Milking It

I have never been a big milk drinker.  We drank iced tea with our dinner at my house and it always seemed weird to me when I was offered milk with a meal.  Milk is mostly a breakfast item for me.  I use it on my cereal and like a glass of milk if I am having pancakes. 

I have grown up under the major assumption that milk “does a body good.”  It is a source of calcium and our bones need calcium to stay strong.  These are things we were taught.  If its good for babies it must be good for adults.  But I have recently been reading a lot of nutrition studies that point out the fact that cow’s milk is the perfect food for just one type of baby; it is called a calf.   It is the perfect food for a baby that is expected to grow to at least 1300 pounds.

So, I have been looking into the alternatives.  I am currently experimenting with using almond milk on my cereal and that half glass that I use to take my vitamin.  I don’t mind the taste and on my cereal I don’t really notice a difference.  A cup of almond milk has almost half the calories of the 1% milk that we usually stock in the fridge and the same amount of calcium and vitamins A and D. 

All that being said, I do have one major issue with almond milk.  It just isn’t milk.  Milk comes from a breast or teat, not from a nut.  I don’t know what the process is for manufacturing this stuff but I know that no one is “milking” an almond tree.  I suppose it is a marketing thing.  People are not going to be comfortable with substituting their milk for almond juice.  And they will not line up to buy something labeled almond milk-like substance.  In reality, almond milk consists of almonds and water so the term should probably be almond water.  Water on your cereal?  No way!  That is a job for milk.

In a New York Minute

The approach of summer reminds me that I need to stock my cupboards with a couple of summer food staples that I can only get in the grocery stores where my parents live.  They are items that I need once I start grilling.  One of these two items is Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans.  They are hard to describe except to say they are like traditional homemade baked beans, sort of pale in color with a thick texture, and nothing at all like the saucy variety you might get from Cambell’s.  I like both but there is no substituting one for the other when I am craving Grandma Brown’s.  They are a must have with burgers. 

Sometimes when you grow up with something that is common in your local grocery store, you don’t even realize that it is a regional product.  This is the case with Grandma Brown’s.  I am from Upstate New York and have no trouble finding this item in any of the stores there.  When I lived in Connecticut, I eventually found one store that carried them.  In my current location in Massachusetts, they are nowhere to be found.  They are actually manufactured in Mexico, NY and although I don’t know where that even is, I am definitely a fan.

Another product that I have to hunt down, especially during grilling season, is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s Mojito Marinade.  Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a restaurant located in Syracuse, NY.  It is actually fairly famous and has been featured on at least one food show as one of the best BBQ joints in the country.  They have a full line of sauces, rubs and marinades and where I can often find some of their products, not all stores carry the Mojito Marinade.  It is my brother’s fault that I even know this product since he lives in the Syracuse area and once gave me a variety pack of their sauces.  They are all good but the Mojito Marinade makes my day on chicken, especially if I am going to use it to make fajitas or quesadillas.

I am ready for the coming season, I just visited New York and picked up six cans of the Grandma Brown’s and already had a couple of the Mojito Marinades in the cupboard.  If I hadn’t gotten stocked up, though, I have discovered that Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans are available on Amazon.  Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a web site and is also available on Amazon.  The days where items were truly only available to a small regional market have vanished but unless you grew up in Upstate New York, I think it would be hard to just stumble upon Grandma Brown’s via a Google search.

Gladys Pies

My grandmother Gladys was a pie baker.  She wasn’t a professional or anything but she was very well known around town.  And when I was a kid, for one week a year, she would put out as many pies as many bakeries.

During the week of the county fair, my grandmother sold pies and other baked goods in the Country Store.  My whole family was involved in selling baked items there.  The Country Store is still a part of the fair but no longer sells any food products.  At some point, I guess in the 80’s, the local health department decided that it was too risky to let little old ladies bake pies and sell them to their friends and neighbors in this way.  Believe me, there were long time customers of those fair pies that were very disappointed.  I suspect she may have even sold a pie or two from her house those first years after we were banned from the fair to keep a few people from having withdrawals.

I also remember her making quick breads, Oatmeal Scotchies and some sort of maple walnut cake.  Well, actually, I don’t remember ever seeing her bake any of those things.  What I remember is seeing them ready to be sold.  I remember packing all those pies in crates and loading them into the back of my uncle’s truck for the short trip to the fair grounds.  You could walk to the fair from her house but not with pies, cookies and cakes in tow. 

