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. 

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

One of the big fundraising events at the church I went to growing up was the church supper.  There were always a few of these every year and our church was lucky enough to have a retired chef in the congregation to head up the meals.  In the summer it was usually a chicken barbecue that we could smell throughout the neighborhood and sometimes roast beef.  In the winter there was soup sold after church to take home for lunch or dinner.  But the best attended event was the Chicken and Biscuit Dinner.

This dinner involved a couple of days of work that included lots of chickens to be cooked ahead of time, then picked and pulled apart, chicken gravy to be made, side dishes to plan, desserts to solicit from the congregation and all the last minute work that had to be done on the day of the dinner. 

Dinner was served family style and as tables were filled, bowls of mashed potatoes, vegetables, chicken gravy and of course biscuits were delivered and refilled until all the guests were full.  Serving tables was one of my first jobs helping out with the dinners and I often found myself walking around each table offering up a tray loaded with a variety of pie or cake slices for dessert.  

When I got a little older, I noticed some of the boys my age volunteering in the kitchen where the chef was teaching them some of his secrets.  I was jealous.  The chef was from a generation where more men were in the kitchen so t took some convincing to get myself a spot kitchen.  Once I made it, though, I learned to make the most important part of the dinner, biscuits.  These were the lightest, fluffiest biscuits and just as delicious with just butter as they were smothered in chicken gravy.

The biscuits were made in a large batch that involved scaling out the flour, salt and baking powder and then working in the required butter.  This is where the biscuits became a true hands-on or perhaps hands-in experience since the butter got rubbed into the flour between my hands.  I then turned the bowl over to the chef who carefully added the milk and turned the dough out onto the counter to be shaped and cut.  The biscuits were baked until golden brown and brushed liberally with butter before being rushed to the tables still warm.

Over time, our chef turned all of his various secrets over to several of the other volunteers so we were able to take over and let him get his rest.  I knew how to do the biscuits, another person had learned to make the gravy and still others were in charge of potatoes and veggies.  There was always a real community feeling both in the making of the meal, serving it to friends and neighbors and eventually all sitting down to share the final bowls of food. 

Foodie Facts

I consider myself to be a foodie but not a food snob.  I just love food; eating it, making it and watching it on TV.  It doesn’t matter to me if a food is trendy or fashionable as long as it is good.

I don’t like lobster, hate caviar and have never tried foie gras.  I am not a big eater of mushrooms, so can’t really imagine paying a whole bunch of money for truffles.  I don’t understand why people seem to think I should try to learn to like expensive foods that don’t appeal to me when no one would ever suggest that I should learn to like doggie doo.  I consider those people to be food snobs.  I don’t care if loving macaroni and cheese is not as sophisticated as enjoying mangling a giant sea bug and sucking its flesh from its cracked red claws.

I do like to try new things.  When I was in culinary school, I got to try a lot of foods that were new to me.  One of the dining areas that we ate in was responsible for teaching the cooking students regional American cuisine.  This included everything from fried chicken to frog’s legs.  Of course, the frog’s legs tasted like chicken.  I was able to discover that I liked rare tuna steak but not trout with the head still on.  I can safely say that I like most of my food without eyes, except potatoes.

I seem to spend a lot of time watching food being made on TV.  I particularly like to watch cake competitions but also enjoy watching cooking competitions like Top Chef.  I am a big fan of travel/food shows and don’t shy away from watching people eating strange foods that I will never experience.  I often find myself watching these shows while I ride the exercise bike and wonder if that is just wrong. 

Whatever I do, food is a part of my life and I fantasize that I will find my fame in food.

Miss Management

When I was in California on my externship from the Culinary Institute of America, the pastry chef told me that most of the students that come through their kitchen did not stay in the industry.  He hoped that I would be an exception to this rule, as he felt I had talent.  I would not have predicted the path that would eventually land me in retail management.

           

There are very few ideal ways to bake for a living and still have an outside life.  Working in a bakery usually requires being up at 4AM and restaurant pastry chefs have to work too many nights and weekends.  I did the early morning thing for a while when I lived in Boston but didn’t have a social life since I needed to be in bed by nine every night.  I also decorated cakes when I lived in Boston.  The hours were great, the pay was so-so and the boss was insane. 

           

The last place I was working in Boston shut down without warning, that owner was nuts too, and I ended up moving to Connecticut to work in a casino bakery.  That was a decent job with tolerable hours.  We got to do things there that not many bakeries or restaurants can afford to let you do, like making gingerbread villages and other display only type items to decorate buffet tables.  I would have stayed there if I thought I had an opportunity to advance but I hit a wall or perhaps ceiling is a more common term for what I was up against.  I found another job, at a local grocery store bakery and gave my notice.

At the grocery, we made some of our own stuff, did some things from mixes and still others from frozen dough or par-baked items.  I got to decorate cakes there to exercise my creativity and keep things interesting.  But my manager was nuts.  I know it sounds like I might be the problem, if every manager I ever was either crazy or not doing their job right.  Guess you just have to trust me on that.  Suffice it to say, I was in a pretty good place financially and had the luxury of not being overly dependent on my place of work.  I knew I could find something else before I would have trouble covering the bills.  So, I quit without a plan.

