Grandma Jean's coleslaw

I came home tonight with no particular plan for dinner, other than what I could dream up in the car on the way back from dance class. I decided on my old stand-by, grilled cheese and tomato. But since I was out of salad greens, I had to be creative if I wanted something besides carrot sticks on the side. I had to make due.

Turns out I am good at this, probably the result of frequently avoiding the grocery store: if I can make something work from what I already have in the pantry, I will.

Tonight’s side veggie came from an old piece of red cabbage and a carrot. That’s really about it. I was going to shred the vegetables and then improvise a dressing, maybe throw some mayonnaise and lemon together and call it coleslaw, but then I thought of the Southern cookbook Ann gave me a few years ago – I’d just baked cornbread from it, and I figured it would have a good coleslaw recipe as well.

The book, The Gift of Southern Cooking, is by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, and though they contribute to it at least equally, mining their southern childhoods and subsequent journeys into all things culinary, it’s the only cookbook I have by Edna Lewis, and I think of it as hers.

According to the New York Times, Miss Lewis (as she was known) was the first to elevate southern cooking  beyond its “knee-slapping, cornpone image.” She was born in Freetown, Virginia, the granddaughter of a freed slave, and wound up bringing her kitchen traditions to New York society through restaurants and cookbooks. She became the doyenne of southern cooking, widely respected and admired by top chefs and glitterati. She died at age 89, in 2006.

I love this book. It really is a team effort; Peacock, it turns out, was so close to Lewis that he lived with and cared for her in her final years, and they were widely known (again, according to the Times) as “the odd couple of southern cooking” – she, an elderly, African American widow and he, a young, white, gay chef. The coleslaw recipe is his, developed when he was chef for the governor of Georgia in the 1980s, cooking for countless political barbeques. I know this because the story is included in the book: The bits before the recipes are at least as good as the recipes themselves. In addition to the provenance of the coleslaw, the explanations and stories turned me from disdain over lard, to wondering where I can buy some; and convinced me that I should make the homemade baking powder, to avoid that occasional metallic taste in my muffins and biscuits when I use the store-bought variety.

The recipes here are solid. I can vouch especially for the lemon chess pie and the biscuits, I am charmed by recipes like “cat’s tongues” cookies, red-eye gravy and chow chow, and I want to bake my way through nearly an entire chapter on cakes.

Tonight I found another reason to love this book: coleslaw. This one involves a cooked dressing, just like my Grandma Jean’s. Hers was finely shredded, and so is Peacock’s (though I have to admit, mine strayed far from the actual recipe, and I just shredded it coarsely since I was hungry and didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it). The dressing is heavy on the vinegar, too, a trait that puts me right back in the kitchen at Bixley Heath, the street in Lynbrook, New York, where my grandmother served my family Sunday dinners when I was small.

The recipe is simple, really: equal parts vinegar and sugar, boiled together for 3 minutes with a little salt; to this you add some Dijon mustard and half the amount of oil as vinegar, then the dressing gets added to the vegetables – Peacock calls for cucumbers with the cabbage, but I used carrot to stretch what little cabbage I had (and I had no cucumbers). There’s also a little cream and sour cream to finish the dish.

I think of Grandma Jean’s coleslaw with “cold cuts,” a favorite short cut for lunch or a casual dinner at her house. It also makes me think of her potato salad, which we called “German potato salad,” though I’m not sure why. She was actually Scottish and Irish.

As such, she would probably find it pretty funny that I now think of this pair of southern cooks as her compadres in the kitchen.  I love how cooking unites all kinds of people. Maybe she and Miss Lewis have found one another in some sort of culinary afterlife.

Thanks, Ann, for this book. As you can see, it’s a winner in more ways than one.

 

Photo is by John T. Hill, and ran on the cover of Lewis' book, The Taste of Country Cooking.

 

The return of the crockpot

 Since the prospect of someone (like this fine gal to the left) greeting me at my own front door with a martini and the smell of dinner cooking is slim to none, at least in the foreseeable future, I’ve discovered the next best thing: the old crock pot.

Really.

I unearthed this from my basement yesterday when I had to run off to yoga class, but the beef stew wasn’t finished cooking. I couldn’t leave the burner on to finish the stew while I was away, but I knew it needed more time to simmer. So I (literally) dusted off the crockpot that’s been sitting in the basement for eight years, slopped the unfinished stew into it, turned the dial to “high,” threw a lid on it and left.

 

I wasn’t sure the pot actually worked – so I did wait around for long enough to be sure it didn’t explode and cause a fire, and that it did heat up and not sit there, broken, on the counter, with beef stew cooling inside it.

