Category Archives: Food

Family, Food, History, holidays, home, News, Uncategorized

Hot Dish

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Dorcas Reilly, the creator of the famous and loved (and also loathed) green bean casserole died this week. She was 92.  Perhaps she attributed her longevity to the casserole.

Thanksgiving is Daughter’s favorite holiday. She isn’t coming home until after Christmas, and she made me promise that I would cook Thanksgiving dinner for her then. The green bean casserole will be on the menu. It is one of her favorites. It has to be the traditional one Dorcas developed using cream of mushroom soup. Daughter also informed me that Brussels sprouts with bacon will be on the list. She has the whole meal planned, and will email the recipes to us. We will, of course, cook it to her specifications. Life is easier that way.

The favorite casserole, however, is the one printed below. We will also make this for Christmas/Thanksgiving dinner:

Butternut Squash Casserole
    • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
    • 1 pound thinly sliced onions
    • 2 1/2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
    • 1 teaspoon sugar
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
    • 3/4 cup canned low-salt chicken broth
  •  2 cups fresh breadcrumbs made from soft white bread
  • 2 cups (packed) grated sharp white cheddar cheese
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions; sauté until onions are light golden, about 8 minutes. Add squash; sauté 4 minutes. Sprinkle sugar, salt and pepper over vegetables; sauté until onions and squash begin to caramelize, about 5 minutes.

Spread vegetable mixture in prepared dish. Pour chicken broth over. Cover tightly with foil and bake 45 minutes. (Squash mixture can be made 1 day ahead. Cool, then cover and refrigerate. Reheat in 350°F oven until heated through, about 10 minutes.)

Increase oven temperature to 400°F. Mix breadcrumbs, cheese, rosemary and thyme in medium bowl. Sprinkle over gratin. Bake uncovered until top is golden brown and crisp, about 30 minutes.

What is your favorite hot dish? Which is your least favorite? What would you like to be remembered for?

Food, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized

Take the Cannoli

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I’ve now had another revelatory meal while on my travels. Three weeks ago, while on my Sicily trip, we had lunch at a winery on the slopes of Mount Etna.  Wineries really know how to feed you and it was a fabulous meal of small bites and a lot of wine.

Then the chef rolled out a little tray with a plate of cannoli shells. They were unfilled and I didn’t think too much about it.  I’ve had cannoli many times but always in the same circumstance – off a tray of assorted small desserts brought by a caterer to my office.  (Often when suppliers come to visit us they have lunch or snacks catered as part of their presentation.)  The cannoli on these trays are sweet and soggy – I often go for something else on the tray, because I’ve never been impressed with Don Corleone’s favorite dessert.

Imagine my surprise when the chef’s assistant brought out a pastry bag of ricotta mixture and the chef proceeded to fill the little cannoli shells right in front of us (talking the whole time). Then imagine my additional surprise when I bit into the pastry and realized that I’ve never had a cannoli properly in my whole life.  Not once.  Crisp shell surrounds the creamy ricotta filling.  Heaven.

Those of you who know me, know that I was googling where to purchase cannoli molds before I even got back to the States. I tested the first batch on Linda and tim at Blevins two weeks ago.  They were OK but I hadn’t been able to roll out the dough think enough so they weren’t as crispy as they needed to be.  I fixed that over the weekend by running the dough through my pasta machine.  Perfetto!

Rolling
Cutting
Wrapping
Fried

Not sure when I’ll get around to making cannoli again, but now that I know how and have the gadgets, who knows.

When was your last revelatory meal?

Art, Family, Food, Media, Technology, Uncategorized

Arabia Beehive

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Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

In 1968 I walked into a gift shop in Dinkytown that sold Danish modern products. There I bought a handsome coffee mug made by the Finnish ceramics firm of Arabia.

I soon decided the Arabia mug was the only perfect object I owned. It was just the right color, the color of coffee. Its size was ideal for me, holding a generous amount of coffee. The design was classic. Because the bottom was larger than the top, the mug was stable and didn’t spill coffee when I walked with it.