           

I did not know that the something else I would find would be Walmart.  The area where I lived then (CT shoreline) has a tourist driven job market, so after a summer of doing odd jobs here and there, I decided it was time to get back to work before the available jobs dried up.  While shopping at my local Walmart, I learned that they were expanding into a Super Center and looking for bakery people.  I figured it was a least a job and I could always keep looking.  I started there as a cake decorator, moved up to Bakery Lead quickly and stayed there for a bit too long.  I got to keep decorating and that I liked but a lot of other parts of the job were frustrating.  I eventually moved to Produce Lead, one of my first giant steps away baking altogether.  The next step was away from food and into the position of Personnel Manager.  From there it was pretty easy to keep going in that direction and I shortly decided to take the step to Assistant Manager.  Essentially, I thought, if I am going to be in retail I might as well earn as much money as I could and do something that would look good on my resume.  Oh yeah, and I also thought that most of the managers I was working with at that time were nuts, and I could do better.

           

After going through a training program for management I landed in a small general merchandise store.  As a manager in a non-grocery Walmart, my life had come full circle.  When I was a caseworker for the Otsego County DSS, I used to make cakes and cookies and other goodies and take them to work for birthdays and holidays and people would always tell me that I was missing my calling.  I followed that calling for a while and somehow ended up back at a job where I took cookies and other goodies to work and people would tell me I should be baking for a living.  I thought it was the end of my baking career but life had a few more twists and turns in store for me and I am currently back in a position where I bake and decorate cakes.  Where will it end?

Fat, Dumb and Happy?

I have lost and gained a couple of me by now.  But I have also lost and gained some other things along the way, mostly knowledge. 

Around the time that I lost weight the first time, during culinary school, was coincidentally the same time that I first found my way onto the World Wide Web.  Growing up, I had learned to believe that guys did not date fat girls.  And I erected a pretty big wall around myself to protect against that kind of rejection.  The internet taught me that this was not the way of the world, at least not the world of the BBW (big beautiful woman).  Ironically I was that big at the time.  But I did learn that there are many men out there that are not only willing to date a woman who is above average weight but many of them who prefer a pleasingly plump figure.

When I gained that weight back, I discovered that I had also gained a sense of self-esteem that had nothing to do with what I weighed.  I knew that I was the same person inside no matter what was going on outside.  And I deserved to be loved for all of it.

When I was engaged and looking forward to my wedding, I worked incredibly hard to lose weight.  I counted calories and exercised daily.  I joined a gym and worked with machines to help tone my shape.  I was successful but I felt deprived all the time.  I would see a commercial for a new kind of candy bar and feel sad that it was something I couldn’t have on my diet.  After the wedding pictures were all taken and placed carefully in an album that I could truly be proud of, my motivation waned and my waistline waxed.  It became unfortunate that one of the last things I remember my grandmother saying to me before she passed away was, “I see you are gaining back the weight.”

What I learned from this trip around the failure track was two fold.  First, if your motivation comes from a single event or goal, once that event passes so will your motivation.  Secondly, if you feel deprived all the time, you are not going to stick with it.  One more lesson learned from both of my previous attempts at a thinner me was to never say never.  As in, I will never be so stupid as to gain all this weight back again.  I learned this lesson so well that I had to prove it one more time when I again lost weight during my divorce and gained it back after.

So now we come to the big question.  What is different this time?  Yes, I am in transition again.  But I won’t call it a diet.  And there is quite a lot that I am doing differently although I still won’t say, “never again.” 

First, I am not trying to lose weight.  I am trying to make healthier decisions.  I can honestly say I don’t even know what my current weight is and I am pretty sure there isn’t a whole lot of women in America who can claim that.  We are obsessed with weight.  And women of all sizes are wishing they weighed just a little less or had a smaller this or bigger that.  I haven’t been on a scale since I started making changes and I plan to keep it that way.  I know I have lost weight.  My clothes fit better, my feet hurt less and people have noticed at work.  But knowing that number won’t do me any good.

I am trying to develop a lifestyle that I can live with and if that means that I live a little longer and healthier, then that is all the better.  I am back on the bike for half an hour a day and I realize that every time I have regained weight it started with slacking off on exercise.  I am choosing whole grains over refined ones and low-fat dairy products over full-fat.  I am cooking most of what I eat in order to know what is going in and avoiding overly processed foods.  I eat when I am hungry but snack on way more fruits and veggies.  And if I feel deprived, I give myself a break.  

With any luck and lots of hard work, I plan to be a little less fat, a little less dumb and a whole lot more happy.

Ghosts of Diets Past

If you need some dieting advice, ask a fat girl.  They may not have figured out how to successfully manage their weight but I guarantee they have tried more diets than their slim counterparts.  They can probably even tell you which ones worked best in the short term.  It is mastering the long term that most people who diet have a hard time doing.  I speak from experience.

I have been a fat girl for most of my life.  I was chubby as a child and when a lot of the other kids had their growth spurts and became a little more long and lean, I did not.  As a teen, being anything other than average can be painful.  I was the girl in seventh grade with braces, glasses, acne and extra weight.  I never had the most trendy clothes and things like a weigh in during gym class were humiliating.

My mother took me to a nutritionist who taught me a system of tracking what I was eating and measuring my portions.  I think I lost ten pounds but at that age I resented having to put so much attention on everything I ate when the rest of the world seemed to be able to eat whatever they wanted.  I did a lot of closet eating back then.  I was determined not to be one of those yo-yo dieting girls, so instead of going on and off of diets, I just swore them off altogether.

I got teased in school.  With all the focus these days on bullying in schools, I can relate.  Fortunately, for me, it was a case of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  I would have liked to have had dates for school dances and all those normal teenage experiences but I like who I am today.  I credit myself with a great sense of humor and sense of resilience.  If I could go back and talk to my younger self, the only thing I would tell her is to love yourself no matter what.