But all systems seemed to be in working order. And when I came home from yoga class, I opened the door and voila! The sumptuous smell of dinner cooking greeted me (albeit without the martini). The stew was bubbling away, and it turned out to be delicious: tender beef chunks, sweet carrots, tender potatoes, all flavored with garden herbs and tomatoes and onions cooked so they melt in your mouth.

Now I’m going to google around and try to find other ways to use this wondrous tool I’ve resurrected. I’m hoping it will work for black bean chili, or maybe a lentil-based Indian stew. Are there revised crockpot cookery books out there that update an old trend, the way books about canning and knitting made home-making hip and cool again? I’ll find out. Or maybe write one myself.

Yoga class beef stew

Yes, it’s probably not very yoga to eat animals, but this was free-range, antibiotic-free, hopefully well-treated beef. And I’m grateful I could buy it for that undeniable red-meat craving I cannot seem to shake.

Approx one pound stew beef (it’s the cheapest cut in the case!)

Olive oil for the pot
1 large onion
3 or 4 carrots, chopped
6 or 7 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
A handful of fresh rosemary (I actually used a 7-inch sprig that had been drying on the countertop), chopped
A handful of fresh sage (again, this was sort of drying out on the countertop), chopped
1 can chopped tomatoes
Water
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse and pat dry the beef. Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Add beef, brown on all sides, turning each piece with tongs, as needed. Add onion, cook until onion begins to soften, stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the veggies and herbs, give it a stir and let cook up to five minutes. Add the tomatoes and enough water to almost cover. Bring to a boil.

    At this point you could either
1) skip yoga class and keep cooking the stew for a couple of hours -- either on top of the stove or in the oven, with a lid, at about 300 -- or
2) cook it for as long as you can, then change into yoga clothes, dump the stew into the crockpot, and leave it for about two hours more.  
3) Third option is to go ahead and bring it to a boil, then transfer it to the crock pot and follow the instructions that come with the pot -- or look it up on a website that is more thorough in the crockpot category than mine. I like this one, as it has veggie options as well as meat.

For the martini, you're on your own.

Give yourself a break

I made a kick-ass minestrone soup the other night, and instead of beating myself up for not making homemade bread, or biscuits, or cornbread to go with it (why do I think this is necessary when I’ve already made the soup?!?) I bought already-baked cornbread at Whole Foods. This was not cornbread mix in a box, to make at home. It was pre-made, wrapped in plastic, good to go, ready for the table. It even had little jalapenos in it.

It was great.

Why do I so often think I have to do everything by hand in order to make the meal perfect, truly homemade, really authentic? It’s not like my mom didn’t pour pre-made dressing on canned pears and iceberg and call it a salad – a salad that I really liked. And there are plenty of great people who use cream of mushroom soup for casseroles and box cake mixes for desserts on a regular basis. How about those parents who buy packaged cookies and disguise them as freshly baked for the school bake sale? You do what you gotta do.

Except I don’t. Instead, I’m the person who wants to make homemade versions of “store-bought” treats like Hostess Cupcakes and Ho-Hos. I have to make my pie crusts from scratch, as a matter of principle. I feel like a hero if I can turn out something from my kitchen that I’ve kneaded, stirred, rolled, whipped or roasted myself.

Usually I love this. Except when I don’t.

There are times when I look up and it’s way later than it should be for the start of some cooking project or other. Times when I run short of energy or incentive or inspiration. Times when I need to give myself a break.

For those times, I’m learning that in addition to loving the satisfaction of having made it myself, I can also love the shortcuts that make life just a little easier. That cornbread, for instance. It was delicious. 

 

p.s.: This photo is not "homemade," either, I took it from a web site that's even more committed to doing everything yourself than I am. Check it out, these kids are shucking and grinding the corn with a hand crank before they make the bread! Farm to Table.

(Homemade) Minestrone Soup

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 tablespoon or more dried oregano (thanks, Simeone, I used some I dried from your mega-harvest!)
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups yellow squash, chopped
3 cups zucchini, chopped
1 cup corn kernels (I use frozen, great to have on hand)
3 cans chopped tomato (or 4 cups fresh)
5 to 6 cups veg broth (yes, I make my own! Whenever you’re cutting up veggies, just throw the trimmings (like onion ends, chard and collard stems, celery leaves, carrot stubs) in a Ziploc and keep it in the freezer, adding to it until there is enough to cook up. Then put them in a pot with plenty of water, a cut up onion and maybe a stalk of celery or a carrot, simmer for a while (an hour?), then drain all the veg out, pour into carryout containers in one-cup increments, and freeze. I like to pop out the frozen cup-size chunks and store them in Ziplocs for whenever I need ‘em. If you’re really thinking, you’ll defrost them early in the day – if not, just zap in the microwave. Of course premade is also TOTALLY FINE)
½ to 1 cup dried pasta – I like penne
1-2 cups cooked white beans (yep, I do ‘em from dried. Sometimes. Or just use 1 15.5-oz. can of pre-cooked)
1 bunch fresh chard, chopped (you can use spinach if you prefer, I happened to have chard on hand)
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan or Asiago cheese, shredded, for on top

    Heat oil in a soup pot (love my Dutch oven) and add onion. Sauté until soft. Add oregano and garlic, sauté a minute more. Stir in the rest of the veggies, except for tomato, until tender.

