillets, vacuum-sealed, and blast frozen to 40 below. This allows your fish to taste just as it did off boats in Southeast Alaska.”

As expected, the price tag exceeded what I usually pay for anything at a farmers’ market.  Offerings included everything from King Salmon to Black Cod.  I thought I would start modestly with the Coho Salmon.  The color alone persuaded me I wouldn’t regret the purchase.

I thawed the salmon overnight in the fridge, then prepared it my favorite way, fried skin-side-down only, doused in lemon juice and a touch of sea salt.  I drizzled a bit of my fancy olive oil on the top of the rare (OK, so almost raw) fish after it came off the flame.  Served alongside my truly local roasted asparagus from Claybank Farms, it was a treat well worth the miles the fish traveled, and the splurge to support a really fantastic product.

This week I may go back for the King Salmon…

My new bag--the perfect size and shape for carrying salmon!

What's that smell?

Well, somebody’s gotta talk about it, right?  It happens every year; asparagus season arrives, and we’re excited to get this once-a-year delicacy, so we gorge ourselves on steamed asparagus, asparagus soup, grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon, asparagus quiche…..or at least I do, anyway.  And then…we go to the bathroom.  We’ve forgotten about the inevitable result of ingesting large amounts of asparagusic acid (yes, it’s a real thing).  Asparagus pee.  Stinky asparagus pee.

A Google search of “asparagus pee” renders some interesting results.  Apparently, although all of us who eat asparagus expel the stinky sulfur compound in our urine, only about 75% of us possess the gene to be able to smell it.  If you are of the 25% that cannot, consider yourself lucky.  My favorite bit of trivia from my search was a quote from the famous French author Marcel Proust, who declared that asparagus:  “..transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume,” which makes me wonder what else he’d eaten or drunk with his asparagus.

Despite this pesky side effect, I’ve been enjoying this week’s haul from Claybank Farms, three pounds of brilliant green, thin, tender spears of the stuff.  I’ve still not found a way to prepare it so that my 12-year-old finds it palatable, but he did manage to choke down a spear or two. (When I mentioned my research for this blog post, he exclaimed, “that’s why my pee smelled so bad!  Like peanut butter that had been rotting for a thousand years!!”) But my husband and I won’t find it difficult to quickly do away with the three pounds of spring deliciousness.  

Here’s a photo of my favorite way to eat asparagus, the day after it’s been steamed for dinner; I cut the spears into bite-sized pieces, shred some carrots, cut up some grape tomatoes, boil a couple of eggs, and top the thing with a lemon vinaigrette (1 part Maille mustard, 1 part lemon juice, salt, 3-4 parts walnut oil).  Nothing tastes more like the arrival of spring!

Soup again...with a side of snow

The calendar says March, but a hefty new snow and temps falling to zero assure me that we’re still in winter.  And I’m still dutifully making winter soups.  I’m still getting oyster mushrooms from Greg at Claybank Farms every couple of weeks, too.  Sometimes I have a plan for them when I buy them, sometimes I don’t.  I’ve found it’s nice, though, to have a fallback recipe for these gems when I don’t know what else to do with them.  My latest fallback recipe might be one of my all-time favorites, and so very easy to do.  You don’t need local oyster mushrooms, but if you’ve got a mix of cremini (mini-portabella), white mushrooms, and/or any wild mushrooms, use any and all!  I make sure I have at least a pound of mushrooms to start with, and more if I have them.

I start by breaking up and browning a pound of bulk Italian sausage from Triple S.  You can use any bulk Italian sausage, including turkey sausage removed from the casings.  If your sausage is mildly spiced, you can always add some red pepper flakes to give this recipe a kick and some added warmth when it’s really nippy outside.

I add a bunch of chopped onion (at least a cup) and some minced garlic (at least four cloves).  If you want to drain the sausage before adding the onion, do so, but make sure to leave some to cook the veggies and bind with flour added later for thickening.  Cook the onions and garlic until almost translucent, then add in the mushrooms.  When the mushrooms are starting to soften and steam, add enough flour to soak up the liquid released, and cook the clumpy mess for a couple of minutes to make sure the flour has been thoroughly combined with the liquid; I usually start with a quarter cup, then add more if necessary.  Add a healthy teaspoon of dried thyme, a tablespoon if you have fresh.  Pour in at least four cups of chicken stock or veggie broth and stir until the clumps disappear.  Since those cartons of grocery store stock are usually four cups, I put in a whole carton, then add a cup or so of water, or part of a carton left over from something else.  I bring it to a boil, then simmer until my family starts whining that they’re hungry, usually about 20-30 minutes. Of course, if you wanted to be super healthy, you could add a few diced carrots or some chopped kale from Blue Moon before bringing it to a boil.  You could throw in leftover rice, if you have some, or pretty much any pasta.  For a really rich treat, add some half and half at the end. None of these is necessary, though; no one will go hungry if you stick to the simple version.  Crusty baguette, goat cheese, and a simple salad of greens (also from Claybank!) in vinaigrette round out this hearty meal. 