I was in my late twenties when I went to culinary school.  While I was there, I found the motivation to eat better and do some daily exercise.  I continued this while I was on my internship in California.  It was actually pretty easy to eat healthy in California because there was so much fresh produce available.  Taking regular bike rides was easy there too since it was a rare day that it would rain and most of the roads were pretty flat.  I would tell you how much weight I lost, it is a pretty impressive number, but I gained it back after a year or two so it is not something I celebrate. 

I lost even more weight a little later in life when I was engaged.  I was determined not to have wedding photos that I hated and I got down to a size I was very proud of.  But I am not proud that I gained that weight back too.  And a few years later, when I started going through my divorce, I lost weight again.  Guess what?  Gained most of it back. 

It is no wonder that people give up trying.  (To be continued...)

The Cooke Bakes

Whenever I am invited someplace for a holiday or dinner party, I like to offer to bring something and in most cases it is usually something baked.  If I am invited back, it always becomes a challenge to outdo myself.  Fortunately, people who do not bake for themselves are easy to impress.  It is one of the reasons that I think Martha Stewart has been so successful.  The average fan doesn’t seem to understand or perhaps they just don’t care if that kind of culinary magic takes a little slight of hand.  They may not realize that there are people whose entire job is food styling.

When I was married, I would take my in-laws things like gingerbread sleighs filled with homemade candies, lovely decorated cakes, a chocolate house and over the top platters of Christmas cookies.  They couldn’t believe their eyes or their mouths.  It was easy for me to do and I had to learn to accept their compliments without explaining how little I felt I had done.  I was once asked to make a cake for the birthday of a nephew and when he saw it and ate it he said it was the best cake he ever had in his life.  Imagine how I felt when I was later asked to make the same young man a graduation cake.  What could I possibly to do to top the best cake of his life?

I don’t think of myself as being much of a cook.  I have dishes I can do well but they are mostly casseroles and simple foods.  I don’t necessarily know what to do with a steak and have no idea how to prepare seafood.  I don’t love it the way I do baking.  People who understand both will tell you that they are very different and I admire chefs who can do either equally well.  Chefs can grab whatever ingredients look good to them and find a way to throw together a great dish.  A baker may be inspired by a specific ingredient but putting together a cake takes an understanding of different kinds of flours, types of sweeteners and forms of leavening.  Cooking is improv; baking is science. 

Piece of Cake

I have been decorating cakes for over half my life.  I learned from my mother.  Mom always made special cakes for my birthday, personalizing them to whatever I was into that year.  My favorite cake had Kermit the Frog on top and was made during a time when the Muppet Show was a weekly “must-see”. 

When I was a teen, my mother took an adult education class to learn more cake decorating.  When she practiced at home with all the bags and tips, I watched and learned.  She showed me what she knew and I learned what I could from looking through books and manuals.  My mother was always the one to bring the birthday cake to all the family parties and after I learned how to decorate I took over making mom’s birthday cake because no one should have to make their own cake.  Since my mother’s birthday is New Years Day, we always had a family get together.  Those first cakes may not have been the most beautiful but I think she appreciated someone making the effort for her.

When I graduated college, the job market was weak and I was unsure of what I wanted to do so I ended up living at home.  During this time, mom and I took a cake decorating class together and I continued to improve.  When my mother started to feel like I was surpassing her in ability, she let that be an excuse to let me take over all of the family cake decorating.  And when I got my first full-time job, as a caseworker, I soon became the office party cake person as well.

It was through that job that I got the opportunity to do my first wedding cake.  Someone in my office gave my name to someone in another office and they gave me a call.  This is how I ended up doing my first cake for two nice ladies who were having a commitment ceremony (only very recently has NY state legalized gay marriage).  It was a spice cake and a nightmare.

Unfortunately the happy event was scheduled for July and although summer in Upstate NY is not exactly sweltering, that July was hot, Africa hot.  If you don’t know anything about cake decorating, let me just explain that butter cream icing is actually made with butter.  If you have ever left the butter on the table on a hot summer day you may be able to imagine the challenge of molding this substance into the beautiful red roses requested by the clients. 

As my mother watched on, trying to be supportive, I iced the cake layers and then tried to place my roses on the sides of the cake.  The weight of the flowers combined with the overly soft icing resulting in large sections of icing peeling back off the sides of the cake and flowers that drooped as if they desperately needed to be watered.  At first, I calmly re-iced but as the cake continued to shed its icing I got closer and closer to my own meltdown.  Since my parents were years away from ever owning an air conditioner, my only choice was to wait until the evening, hoping the house would cool enough to begin again.

Once the sun went down and some cooler air began to circulate, I re-re-iced but in the end the only working solution was to alter the design of the cake.  I moved the roses from the side of the cake to sitting on top of each layer.  It was an important lesson.  I learned that sometimes you have to be willing to alter your plan.  I don’t think the happy couple noticed the slight change and as far as I know the cake was a success for them.

While I was working as a caseworker, I did quite a few cake jobs on the side.  I never charged enough for any of them and considered each cake as practice and learning experience.  Most of the cakes I did for people were a lot simpler and easier to complete than the lesbian wedding cake but in the end it is one of my best cake decorating memories, filled with a few tears and even more laughs.

Recipes For Success

I suppose with so much information going digital, recipe boxes may become a thing of the past but old fashioned recipe boxes can be as telling of our history as the family Bible.  I have my collected recipes in several places.   

My traditional recipe box contains recipes that I got as a child through 4-H projects, friends, neighbors and family.  As I look through that box, I can remember from whom each one came, when I first tried it and why I decided I wanted the recipe for my own.  Some of those recipes are typed, some in my own youthful scrawl and some in other people’s handwriting.  There are those that got copied but never used and then those so beloved that they are stained and crusted with remnants of ingredients.  In my mother’s recipe box you would find the revered Whirligig recipe was so overused that the title is worn off the top and the card only softly resembles the rectangular shape familiar to the recipe box.  You would have to know what you were looking for to find it.