    Place 3 cups tomato and 1 cup broth in the blender, process ‘til smooth. Add tomato mix to pot, stir in remaining tomato and broth, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes.
    Add pasta and beans, cook another 10 minutes or until pasta is done. Stir in chard, salt and pepper.
    Ladle into bowls and garnish with cheese. Serves 8.

Not your mother's grilled cheese

Grilled cheese always makes me think of my mom making me lunch. It was my favorite: Velveeta from the big, long box, Wonder Bread from the package with the balloons on it, and sliced tomato, served beside a bowl of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Tomato Soup. I sound like I’ve just stepped out of a 1960s food advertisement.  

Actually, I still love grilled cheese -- it means I’m home – working, usually, but in my own kitchen, taking a break from the deskwork, able to take a few moments to put together lunch.

This is not my mother’s grilled cheese, but it is good. Really good: fully of gooey smoothness against whole-grain heft with a bright hit of fresh tomato and, sometimes, some other veggie tucked in between the bread.

The transformation from Velveeta to, well, healthier (and tastier) starts with the obvious: whole grain bread. Even though the little girl in me is still in love with the Wonder Bread commercial that told me it “Builds Strong Bodies 12 Ways!” and then showed a child magically shooting up a yard stick, getting older and taller instantly! Sadly, Wonder Bread is processed until all the nutritional value of the wheat has been sucked out of it, then supplemented with vitamins that are harder to digest than the original vitamins, minerals and fiber in the raw product. Go figure.

I also go for real cheddar cheese, instead of Velveeta, which is perhaps the poster child of all processed foods. Labeled “pasteurized processed cheese food,” it was a squishy, orange block of something that felt like a cross between butter and cheese, and it was super creamy with a great melting quality. A step away from Cheez Whiz.

I use sharp cheddar now, and mix it with goat cheese to get that same, melty, Velveeta affect. It also adds a more complex flavor  – as if grilled cheese needs complexity.

I’ve kept the sliced tomatoes just as they were in Mom’s grilled cheese, and they really make the sandwich, cutting  the rich cheese and bread combo with a burst of tangy freshness. Once, when I was out of tomatoes, I used leftover mustard greens I’d sautéed at dinner the night before, and the bite they lent was an unexpected and delicious substitute. Thinly sliced apples can work, too, but make sure they’re crisp – mealy ones are just a disappointing substitute that makes me wish for those tomatoes after all.

If I’m lucky, I’m serving up this re-invented grilled cheese with soup, but not Campbell’s, with its corn syrup and mystery “flavorings.” Instead I like a homemade squash soup, or maybe potato or beet. Something thick and rich. I’m still looking for a favorite.

Hold on loosely

There's nothing like a bike ride to shake off the torpor of an all-indoors day, especially in winter. Just before the light is gone (it fades so quickly this time of year), I bundle up, pump up my tires and take off into Sligo Creek Park, trusting that the dim halo of light carved by my bike light will be enough when dusk turns to dark.

There’s something edgy about riding a bike in the dark: You can’t quite see what’s in front of you, but it just keeps on coming. Shadows disappear with the light, erasing dips and ridges on the bike path. To compensate for lost vision, my other senses crank up the volume. I feel the trail, rather than see it, and ride in ready-set-go mode, my body raised slightly off the bike seat, just enough above it so the bike seems to take on a life of its own, moving under me with the slightest of guidance. I clip along fast, exhilarated by each curve and bump, pavement speeding beneath my tires.

And then a hiccup in the trail sends me flying.

It’s my loose grip on the handlebars that saves me: there’s enough give so the bike jostles underneath me without taking me with it, enough control so the bike is still there for me when I regain my balance. I keep my momentum, stay upright – and land hard back on the seat. Ouch. But also, wow. And wheeeee! It’s like surviving my own personal (and very small) roller coaster. I keep pedaling down the trail, laughing at the surprise.

And I think about hanging loose, being flexible, rolling with the punches. If I’d been more rigid, followed the “hold on tight!” advice I’d probably have given my kids, I’d have jammed my wrists and very likely toppled over, scraping my knees, cranking my 51-year-old bones around, maybe worse.

Lesson learned.