Take that, Old Man Winter!

Reaching the Bottom

Bleak.  That’s what it looks like to me, all of it.  My little raised bed, my yard, my house.  At some point every winter that’s what everyone’s yard looks like.  It’s cold.  (The persimmon seed prediction turned out to be fairly accurate, for the record.)  The only 50 Shades of Grey I can see is the sky.  We all react in different ways to the depths of winter; some of us escape into seed catalogues, some of us take to the bottle, some of us get involved with holidays or parties or social outings, some of us escape for real in a plane or car headed to warmer climes.

And…some of us feel a little stuck, not knowing what to do next.  I’ve checked out a little bit, I guess.  I’ve been writing on other projects, distracted by friends’ comings and goings.  The stretch of holidays from Halloween to Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and Mardi Gras—the fattest of all Tuesdays—is calling me to make gumbo and to get in touch with my Catholic alter ego, if only to be part of the Lenten countdown to spring.  But I have to admit I feel a bit lost.  Purse strings and calorie counts are tightened after Christmas, of course, and I’m pretty much on auto-pilot to shop local, eat local, cook local, and even to do some shopping at home.  Trying to get busy to chase away the winter blues/blahs I’ve cleaned out the fridge and a cupboard or two in hopes that I’ll be able to fill them again with summer’s bounty.  I’ve managed to empty and clean out one of my chest freezers, then will relocate the contents of the second freezer to the first and do the same for the second. 

In the course of emptying my freezer, though, I found a metaphor for my dilemma.  Turns out, once I’ve emptied everything out, used pliers to open the drain on the inside, and opened the drain on the outside, and I can see every bit of spilled muck and breadcrumbs and twistie-ties lying on the bottom, I find I can’t actually reach the bottom.  My arms are too short, my frame not elastic enough.  Dammit!  My attempts even to gain a sense of accomplishment from the menial tasks of cleaning have been thwarted.  What to do?  I mean, I can see the bottom from here, and I suppose I could use a mop or a wet vac to get it clean, but I prefer to do the thing that will get the job done best.

I’ll ask someone else for help.

You see, we’re all kind of crabby, stuck inside the same four walls.  And if I ask for help from my fellow Winter Doldrummers, maybe we can all get through this together, and out the other side with a sense of accomplishment.  And maybe, just maybe, though I can see the bottom, it will be a comfort to know that I can’t actually reach it.  And I will always have my team—my little family—to help me get the job done, and get everything back on track.

Now…time to look for gumbo recipes…

New Year, New Foods

With the perfume of New Year’s resolutions still in my nostrils, and the crispness of a new fallen snow shocking my eyes, and the cold wind burning my cheeks, and the warmth of The Little Wood Stove That Could pumping out of her vents, I am taking a moment to reflect on 2014.  It was—as any year lived—a mixed bag of tricks.  I had some accomplishments and made some wonderful memories. Unexpectedly low lows, however, make me glad to hit the restart button and put that particular number behind me.

Foodwise, it was a year of learning and exploring, of making my first garden in a raised bed, of expanding my repertoire and my preparation horizons.  I have much to be thankful for, and mostly to always have a full larder.  So many in the world, and so many in our history, have gone without.  Too many are suffering from starvation still.

So, being blessed as I am, I am making goals for 2015 (and not a minute too soon!):

1.     To try new foods, challenging my palate and opening my horizons.

2.     To incorporate more fruits and vegetables into every day’s meals, fighting the tendency to center meals around meat and starch in the winter months.

3.     To make “shopping at home” a regular feature, perhaps monthly.

I’ve already gotten started on #1.  The last of the indoor holiday markets was the Saturday before Christmas.  I had pre-ordered from Greg at Claybank Farms, so I went to pick up my order.  On the table in front of me lay some plastic bags containing something that looked like huge bulbs of ginger.  Now that I’ve known Greg for some time, all I had to do was point at the bags and raise one eyebrow to get the full story and inevitable sales pitch.