I also have a separate recipe booklet with all my recipes from my internship in California and another from a job in a casino bakery.  Unlike my earlier recipes, these are mostly in large measurements and may be in pounds instead of cups.  Few of these recipes list all of the instructions someone would need if they didn’t already know how to make them.  And many of them are hard to read because they have been grease stained through heavy use.

My most used set of recipes is in a forth index card style notepad.  I have slowly compiled many of my favorite recipes in this booklet because I got sick of searching for them elsewhere.  Some of them are repeated from the other locations and some of them are the large restaurant size recipes translated to smaller amounts to use at home.  A few of them are original recipes, variations of other recipes that weren't quite what I wanted.  Recipes don’t go into this book unless they have been taste tested and passed with flying colors. 

Regardless of when they were written or how often they get used, searching through my recipes is like flipping through a photo album in order to spark wonderful memories.

A Maple Staple

When I was younger, I used to look forward to our local county fair in the summer for many reasons and one of them was maple sugar candy.  At that time, I only got maple candy when I could buy it at the fair.  It is still something I only get a couple of times a year.  I know that you see maple candy in specialty stores fairly commonly now but it isn’t as good.  The commercial mass-market candy that these stores sell is just not the same as freshly made.

The maple candy I got at the fair was produced by a local syrup maker and was sold in an area called The Country Store along side some of his other maple products.  They do not sell it in that area anymore but there is a couple of places to get the good stuff.  The maple candy you buy in a specialty store tends to be much harder, more crystallized, and less flavorful.  I prefer the softer bite of the variety I grew up with.  It literally melts in your mouth, pooling maple goodness onto your tongue.  It was a treat a was willing to spend my own hard earned money on and I usually tried to stock up at the end of the fair.  It never lasted very long.

Now, I am lucky enough to have a brother who makes his own maple syrup and maple candy.  Every year for Christmas, he gives me a nice tin of maple candies and many years a gallon of syrup as well.  The past couple of years he has skipped the syrup but only because I was having a hard time using it up and had started to get a stock pile.

For most people, real maple syrup is an expensive treat and not a burden.  Too much maple syrup is certainly not the worst problem so I am not complaining.  If it is every something that happens to you, I have a few suggestions.  In addition to making pancakes, waffles and French toast a bigger part of your diet, I have added maple syrup to homemade bread, pies and bowls of oatmeal, plus I found recipes for maple popcorn and maple granola.  I also repacked it in gift bottles and did some re-gifting.  The only thing left to do is find a way to use it outside of the kitchen... maple facial anyone?

Hope Springs Eternal

I come from a family of gardeners.  I don’t mean that any of my relatives are professional gardeners or anything like that but everyone has a garden.  My grandparents had a large garden in their back yard when they were alive and my mother has always had a garden.  Both of my brothers put a lot of time in their gardens.  I do not seem to have inherited the green thumb.

When I was in my pre-teens, one of my best friends lived next door and I remember trying to put together a garden in his back yard.  It was hard work and all I really recall doing was throwing around a lot of dirt trying to hoe the soil to get it ready for planting.  Other than that, I am sure my friend Brian did all the work.  By the time we got around to planting and later weeding the garden, I had lost interest.

My mother grew lot of tomatoes.  If you have read some of my previous entries I have already gone into my feelings on tomatoes.  She also grew things like peas and green beans that I love fresh from the garden.  She has some luck with green peppers and usually includes onions in her garden.  One of my brothers grows tons of garlic and pretty much supplies the rest of the family with this goody.  His garden is raised beds and usually looks like something from Martha Stewart.

The one thing that everyone grows is zucchini.  If you have ever lived in an area where there was a lot of gardening going on, you know that zucchini can become so plentiful that every neighbor is trying to give it away.  Which was always fine by me because I love all the things that I can make with zucchini, such as zucchini bread and zucchini relish.  It practically grows like a weed.

So, when I lived on my own later in life and didn’t have neighbors with zucchini surplus, this was the thing I decided I could garden.  I once tried growing them in a large laundry style basket on the patio of my apartment.  The neighborhood cats decided that I had set them up their own private bathroom.  End of experiment one.  I have tried to grow them two years in a row where I currently live.  The first year, the seeds came up but the plants got eaten.  The second year, I put up some fence and the plants got to live a little fuller life.  They even had flowers that gave me hope that I might actually see a vegetable one day but for some reason they never materialized.

It’s early yet this year but I went out and turned the soil in my little garden area.  After looking for information on soil quality online, I have decided that my soil is sandy and perhaps can be helped with some added organic materials.  A couple of bags of manure will need to be bought at the local nursery type store and I will try one more attempt at planting in a few weeks when the weather gets a little warmer.  Hope truly does Spring eternal.

Happy Easter

Easter was not a huge holiday in my family when I was growing up.  Easter Sunday service at our church was really early and out in the middle of a field, so, although my mother and I often went to church, I don’t remember ever making it to that service.  Easter morning generally consisted of getting up and hunting around the house for the eggs we had colored and then finding my Easter basket. 

The eggs we were hunting for were either colored hard boiled eggs or eggs that we had blown out of the shell before coloring.  If you have never blown out an egg, you might not realize how hard this is to do or maybe you wouldn’t realize it was even possible.  You take a needle and make a small hole in each end and then blow until you think your head will pop.  The nice thing about these eggs is you can keep them from year to year if you handle them carefully.  We didn’t have plastic eggs filled with candy, I guess they weren’t invented yet and that makes me feel very old to admit.  There was always at least one egg that went unfound and when the hunting was done there was nothing left to do but have a peanut butter egg.