Although I don’t value “things” nearly as much as I value relationships or values, the Arabia mug became a thing with a special claim on my heart. It was a joy to start every day in the company of something perfect, or at least as perfect as anything we are likely to touch in this world.

In the 1970s we hosted a small party at our Saint Paul home. Looking across the living room I spotted a guest drinking from my Arabia mug.  I felt an absurd twinge of jealousy, the same feeling I’d had when I walked into the student union and saw my college girlfriend dancing with another guy. After that party I quietly hid the Arabia mug whenever we had guests. Some things you just don’t share.

I knew the mug was doomed. I used it every day and it went wherever I went. When you handle something that fragile that often, it’s just a matter of time until the worst happens. That time came in 1983. My six-year-old daughter bumped a wobbly table, knocking the mug to the floor. It shattered. I concealed my grief from her.

I tried to replace it. Haunting antique stores taught me that objects popular in 1968 can be hard to locate decades later. But that’s why God gave us the internet, right? Two or three times a year I would spend a few hours running Google searches for the Arabia mug or something very similar. All those searches were futile. Years passed, and then decades. I made do with other mugs, but every day I missed my old coffee-colored mug.

All that searching did turn up some delightful mugs. My favorite was a handmade teal mug that I found at a curated craft show at nearby St. Catherine’s College. And I loved a mug from San Francisco decorated by ten cheerful bears having an orgy.

Then, last year I was thrilled to spot my old mug on eBay. I learned that Arabia called it their “beehive” model. Alas, the photo was linked to a shop that had sold the only copy they had. I’d come so close! By that time I had been pursuing a replacement beehive Arabia mug for thirty-two years. I’d spent many hundreds of hours running internet searches.

Last Sunday I tried again. In Phoenix there is a little antique shop called In Old Things We Trust. Its owner, Teena, has a great eye. She had one Arabia beehive mug. I ordered it as fast as arthritic fingers could type. And now, in spite of many losses in life, in this one special sense my world is complete again.

Do you own—or have you ever lost—anything that seems perfect?

Food, Music, Travel, Uncategorized

The Policy Makers Have a Party

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I wrote yesterday about the dull conference I am attending.  Well, Friday evening the policy makers let down their collective hair, and my, do these people know how to have fun. All they need is a live band playing great dance music, lots of food, some,  but not too much alcohol, and red and white striped shirts and stocking caps. (It was a Where’s Waldo themed party). All the rancor, grinding of teeth, and pedantry disappeared, and everyone just wanted to enjoy themselves.  Many have hair much greyer than mine,  many are much older than I am.  The conversations today were heated, and people became angry with one another. It was very refreshing to see how we can disagree but still be united, at least on the dance floor.

What do you think makes for a good party?  Tell about some good parties you have been to?  What kind of party do you want to throw?

Food, Uncategorized, work

Unexpected Encounters

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I was shopping at Walmart the other day when I turned my cart into the baking supplies aisle and encountered a strange scene. A young female Walmart employee  was on her hands and knees, weeping, as she peered under the shelving.  Two other employees were also peering under the shelving. One explained that the weeping woman was stocking the shelves when her wedding ring flew off her finger and settled somewhere on the floor in the dark recesses under the baking supplies.  It caused quite a bottleneck in the aisle, but shoppers were very understanding and respectful and we all wished them luck in their search.

The next day I was back again in Walmart, this time in the dairy aisle, when I encountered the formerly weeping employee busily restocking the sour cream. I saw that she had no ring on, and stopped to ask her if she had found her ring. She explained happily that she had, under the pallets of sugar, and that she no longer wore her ring to work. I told her I was very happy for her. Then, unexpectedly, she asked if she could give me a hug.  I, of course said yes, and we embraced in front of all the pudding and sour cream and chip dip.

I treasure these sort of encounters. I work with people all day, but it is somewhat artificial, with a power differential that is always there.  Unexpected interactions with people when we are both just people are so nice.

When is it easy for you to be with people? When is hard? Tell about some fun, unexpected encounters with people. 