We stayed with my grandmother for the whole week but I never saw her making the pies because she was up before dawn and done before I ever stumbled into the kitchen for my bowl of cereal.  By the time I was waking up, the oven had been turned over to my mother who was baking off white bread and cinnamon rolls.  All of the quick breads and cookies were usually baked ahead of time, packaged up and frozen until the day they were needed.  

I also never remember my grandmother baking anything that wasn’t for sale, either for the fair or the yearly lawn sale.  I have no fond memories of eating my grandmother’s baked goods.  I am sure that we occasionally got to eat things that were leftover but never the pies.  The pies were never left over.  I never gave away any of the things that I baked for the fair either.  If my dad or brother wanted a cookie or piece of fudge, they knew they would have to pony up the cash.  This was the lesson I learned from my grandmother instead of learning how to make pies. 

I am not a pie baker.  It is ironic that pies are the item I least like to make.  I find working with pie dough to be difficult and messy.  Pies are not a favorite treat to eat and I am likely to only make one or two a year, usually at Thanksgiving.  But when I do make them, they get rave reviews.  Hmm, genetics?

Harrod's is King

Is the American grocery store the cause of the downfall of cuisine in our country or just a symptom?  I am not sure what the answer is to this question.  It is a chicken versus the egg kind of argument. 

Convenience has won out over cuisine.  There are more and more frozen meals ready in five minutes or less and boxes of almost ready to eat meals.  It is not that you don’t know this or that we don’t all buy them at least once in a while.  I am not against the occasional Hot Pocket or Mac and Cheese dinner.  It is not only the selection of fast foods that I want to bring to your attention but the lack of entertainment in the experience.  What I miss is the kind of food buying experience that I have seen in foreign countries.

There is a market called Dalymar located in Munich, Germany.  Stepping into the food emporium Dalymar is like stepping back in time.  The store is set up with distinct areas for different types of products and each area has an attentive seller on hand.  These are sellers who have actual knowledge and can direct you in your purchase further than just showing you on which shelf a product is located.  My purchases included some high-end bars of chocolate, a decorative tin of mini truffles and some tea.  The tea seller was most helpful, despite the language barrier, and guided me to some wonderful selections.

But my introduction to the idea that a food store should be an entertaining experience began with Harrod’s of London.  Harrod’s is a store where they say you can buy anything and indeed they have floors of clothing, toys and things you will see nowhere else in addition to the most magnificent food market I had ever witnessed.  The staff at Harrod’s were all dressed in period clothing that made me feel like I had been transported straight into a Dicken’s novel.  The counters and refrigerated cases all gleamed and each section had a purveyor who seemed to have as much pride in their area as they would if it was their own individual store.  There was a section for everything from bread and dessert, prepared foods, confections and chocolates, fine charcuterie and, being London, an expansive selection of teas.

I know that a lot of this was about tourism and probably only the higher income family could afford to shop at Harrod’s for their everyday food needs.  There are normal grocery stores over there, too.  I don’t want to circumvent the American grocery store altogether, just find a little more of that knowledgeable staff, service and attention to detail.  It is about slowing down our lifestyle enough to realize that life should be experienced and not just lived.

Eat Me

Each time in my life that I have lost a significant amount of weight, I have encountered similar reactions from the people around me.  One typical reaction is that people tell you how great you look.  This is supposed to be a compliment.  Except for me, it always made me feel like there was a whole lot they were not saying before I lost weight.  It always comes out more like; you look so much better than before.  And inevitably, when I gained the weight back, I always felt that sentiment floating out there.

The second comment that often followed the weight loss was how did you do it?  I always think that people are hoping you will tell them that you woke up and found a little bottle on the bedside table with a note saying, “Eat Me.”  My answer to this question the first time it happened was that I had quit my job, gone to culinary school, moved to California for an internship and virtually changed every aspect of my life.  I wondered if people were ready for that particular diet.

Every time I have lost weight it has revolved around some major life decisions but in reality, the answer to the question of how I did it is, exercise and a sensible diet.  That seems a little anticlimactic doesn’t it?  It is just what every doctor and nutritionist would tell you.  And, surprise, it works.