I don’t remember having big Easter dinners until I was much older and there were grandkids for my parents to fuss over.  I do remember getting together with my aunt’s family sometimes though because one of my cousins had a birthday around that time.  I only recall this because I remember making cakes with my mother that were both Easter themed and birthday themed at the same time.  And I also recall that this particular cousin did not like coconut.

For some reason coconut and Easter just go together.  I don’t know if there is some significance to how they became related or if it is just because coconut makes really good fur on Easter bunny cakes and grass for a basket if you tint it green.  So year after year we had to find ways to make bunny cakes and basket grass without coconut.  One year we cheated.  There is a cake you can make using two round cakes where one becomes the bunny head and the other round gets cut into pieces for the ears and a bow tie.  That year we made this cake; covered the head and ears with coconut and left the bow tie plain for the birthday boy.

Getting back to the peanut butter egg, is there a more perfect Easter candy?  For some reason they are better than the regular peanut butter cups you can buy year round and I will propose that they are even better than the similar peanut butter tree that eventually became available at Christmas.  The peanut butter egg is thicker than the cup giving it a fuller amount of peanut butter filling that compliments the chocolate coating, the perfect ratio of filling to chocolate.  And the rounded shape makes it easy to nibble the chocolate around all the edge until you are left with mostly filling.  A treasure designed for delayed gratification if you are a peanut butter lover.  Keep your jellybeans and Peeps, fill my basket with peanut butter eggs.

Sunday Snacks

My grandfather has been gone a long time now but that does not mean he has been forgotten.  We saw my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family every week on Sunday afternoon.  I feel lucky to have so many nice memories of those times and although I am sure that there were weeks where I had other Sunday plans, I do not recall ever resenting spending time with family.

One of the traditions of those Sunday visits was an afternoon snack that always finished the visit around 4 o’clock.  It was always something sweet and homemade by my mother and there were favorites that we could count on repeating.  One dessert we had fairly often was Hot Fudge Sundae Cake that I always thought was a bit of magic.  For this cake you assemble all of the ingredients in the cake pan and when it bakes it forms a top layer of chocolate cake and a bottom layer that is like a rich fudge pudding.  Scooped out and flipped upside down into a bowl it was usually topped with Cool Whip.  We never had real whipped cream when I was a kid.

But my grandfather’s favorite was homemade donuts.  I was always happy when I saw my mother pull out the fryer in preparation for making the donuts but not because I was a huge donut fan.  I liked what came after the donuts.  For the donuts, my mother made the dough and patted it out to rest on the counter top while the fryer was heated.  Donuts and donut holes would get cut out and dropped into the fryer a few at a time and I always had to beg my mom not to re-roll too many of the holes back into the dough when she patted the dough out for a second time.  Not all of the holes made it to the fryer but enough.

If you have never had an old-fashioned donut made at home, you would see no resemblance to the kind you get at your local Dunkin Donuts.  Their texture was very crisp and crunchy on the outside and a little dense in the center.  They were best dunked in coffee or hot chocolate and we usually had them in the fall and winter since they were perfect when you had just come in from the cold.  They were such a favorite of my grandfather’s that my mother made sure to stash a batch in his freezer when he was ill so he could enjoy one every day toward the end of his life.

I liked the donuts okay but the reason my eyes got big when I saw the fryer coming out of the cabinet was because after my mom got done frying the donuts she would always let me make homemade French fries.  This all happened after we got home from church and by the time the donuts were done it was just in time for lunch.  I would peel the potatoes and them feed them through an antique French fry cutter that made nice uniform sticks.  They were then dropped in the fryer and when they were golden brown we drained them on paper towels on top of a paper bag.  Salted and eaten with copious amounts of ketchup, they were then and still are a favorite food indulgence of mine.  French fries for lunch, a visit with my grandparents, donuts with hot chocolate in the afternoon and most likely a hot dog cooked in the wood stove for dinner; how could a Sunday afternoon have been any better.

Back In The USSR

When I was a teenager, my parents allowed me to sign up for a trip to the Soviet Union that was being put together by one of my teachers.  A few of my best friends were going and it seemed like somewhere really interesting to visit.

It was winter break when we took this journey and Russia was cold and snowy.  We traveled through the country from Moscow to Leningrad (currently Saint Petersburg).  I saw magnificent things, some of which I may have been too young to fully appreciate.  We went to the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin’s Tomb, The Hermitage and Olympic Park.  We saw amazing architecture, great works of art and experienced the culture.  At the time, late 1980’s, the Soviet Union was eager to prove that they were no longer our Cold War enemy so we were taken to elementary school classes where the children sang songs to us in English and participated in an overly scripted dance social with Russian youths.  Some of these events came off not so much cultural exchanges but as advertisements for a kinder, gentler Soviet Union but it was fun none the less.

I remember only a couple of things about the food.  It isn’t that I have forgotten anything, there was just little that was memorable.  The food is largely what you would expect.  We ate a lot of combinations of liver and onions with healthy helpings of borscht.  In other words, being a bunch of high school students, we ate a lot of bread with butter and were terribly envious of the student from Canadian group who had packed his own jar of peanut butter.  Our one comfort from home was that at most of the meals we were able to get Pepsi.