Fitness, Food, Medicine, Uncategorized

Self Regulation

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Last March I went to the doctor for my annual checkup and he informed me that my cholesterol  and blood sugar levels were too high. He asked me to come back in six months for a recheck.   I spent the summer working in the garden and changing my diet only a little. I  went back to  the doctor in September, and he said my cholesterol had dropped 50 points to a normal level, and my blood sugar was in the normal range.  I was surprised as well as dismayed, since that meant that I had to maintain my current level of activity and continue to watch my food intake.

The elevators at my work have been out of commission for three weeks, and won’t be in operation for another two weeks.  I work on the 4th floor of my building. I know that I will need to continue to walk the stairs all winter once the elevator is repaired.  I hate to exercise, but I hate the thought of poor health even more.

How do you motivate yourself for good health choices?  What should you do for better health, and how will you accomplish it?  How do you maintain your health?

Food, gardening, History, home, Media, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Death in a Jar of Salsa

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I gave one of the nurses at my office a about 40 lbs. of tomatoes this year, since she wanted to make salsa. We had an abundance and I was glad to get rid of them. She said she got other tomatoes, too, and canned 60 jars of salsa. She gave me a jar earlier this week, and it was all I could do to smile and thank her when she handed it to me.  Once I got up to my floor, I flushed it down the toilet.

Perhaps I am overly cautious, but I would never can and process anything in a used Hormel ham hock jar using the original cap.  She hadn’t even removed the ham hock label.  I know that salsa has lots of acid in it from the vinegar, and that her salsa will probably be fine, but, still, this person is a nurse and there are some basic rules of hygienic food preservation that you just never violate. There was a story in the Fargo Forum a few years back about some well meaning woman in the eastern part of the state who invited people for Sunday dinner, fed them home canned peas, and killed half of the guests with botulism.  Those stories  stick with a person who does any home canning.

Tell about some gifts you would have rather not received.  Got any canning or food preservation disasters or horror stories? Am I being alarmist?

Family, Food, gardening, home

Borscht Closure and Cabbage Tiffs

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We grew a short row of beets this year.  Husband started to talk about making borscht in June. He is an incredibly obsessive person who loves to compare and contrast recipes.  Borscht recipes started to appear on the lamp table near his chair in the living room, and with difficulty he finally settled on one recipe a week or so ago.  He had, of course, annotated it with suggestions from other recipes. It was a complex recipe with twenty-one steps.

Last Friday he started to make the borscht, beginning with a beef stock.  That took all Friday afternoon and evening, with Husband fussing over the vegetables and herbs  that were to go into the stock, and how long the stock was to cook.  It was finally finished at 3:00 am Saturday morning. I strained it for him later in the morning. He fussed and fussed, asking if I should skim off all that fat, was the beef tender,  and was it enough?  I reassured him it was. Then the real hysteria began, with the twenty one steps.

The vegetables had to be julienned in a specific way.  It was a clear borscht with beets, cabbage, onions, celeriac, carrots, potatoes, and our home grown fresh Vermont Cranberry beans.  Only he could assemble the soup.  I don’t quite know what the other steps were, but I went to bed at  9:00, and he finished the soup just before midnight. It made two gallons. The kitchen was in a state of continual mess and uproar the whole time the soup was in preparation. I became increasingly irritated with him. I started to argue with him over what to do with the leftover cabbage he didn’t need in the soup, a half head of  savoy cabbage we had grown last year and blanched and frozen. He was going to throw it away. When I heard myself saying  “You can’t throw out the rest of that cabbage! It worked really hard to grow for us!”  I knew I was completely around the bend. I don’t even like cabbage. Then Husband got stuck at Step 20-correct for seasoning.

He ate some of the soup for breakfast on Sunday. He was pensive and broody all morning after that.  We went to church, and as we were driving home he said we had to go to the store to get a cruet. He explained that he was disappointed in his soup because it needed more acid and herbs, and he wanted a cruet to infuse herbs and vinegar to add to the soup. No, he said, he couldn’t just use a pint jar.  After a great deal of indecision on his part, we found just the right cruet to match his expectations. We went home, and he proceeded to turn the kitchen upside down (again), chopping all these herbs and figuring  out what he wanted in his soup.