It seems that Jerusalem artichokes (also known as sunchokes) are like Grape Nuts, in that they are neither from Jerusalem, nor related to the artichoke.  They are actually the tuber roots of a certain kind of sunflower native to North America, and were even cultivated by Native Americans long before the arrival of European settlers.  According to Wikipedia, they contain a large amount of inulin, which we cannot digest in the stomach.  You know what that means?

That’s right.  Gas.

But I digress.  Greg persuaded me to try them and gave me a recipe that seemed simple enough.  I was to wash them (but peeling wasn’t necessary), cut off the end of each where the tuber attached to the plant, then slice them thinly length-wise.  I could toss these with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, salt, some herbs (I used Fines Herbes to get a good mix), and a whole lotta sliced garlic (I used about 5 cloves).  I should spread them out in a baking dish and bake at 425° for 15 minutes, then switch to a high broiler setting for about 5 minutes to brown them on top.  I bought them and thanked him, wished him Happy Holidays, then tucked them into my vegetable drawer to be ignored until the calendar had been switched and the Christmas decorations had been removed.

I’m not sure why I’m nervous about trying to cook new things.  Some things don’t scare me at all.  For Christmas I made two things I’d never attempted:  Beef Wellington (was delicious, but not perfect; perhaps for another blog entry?), and flourless chocolate cake (also deliciously flawed).  And my family ate them both with aplomb.  If they had failed, well, we do have a dog.  And a compost heap.  And other things to eat.  So, I’m not sure why I was procrastinating about preparing those wiggly little sunchokes.  Maybe because they looked like ginger.  Maybe because I thought they’d be hard to slice, and I just wasn’t up to the task.  Maybe because I thought they’d taste terrible, and leave an aftertaste on my palate it would take days to get rid of.  Maybe because I keep hoping my son will like one of these vegetables, but of course he never does.  Maybe I should have worried more about the gas.

I needn’t have worried about making something unfit for human consumption.  I was making pork steaks and green beans, and the ‘chokes would be an optional side dish.  They were surprisingly easy to cut, sort of like a radish.  And they came out perfect after a few minutes in the oven.  The garlic balanced the sweetness.   The flavor is mild, but difficult to describe.  The closest flavor I can think of is a turnip, but without the gritty, mushy texture I despise from turnips.  The simple preparation allowed me to test out this new (to me) vegetable.  I can’t say I’d like to eat them every day, but my son ate one without spitting it out, which is in fact a stunningly positive recommendation.

In all my trepidation and fuss, I overlooked taking the obligatory food shots.  If you want to see pictures of sunchokes, I suggest you visit the Wikipedia page.  I will instead leave you with a shot of our holiday decorations, which every year I am sad to take down.  The end of another year.  The beginning and promise of a new one.

How [not] to make Persimmon Pudding

It all started with a trip to the big box store where I get my toilet paper, my kid’s lunch snacks, and my frozen goods.  There they were, beaming up at me.  Persimmons.  I have to admit to a secret love affair with persimmons.  They’re mysterious.  They’re sweet and sour at the same time, which is why my son named our dog Persimmon.  They look like a yellow tomato, but they’re not.  They grow from a variety of ebony tree.  Native to China then exported within milliseconds to Japan, their varieties have beautiful Japanese names, like Fuyu and Hachiya.  The Hachiya looked gorgeous, and I had a potluck coming up Saturday night, so I would try my hand at persimmon pudding.

Saturday morning dawns, and I make breakfast for my husband and myself while my teenager wannabe has a lie-in.  As we wait for the water to boil, I offer hubby a slice of one of the gorgeous Hachiya persimmons with the USA sticker, and I bite into one myself.

Big mistake.

I instantly feel as if I downed a bottle of 100-year-old Bordeaux.  Without the buzz.  My gums pull away from my teeth.  My tongue grows hair.  I start clearing my throat at the rate and with the sound effects of an 80-year-old man with a sinus infection.  Good gods!  What is happening?  This is not the persimmon I knew and loved!

A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me I am not suffering from an allergic reaction, and, to my relief, would not need to visit the ER.  Turns out that Hachiya and Fuyu are quite different varieties.  Fuyu, which are short and squat, can be eaten like apples.  Hachiya should be kept on one’s windowsill until they’re completely soft and mushy.  Until that point, the tannic acid—the same tannic acid found in oak barrels to keep wine, and in such fruits as the cashew apple—has an extremely astringent effect.

I’ll say.