I have just one positive recollection of the food in Russia.  I don’t know if this meal would have been a stand out if it had been one among many great meals or if it is only because it was the final meal after a trip full of liver and onions but I remember it as being the best thing I ever tasted.  A golden breaded ball arrived on my plate and I had no idea what it was.  I slid my knife into the tender, crispy ball and butter squirted out onto the plate.  I cut a slice of what turned out to be chicken and tasted it, moist and delicious.  This turned out to be Chicken Kiev.  And I remind myself of how much I appreciated that meal every time I think I am so sick of having chicken for dinner.

In A Jam

It seems I just keep saying this but there are some things that are worth the effort.  I seldom buy a jar of jam or jelly at the grocery store unless I am using it for a baking project.  If I am going to be eating it myself, I never buy my jam at the store.  You will never know what a grape tastes like if you only experience it through commercially made jelly and I do not even think you can find my favorite jam flavor, strawberry rhubarb, in the jelly section along side the peanut butter.

When I was young, my mother and aunt would go strawberry picking every year when the berries were ripe at the local farm.  It was a task that I longed to help with when I was too young to be allowed in the fields and later learned was too much like hard work when I got to an age where I was expected to participate.  It is inevitably a hot, sweaty and tedious job.  Especially when we were trying to fill four large baskets in order to then get a fifth one free.  The berries were then split between my mom, aunt and my grandmother who used them to make jam she would later sell to lucky townspeople.

You might ask, why not at least buy the berries at the store if not the jam?  Again it is just worth the effort.  My most recent trip to the strawberry fields last summer was particularly hard work as the berries were small and it took twice as many to come home with enough for a couple of batches of jam.  But picking each berry at the peak of its ripeness and going straight home to cut them and cook them results in capturing all of the flavor and jewel tone colors.  It is a bit of summer that can be enjoyed throughout the year.  I view strawberries, much like an ear of corn, I need to see them in the field in order to trust what they will taste like on my tongue. 

Whether it is strawberries or grapes or peaches, you get the best fruit at the peak of the season and usually just need sugar and pectin to transform it into something that is divine.  That season of perfection may only last a couple of weeks so be sure to grasp the moment.  And if you have never made your own preserves, have only ever had the overly jelled and processed jams and jellies from aisle 5, find a way to beg, borrow or steal some and you will never look at a PB&J the same way.

A Campy Tale

Growing up, all of our family vacations revolved around camping; most likely due to campsites being cheaper than hotel rooms.  The first camper I remember was a small box camper where I slept in a bunk at one end but most of our camping was done in a pop-up trailer which is sort of a half trailer, half tent contraption.  My parents now do their camping in a camper with a bathroom, small kitchen, air conditioning and TV (cable hook up optional in many campgrounds).  It is basically a hotel room on wheels.

Sometimes the camping was about a means to travel and sometimes it was just about the camping.  We went to places like Myrtle Beach and camped close to the ocean but we also went to a place only fifteen minutes from home.  It had its plusses and minuses.  For one thing, being trapped in a small space with someone who snores like my father is never much fun.  But usually camping also meant access to a swimming pool, playground facilities, a recreation room, the camp store and some yummy camp food.

Our favorite local campground had a store that sold a wide selection of merchandise, including penny candy at a time when it was still a penny or at most a nickel.  My cousin and I always looked forward to coming out with out little paper bags filled with a variety of treats.  They also stocked ice cream bars and novelties for those hot summer days and marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars for s’mores around the evening campfire.  We always planned ahead for the s’mores and brought our own supplies but it was good to know there was backup.

In addition to these treats, there is also something special about ordinary foods when they are cooked over an open fire.  My father would get up before the family and start a campfire.  First he would cook the bacon, popping and sizzling until it was pulled from the fire and set aside.  The extra bacon fat was then emptied out of the cast iron skillet, leaving just enough behind to fry the eggs.  A couple of eggs for each person were added to the pan and little bits of bacon would cling to the eggs.  The eggs always stuck and more often than not the yolks would get broken in the process of turning but at that age I didn’t really like a runny yolk anyway.  We had a regular toaster and I was usually in charge of trying to get the time down so the toast was ready when the eggs were done.  We would all sit down to breakfast at the picnic table just after water was put on the fire in order to do the dishes when we were done.

The only item we had when we went camping that could top that was our whirligigs.  Sounds like a thing you put out on the lawn or hang from the awning to watch it spin I suppose but in this cake the whirligig was a cookie.  Whirligigs are a crisp peanut butter cookie with a swirl of chocolate baked in and we seldom had them at home but mom always baked them for camping.  One reason we had them on camping trips was that they kept well stored in a tin.  They never really lasted long enough to test the staling rate anyway.  We always took our trips with my cousin’s family and I think my uncle looked forward to those cookies as much as us kids.

I Scream, You Scream

There is something to be said for doing things the old fashioned way.  When you have to work really hard for the end product, it is inevitable that it will mean more.  I own an electric ice cream maker by Cuisinart and it is great.  You simply dump in whatever mixture you want to freeze, turn it on and come back when it is done.  I am sure you would appreciate the resulting batch of homemade ice cream more than a pint you buy at the corner store.  But as a child, we never had it that easy when we wanted homemade ice cream.

My parents owned an old-fashioned ice cream maker that consisted of a large wooden bucket mounted on a base, a silver canister that housed the ice cream base, a paddle that churned the ice cream inside and a crank that had to be turned by hand.  After the bucket was loaded with ice and salt, the crank was kid powered and dad powered. 