I had finally had it with all this obsession and brooding, and asked if I could taste the soup. It was wonderful. I told him that if he thought it needed more acid,  to squeeze a God damned lemon into it and just add some fresh dill, but what ever he did he needed to be done with the soup!!!  He looked stunned and seemed to come back to reality. He sheepishly agreed that I was correct, and filled up the cruet with vinegar and the herbs and put it in the fridge. I have no idea what we will do with it.

When have you got so close to something that you couldn’t see it for what it truly was anymore?  How do you choose recipes? What is your favorite beet recipe?

Business, Food, Science, Technology, Travel, work

Fly Away

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I don’t fly as much as I used to, so it’s interesting to see what has changed and what hasn’t at the Minneapolis Airport every time I travel.

Construction. I moved here in 1980 and I believe that some portion of the airport and/or the parking structures have been under construction every single minute.  Currently it’s the entrance to the parking shuttle area (and probably more, but that’s what I saw).

Check-in. If you’ve flown in the last few years you’ve experienced the little kiosks that guide you “gently” through the check-in process on your own.  Now you even get to put on your own bag tags.  A little embarrassing how long it took me to figure this out after watching ticket agents do this for 40 years.  And you get to put your own suitcase on the conveyor belt, unless you run into an agent who is chatty and willing to do it for you.

Security. This has changed and not for the better.  Long long lines (which I don’t understand – the only people going through security are ticketed passengers.  Certainly the airlines know how many bodies they are expecting on any given morning, afternoon or evening?  Why isn’t the security area ever properly staffed up?)   By the time they finally diverted some of us to the other security area, which had been closed earlier, the line went the entire length of the airport.

More Security. No more plastic bins to put your stuff in.  And no more taking your laptop, tablet, kindle, etc. out of your bag. But you still have to take off your shoes if you wear Birkenstocks that always make the security scanner go off.

Shopping & Eating/Drinking. OMG!  Considering that the only things I ever buy in an airport are bottles of water and the occasional refrigerator magnet, it is mind-blowing how many shops (and expensive shops at that) and restaurant/bars there are in the airport.  With the possible exception of rolls of toilet paper, I think you can get just about anything at the airport these days.

Connectedness (if this a word).  Well, there are a lot more places to plug in and get online at the airport, especially in the international gate areas, but considering that every single person that I can see from where I am sitting is online somehow, it’s still not enough.

The changes seem to happening faster and faster so I suppose in a couple of years, this blog will be completely obsolete.

What changes would you like in future airports?

books, Family, Food, News, The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized, Words

I Scream, You Scream

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Over the weekend, PJ got me going when she said “I can think of worse ways to go than death by ice cream.” It reminded me of the time we had talked about death by rhubarb and Clyde actually found a book entitled exactly that. (It was awful!)

So I went looking for death by ice cream titles. Didn’t find exactly that, but found plenty that were close enough.  Here are a few:

Ice Cream Murder (A Sprinkles Cozy Mystery) by Jennifer Martin
Death with a Cherry on Top by Molly Dox
Chunky Raspberry Fudge Murder by Penelope Manzone
Death by Chocolate Sundae by Constance Barker
Triple Dipped Murder by Gretchen Allen
Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake by Sarah Graves

I requested a couple from the library – you never know, maybe I’ll find a new author I need to follow.

But while I was searching around, I found this:

National Ice Cream Death Museum, Derbyshire
Perhaps the most unusual display anywhere in Britain, this small but lively museum is devoted to major accidents, deaths and disasters caused by ice cream, from the great M65 pile-up of 1981 (caused by a discarded vanilla tub, on which a lorry skidded) to the case of the Sussex child who swallowed a wooden ice cream spoon in 1967 and still walks around happily with it inside. Anyone who has any new ice cream disaster to report should ring their Cones Hot Line (sic).
(Independent.co.uk 1998)

I couldn’t find any indication that the museum is still open. I can’t even confirm that there was a great M65 pile-up of 1981 or that a Sussex child swallowed a wooden ice cream spoon in 1967. But it’s fun to think about.

What’s the most interesting museum you’ve ever been to?