Once my hairy mouth wears off, I head off to the farmer’s market.  Once I get an idea in my head, I’m not easily dissuaded.  I ask my friend Sarah, the second-in-command at the market, if anyone sells persimmons.  I had never seen them there, but Sarah is in the know.  As luck would have it, the first-in-command had just purchased some from none other than my beloved Claybank Farms’ farmer Greg.  Whaddya know.  I smile and try to keep myself from running to his booth.

I’m pretty sure my love affair with persimmons started with a family recipe of persimmon pudding from my youth.  My mother and aunt talked about a persimmon tree that grew on their parents’ farm in Clay County, Illinois, coincidentally not far from the Claybank Farm itself.  A little more Wikipedia research tells me that there is an eastern US variety of persimmon, the American Persimmon, that is even higher in vitamins and minerals than its Asian cousins.  Flavor and nutrition?!  I’m hooked.

I ask Greg about the persimmons, and his face lights up.  “Why, yes, the persimmons are finally in season!”  He goes rooting around in his coolers and comes up with a Ziploc bag of what looks to be orange pingpong balls in mush.  Yes, this is what I remember.  This.  He proceeds to tell me that his aunt recommends simmering them before running them through a strainer or food mill.  I add the persimmons to my weekly order, and as I’m paying him, he asks, “hey do you know what you’re supposed to do with the seed?”

I shake my head no.

“Well, if you cut the seed in half, it will predict what winter is going to be like.  Of course, the persimmons have to be local.”

Of course.

“If you see a spoon, the winter will be full of snow and precipitation, but not very cold.  If you see a fork, the winter will be dry and windy.  That’s what I’ve been told, anyway,” he winks at me.

I can’t wait to get home to split one of those seeds open. But first, persimmon pudding.

So…in keeping with my romance with the southern Illinois persimmon, I feel I have to use my grandmother’s original recipe.  I crack open the Ancient Binder of Secrets, and find this:

Sorry, Grandma, this is completely unusable.  First of all, despite being a food hoarder, I simply cannot imagine cooking a recipe that calls for milk and flour in units of [half] gallons.  Second…what do I do?  Where are the instructions?  Third, what is a “slow oven?”  I have a high ambiguity tolerance in general, and usually I’m OK with vague cooking instructions, but this has me beat.  Once again, I turn to the internet.  I find a couple of recipes here and there, and glom them together to make something I think would be tasty, and more pudding-like than cake-like.  All the recipes have flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, sugar.  And, of course, persimmon pulp.

Next, to process the persimmons into persimmon pulp.  According to Greg, after simmering them for a bit it should be relatively easy.  I simmer for a few minutes, then let them cool.

Curses to you, Greg.

I start with my grandmother’s ancient food mill.  I grind and I grind and I grind.  A half-inch of pulp clings to the bottom of the mill.  I scrape it off and start over.  Almost nothing.  Frustrated, I grab a strainer and start pushing it through.  Even worse.  After going back and forth between food mill, strainer, and colander, I am cussing.  And the beautiful persimmon-y orange color has oxidized to a dark brown.  Finally, after about a half an hour of processing, I get enough pulp to make a double-recipe of the stuff.  I swear I will never do it again.

I started with the food mill

... then the strainer

...and finally the colander

But after baking the pudding in a water bath, it is splendid.  It’s not too sweet, which I prefer, and with a drizzle of maple syrup, it’s just as I remember.  A dollop of vanilla ice cream makes it divine.  And although most people thought I had brought brownies to the potluck, they soon discovered the wonder of my family’s fall culinary heritage highlight:  the persimmon pudding.

No photo.  You know what brownies look like, right?  Like that.

But, wait…what about the seed?

My husband and I rescue one from the compost bin, and I come as close as I ever have to cutting off my own finger in an attempt to cut it in half length-wise.  After last year’s horrible winter, we want to know what we’re in for.  We hold our breath to see if it’s a spoon or a fork.

It’s a knife.

We go through the process again, again narrowly close to losing a limb, only to find the same exact shape.

Most decidedly a knife.

For the third time, I thank the powers-that-be for the blessing of the internet, and all the knowledge that she holds.  (Farmer Greg will get an earful the next time I see him). A site with the full farmer’s almanac lore sheds more light on the matter; if the kernel inside the seed is shaped like a spoon it means indeed a warmer, snowier winter (spoon = shovel); a fork indicates a mild winter with powdery snow; and a knife indicates a cutting, fierce wind and lower-than-normal temperatures.  See for yourself at http://www.almanac.com/content/predicting-weather-using-persimmon-seed.

Family folklore, winter weather wiles, and cinnamon-persimmon-y goodness? That’s something you can’t get from those puckery persimmons at the grocery store…