As odd as it will sound, ice cream was often a winter treat in my family.  This was because the old style churn required a lot of ice in order to freeze the cream and we didn’t have that many trays of ice in our freezer.  Making ice cream would wait until we had nice size icicles hanging from the eaves of the house.  We would stick out heads out an upper window and knock the large icicles off the roof while one of my brothers waited below to gather up the chunks.  We then loaded the large ice chunks into a heavy canvas bag and took it down to the cellar of the house to bash it on the cement floor.  When the pieces were broken up enough to fit inside the wooden bucket the freezing could begin.  Rock salt would assist the ice in melting and make the freezing more efficient and more ice would constantly be added to the top while a constant stream of cold water drained off the bottom and into the sink.

One of us kids would crank for a while and we would trade jobs as we got tired.  As the cream started to thicken my older brothers would have to take more turns on the crank and eventually my father would take over toward the end.  The more difficult the cranking became, the closer we knew we were to the end but only mom or dad could determine that it was done.  It was best not to open the canister to check on the freezing cream because there was always a risk that of the rock salt getting in.

When they decided we were done, mom would very carefully disassemble the crank and pull the canister out of the bucket.  Next she would carefully remove the top of the can avoiding getting salt inside and pull out the paddle.  We would fight over who got the paddle after most of the ice cream was scraped off and being the baby of the family I would usually win the right to give it a lick.  The ice cream would then be transferred into a Tupperware container and put into the freezer to finish hardening.  The waiting was torture but the true treasure of the project was the few tastes we could sneak of the soft serve cream.  And long before I knew terms like savory and sweet, before all the weird combinations of ice cream we now see in stores, even then, I remember how special the ice cream tasted when there was just a little rock salt sneaking onto the spoon.

Movie Magic

I think every food enthusiast probably has a favorite movie revolving around food or food service.  One movie I often hear praised in this genre is Big Night and among my personal favorites are Like Water for Chocolate (the book is even better than the movie) and Chocolat.  Oddly both of these are foreign language films and that may be a comment on how much more attention other cultures place on their food.  Here, in America, we often grab whatever is in the latest value meal and proceed on with busy lives.  We could take a lesson from places like South America and France where meal times are special, an event for gathering and a social experience.

But I digress.  My favorite culinary movie is probably not even considered to be in this class but it is delicious to me.  My culinary fantasy is Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, the original movie from 1971.  It compels me.  I love the entire story revolving around a mystical chocolate factory.  I want to immerse myself in this imaginary world where everything is edible and even the wallpaper has a flavor.  It is innocent and rich and full of life lessons.

When I went to culinary school for pastry, I learned how to work with chocolate and sugar in ways that made me believe that the world of Willy Wonka could actually exist.  We made watering cans out of chocolate and candies that looked like coins.  We were taught to mold sugar into flowers and blow it  into globes.   For the first time, I saw how a tea cup flower, plucked from a stem in a garden of culinary Eden could be accomplished with simple sugar.  It revitalized a child’s dream that still existed within my heart.  I don’t want to grow up… I’m a Willy Wonka kid.

Like Apples and Lemons

We all take for granted those things that are easily obtained.  This is an obvious statement and there are so many examples in our society of this kind of presumption.  For me it was apples and lemons. 

The house I grew up in had an apple tree in the yard that dropped apples on the lawn in the fall.  They were not good to eat but apples were all around me.  There was a cider mill just up the street and during the season it was a weekly tradition to go for a gallon of cider with my grandparents every Sunday.  In my teens, I worked at that mill making candy apples, directing traffic dressed as a scarecrow and cashiering in the gift shop.  At home we made apple pies and applesauce and apple muffins; an apple a day.

In the backyard of the house where I lived in California during my internship, much later in life, there was a lemon tree.  I could walk out into the yard and pick a lemon, bring it back into the house, squeeze it into a glass, add a little sugar and have lemonade.  I found this wondrous in a way that I never had with apples.  Would my citrus rich neighbors have been equally enamored with watching ground up apples being slowly pressed as they released their dark brown and naturally sweet liquid?  Did any of them remember that when life gives you lemons, you are supposed to make lemonade?

As life goes on and I live in a place with neither a cider mill at the end of the block or a lemon tree in the yard, I appreciate both.  It is actually hard to find a good cider mill now.  Especially one that doesn’t pasteurize the cider and pasteurized cider is really just apple juice to me.  It is a commodity worth paying a little bit more.  It is equally hard for me to pass up fresh squeezed lemonade on a hot summer day and even though lemons are easy to come by at any grocery store, it is never quite the same.  It is all a little like comparing apples and oranges.

Pleased to Pizza

For me there is no more perfect food than pizza.  It is bread, dairy, vegetable and often meat.  There are even those that might go so far as to put fruit on theirs.  It is easy to find in every town and available in many varieties from your grocery store.  It is economical and in many places you can even have it delivered to your door.  It can be eaten at any meal (and yes I will definitely have it for breakfast) and it is one of those foods than even when it isn’t great, it’s still good.

I have always liked pizza in its many forms.  Growing up, we had pizza every Friday for school lunch.  This would be one of those times where it wasn’t great but still better than the choices most days of the week.  My mother also made pizza often at home, usually using a store bought par-baked crust or a boxed mix.  Again, not as good as going to a pizzeria but still good enough.

My generation and younger have probably never known a time without so many pizza choices but my mother can tell me about the first time she had a pizza.  It was an event.  The fact that pizza has not been common throughout the United States for any longer than my mother’s generation makes its dominance now more amazing.  We now have television shows dedicated to finding the best pizza in America, debates about thin crust versus thick, Chicago style versus New York, pizza commercials on every channel and pizza joints in every town.