Eventually I turn around to head back home, still congratulating myself on my flexibility, considering how a balance of control and quick response and adaptability is relevant not just on the trail but at work, in the family, at home. Then, wham! I go flying off the seat. Again. Same exact bump in the trail, same flight, same hard landing. Same recovery.

 

Next time I'd like to land more softly. I guess I have something more to learn.

 

Reflections on the new year

We made it through Dec. 21, 2012, and the new year is dawning.

Rumors of a Mayan-predicted collapse were not all bad: they prompted many of us to reflect on where we are headed as human beings on a changing planet. Storms, weather catastrophes, unusually warm temperatures, all point to possibilities we may not entirely understand. A corporate culture stained by the domination of profit over product, or service, or morals for that matter, and the related corruption and greed that can breed, suggest a devolution of who we are as a community and a country.

And so: Are we going to burn up natural resources and continue to clog our collective arteries with excess, bury ourselves in acquisition and materialistic “success,” blinded by the unquenchable desire for more?  Or are we going to open up our consciousness and slow down, recognize that success can be many things, reach out to neighbors literal and figurative, and begin to make the world a better place?

I like to think that the end of the Mayan calendar marks not an abrupt end to the world as we know it, but a slow shift. That “world as we know it,” the one that prompts us to tell our question-authority-and-the-status-quo children, “well, that’s just the way the world is, you have to learn to play the game,” well,  maybe it is time to end that world, and replace it with something that speaks to our better selves.

Hope moves me to believe that is possible.

What if Dec. 21 was about the tide shifting imperceptibly, a sort of tipping point so that yes, we have enough momentum to pull ourselves out of the destructive continuum that has propelled us in recent years, and begin to live our lives with more awareness of the big picture: the universe around us. What if it was about leaving behind the old world, and beginning a new one?

It’s hard for me to name the global signs that this may be beginning: perhaps if I did some research, I would discover them. But I do see them in my little bubble, here in Takoma Park and by extension, parts of the Washington, D.C. area. There is a strong interfaith community here, for example, to counter the devastating wars prompted by religious fervor. There is an embrace of all people, of all ethnicities and sexualities and abilities or lack thereof. There is strong community built around people who care for one another and know their neighbors. There is an ethic around growing (and purchasing) locally grown food, and promoting sustainable ways to grow it. Some of the things we take for granted are, actually, miracles: 20 years ago I would never have believed that the local grocery store chain would offer free range eggs, or that every piece of plastic I use could be recycled at my curb, or that my Community Center would be powered by solar panels and wind energy. It is progress.

It is true: these small steps do not begin to address the heartbreak around the world – the wars, and poverty, violence and disaster. But they may address our lives right here and now, on a scale we can begin to understand. And if we can live good lives at home, perhaps that will impact the rest of the world in some subterranean way. We can be the subconscious of the world. And, if we are strong at home, we can begin to reach out and help others become their best selves as well.

 And so, here’s to hope. It may start small. But I pray that it grows, this year and moving forward.

 Happy New Year.

Second Thanksgiving

This time two weeks ago I was elbow deep in pie dough, experimenting with gluten-free flour and getting ready for I didn’t know how many kids for our annual Second Thanksgiving celebration. After the traditional (and typically more formal) Turkey Day, Second Thanksgiving gives me an opportunity to celebrate my children and their friends with a low-key potluck: I roast a bird and bake a few pies, and our extended family of young friends fills in the blanks. Some bring freshly prepared harvest veggies or a new recipe’s worth of dressing; others bring leftovers, or chips and dip. It’s all good. 

In our kitchen, we baked three pies. The dough, though it tasted gritty before it was baked, miraculously turned out just right – flaky without falling apart. The chocolate pecan pie, my new favorite, looked burned but tasted like an exceptionally gooey, rich, warm candy bar in a pie crust. There’s a lesson in there about expectations and surprises and being open to success in the face of apparent failure, but I’m not sure what it is. Charge ahead?

Well, yes. The best part was how the chaos of preparation all came together: Momma and two kids in the kitchen, one turkey sizzling in the oven, three different pie fillings, two different crusts (one dairy AND gluten-free, one just gluten-free), and countless reasons to be grateful. Our little kitchen is so familiar to us we are able to slide past one another with bowls, knives, hot tea kettles, swinging cabinet doors and drawers, a choreographed dance worthy of all tight but functional spaces. Tyler was on apple pie filling, Clara did pumpkin and pecan, and I rolled out crusts.

By the end, we had a beautifully roasted turkey on the table (not overdone, as I’d feared), plus three gorgeous pies and assorted potluck dishes. Someone played a drum out by the firepit, someone else picked up the guitar in the living room, there was a dart game in the upstairs bedroom and, at one point, freestyle rap beside the table – featuring the word, “pies.”

The taste AND the sound of Thanksgiving. I am grateful.