Lately I have been doing a lot of research on eating with a whole food approach.  This involves eating less processed foods and more fruits and vegetables.  I have been choosing more whole grains and lower-fat meats and cheeses.  There is compelling research that a plant based diet will not only help you lose weight but also fight chronic illness.  I am moving in that direction but admit that it is hard to fight against the inner dialogues that tell me things like, “milk, it does the body good” and myths that insist we need meat for protein.  All that and oh, yes, I like meat and cheese.   Guess what?  They taste good.

So I continue, daily, just to try to make better choices than the day or week or month before.  It is a balance between what tastes good and what is good for me.  It is a work in progress and so am I.

Appliance Owners Anonymous

I think I might have a problem.  I might be addicted to kitchen gadgets and appliances.  Actually, the real problem is that there isn’t room in the kitchen where I am currently living for all of my fun tools. 

I have always liked this stuff.  It all started with the old-fashioned French fry cutter that I used as a kid.  It was an aluminum contraption with a metal grid that you forced the potato through with a lever resulting in uniform potato sticks.  We also had an antique pocket sandwich maker that we used in the wood stove.  With two slices of bread, a little sauce and some cheese you could make a nifty little pizza pocket long before Hot Pockets ever hit the market.

I currently have two waffle makers that I only use a few times a year, one standard and one Belgian style.  I strongly prefer waffles to pancakes which is why these actually get used at all.  I also have an ice cream maker, a Crock Pot, a panini grill and a stick blender.  I use a Crock Pot but not the one that I own.  The person I live with has a couple of them.  Most of my gadgets are in storage around here somewhere or in a cupboard above the refrigerator that is inconvenient to get into.  There is a fryer but I guess that I am eating too healthy to use it.  I got a nice food scale for Christmas one year but I don’t think I ever used it before it got stored away and there was once a food dehydrator that only got used twice. 

At the moment, I am missing my Kitchenaid stand mixer, also stored away due to lack of counter space.  I once thought I would like to own all of the attachments that go along with it but I have had to scale back my appliance dreams.  I used to bake a lot more than I do now anyway.  As a matter of fact, there are a couple of totes filled with specialty bake ware and cake pans in the basement along with that mixer.  Someday perhaps I will have a bigger kitchen again but for now I have had to admit that I am powerless over my kitchen.  Do you suppose there is a ten-step program for this?

Short Order

My oldest brother has a day job with a university but he is also a folk singer and guitarist.  He has a couple of CDs that he recorded under the name of Dana “Short Order” Cooke.  I guess that is a little better than a nick name like “Bleeding Gums” but I have always thought of myself as being the more authentic short order cook.

My first summer job was at a restaurant near my house where I was hired mostly as a dishwasher but also all around kitchen helper.  I did salad prep, appetizers and plated desserts during the night in between keeping up with the dishes.  It wasn’t exactly the most appetizing combination.  I also tried to learn what I could to help out the cooks and for some reason have fond memories of a dish called Chicken Calvados.  I spend two summers at this job, feeling overused and underpaid.

The following summer, I tried a different restaurant job where I learned that overworked and underpaid was pretty much par for the course when you are summer help.  At this second restaurant, I got to make sandwiches, fried items, burgers and a little more of that all around kitchen helper stuff.  It was hot work for the summer time and being a tourist town we were always busy. 

I had many friends who were cooks during those summers.  One of those friendships changed my future.  I was in college working on my bachelor’s degree, when this friend called to see if I would like to join her on a visit she was making to the Culinary Institute of America.  It was her dream to attend school there.  I was happy to take a break from classes and go on a little road trip despite not knowing anything about the CIA.

I soon learned that the Culinary Institute of America was considered to be one of the best cooking schools in the United States, possibly the world, and I immediately fell in love with the campus filled with beautiful brick buildings set alongside the Hudson River.  My friend ultimately decided to go a different direction but a seed was planted in my mind.  I had never even considered anything other than an academic college and getting my bachelor’s degree.  I was in my final year at SUNY at Albany and would soon graduate with a dual major in English and Psychology, so quitting at that point wasn't really an option but I did feel a little cheated by a high school guidance staff that didn’t help me explore all my options.  After college, three years at a job that was not right for me became the manure that was needed to fertilize the seed that was planted that day.  And that is how I changed my name to Denelle “Pastry” Cooke.