Pizza changed for me in some ways when I learned to make my own.  I was in college earning my bachelor’s degree and living in a with a kitchen area.  I made my own dough but used a jar sauce.  I patted out my dough onto a large sheet pan, slathered it with sauce, laid down a full layer of thinly sliced pepperoni and covered it all with cheese before adding a few more pepperoni to the top.  It was the best pizza I ever ate.  Foods usually are when you take the time to do them yourself not just because of the quality of what you put in but the time you have invested.

I have worked on my pizza perfection over the years.  I enhanced my dough with a garlic-flavored olive oil I discovered when I was in California.  I figured out how to make my own sauce.  I came up my preferred cheese ratio; it takes more than just mozzarella.  I bought perforated pizza pans and a pizza stone.  I don’t use them both at once but the pans are easier sometimes even though the stone imparts a really nice bottom crust you can’t get any other way.

I get great satisfaction from the process of making a pizza.  I have my hands on the dough as I knead it and then let it rest.  I get to stretch it out and decide whether I want the crust a little thicker or thinner.  I have my choice in every ingredient and topping.  And I get to have extra cheese that really seems like extra cheese, I never get enough when I order one out.  Pizza is, of course, not on any low-carb, low-fat or low-anything-else diets but I will never get it completely out of mine.

Dragon Wings and French Fryes

There is more than one time of year that makes my taste buds start to stand at notice.  One of these is when the turning leaves signal that it’s time to start cooking all those hearty soups and stews and baking warm apple pies and pumpkin specialties.  It is a time for cider and donuts at the local Cider Mill as well as hot dogs and hot coffee along side of the local high school football field.  It is also the time of the year when there are Renaissance Faires in my area, bringing a whole other set of interesting food choices.

Growing up, whenever we had a carved turkey, the dark meat (specifically the leg) was always the last thing to go but when you go to a Renaissance Faire suddenly this is a food to covet.  It just seems right.  There is something appealing about any food you can eat at the Faire that doesn’t require utensils.  And I think there is something very primeval in our nature that yearns for an excuse to eat food like a caveman.  Hence there is many meats sold on a stick in addition to the turkey leg.

           

The food at the Renaissance Festivals varies a lot and can be anything from great to ordinary.  You can usually find one of my favorites, the bread bowl, but sometimes the soup inside is something from a can and other times it is really good homemade chowder.  It is a gamble the first time you order it but if it is good you can count on coming back for more next year.

           

More often than not, the food that is served at the Faire is just a normal item with a Renaissance name.  I can understand this, after all they cater greatly to the family crowd and most children are not adventurous with their food.  They want pizza and chicken fingers.  They do not really care if you call their wings “dragon wings” and their fries “French Fryes” but those of us adults that attend appreciate at least pretending that these things might have been available in merry old England.  Of course, Ye’ Olde in front of any food makes it authentic period fare.

One of my favorite items at a Faire I often go to is Jester Chips.  Jester Chips are a long, thin, spiral cut potato fried crispy like a potato chip and although I have seen them elsewhere they are hard to find so I indulge when I can.  I like to get those items that you can’t find everywhere to make the experience seem more special.  At a couple of the Faires I have attended they have a theme food item sold through out the land.  I have not been able to figure out the historical significance of the giant deli size pickle but you can get them at the Faire.  I will have to check with a culinary anthropologist on that but my guess is that pickling would have been a popular form of preservation in times when refrigeration was not prevalent.  That’s my answer anyway and I’m sticking to it.  But, I never saw anyone in a Shakespeare play chomping on a fat deli pickle.

Historically, again I need my culinary anthropologist, I suspect the bulk of what they ate on a regular basis in the Renaissance times would be quite unpalatable to our modern day tastes.  I suppose it wouldn’t earn the Ren Faire people much return business but in Ye’ Olde days they ate a lot of foods that were near rancid and would certainly never turn down a piece of stale bread.  They did not have that luxury.  I wonder sometimes with the economy being what it is currently if we might soon not have that luxury either.

Half Your Chicken and Eat It Too

There are many kinds of barbecue, Kansas City style, South Carolina, Memphis.  The list could go on and on.  And all of the big barbecue authorities will tell you that what we do in our backyard on Memorial Day is grilling and not barbecue.  I am not writing this to argue any of those points.  I have already talked about my rural upbringing but you have to realize that where I grew up there was not a lot of restaurant choices and even fewer that were within my parents’ budget.  So growing up there was only one barbecue, Brooks’ House of BBQ.  And there was only one thing I ever ordered there, half chicken.

Brooks’ cooks their chickens over a large pit outside of the main restaurant and you can smell the food from the highway even if you aren’t planning to stop for dinner.  There isn’t a gooey barbecue sauce on the chicken, just a marinade that is be basted on the chicken halves as they are flipped over the coals, roasting until there are charred black flecks of flavor clinging to ever bit of the chicken skin.

We were semi-regulars at the House of BBQ, one of the few sit down restaurants we went to when I was growing up and I don’t know if we only ordered the chicken because we knew it was so good or because it was the cheapest item on the menu but I can’t say that I ever tried the ribs or anything else on the menu.  Even as an adult when I am responsible for my own ordering, I still stick with the chicken.  It comes with a simple salad bar, a miniature loaf of homemade bread, French fries and always a spiced apple ring sitting on top of the chicken.  You can order a baked potato instead of the fries, of course, but the fries are on the top of my list of worthy splurges.

The restaurant has a large open seating area with chicken and rooster décor as well as some stuffed animal heads on the wall.  Going there is like sitting in your favorite spot on an old reliable couch.  From the smell before you even open the door, to the bucket on the table for discarding your bones, to that bright red apple ring;  none of this has changed in all my life and I hope it never does.