Category Archives: Food

Family, Food, The Future, Uncategorized

Party Down

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Today’s post comes from tim

my daughter had a graduation party this weekend when she described what she wanted it sounded strange as it turns out it was very nice she wanted to have a waffle bar and a barista serving espresso oh what about scones and muffins no she said maybe donut holes and how about some French roast coffee and the amaretto hazelnut flavoring maybe if you said but I think chai tea is a better choice the barista asked me to show him how the espresso machine worked and that was that…he was busy non stop and chai tea was a hit along with espresso cappuccino and latte grandpa from Chicago handled the waffle bar and took great pride in knowing exactly how much of the batter should go into each waffle maker strawberries raspberries blueberries chocolate chip jams marmalades and whipped cream rounded out the entire offering  there was a little table with a wooden decorated imitation steamer trunk to put cards to the graduate in and a memory book to jot down heartfelt messages to last through the ages there was an area to take pictures in front of a back ground sheet holding up a Mardi Gras mask or a 2017 identifier on a stick The rain held off until 245 for a party that was supposed to end at three and everyone who was remaining scurried to their cars and left in short order in by 305 we were picking up the yard The table folded down nicely the table cloths got washed or throwing out depending on the weather they were cloth or paper the table got moved to locations that made sense when there weren’t clusters of people spaced sporadically about the yard and everything was wonderful except…

by the guest login book and the waffle buffet my wife had purchased gala table centerpieces with stars and iridescent streamers and must have also received Little pieces of  confetti in the shape of a graduate hat these little pieces of confetti were the size of the stars they used to get on your homework paper back in the old days they were very similar if not identical to the stars used to get on your homework paper back in the old days it occurred to me that those confetti stars are made in such a way that they will sit in the landfill without degradation for a lifetime they are put on the table as kind of a cutesy afterthought and thrown away without a concern or a thought about how they came to be placed in the landfill and how long they would remain I walked by the garbage can in front of my garage door and saw one of those little graduation hats sitting on the concrete and knew that if I left it there it would be there two years from now when I am celebrating my last daughters graduation party I feel bad when I take a perfect moment and find a little detail to bitch about but it seems to me that that’s what’s wrong with the world is that nobody thinks about the little details of making a meaningless piece of confetti out of everlasting material instead of biodegradable material

The oil companies Third World countries and developing nations all find a reason to worry about it later I hope my daughter and the people who are graduating today learn from the mindless guidelines that have been left by our generation for them to tweak

how do you keep from letting a little disturbances screw up your day

Fifty Words, Food, gardening, Nature, Weather

Strawberries!

28 Comments

I’ve yakked about strawberry picking before, so I’ll save the word and just show this year’s pictures.

What’s a perfect Saturday morning for you?

Family, Food, gardening

Popcorn Memories

50 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben.

I was thinking about popcorn tonight. Actually I wanted popcorn tonight… but I didn’t want to go to the trouble of making it; I wanted a bag of cold popcorn out of the freezer. But that meant making some and freezing it and that seemed like a long wait and a lot of trouble.

And that’s how come I’m thinking about popcorn.

I first learned to make popcorn in a large metal pot on the stovetop. Add some oil, throw in a few kernels, wait until they pop, then add more, add the lid and shake it across the stove. I can hear that sound of the heavy metal pot scrapping across the electric stove elements.

I don’t remember what we served it in.

My grandfather grew popcorn one year. He was quite the gardener. I remember it had to dry and we had to husk it. No idea how it tasted…

I think at some point we had one of those concave, yellow plastic cover poppers; I think you were supposed to serve it in the lid when it was done. And you added butter to the top – it was supposed to drip on to the popcorn before you flipped it over, right? I don’t remember mom ever doing that.

And then there was the black pan w/ the handle on the top in order to stir the popcorn. That one didn’t last long; it probably didn’t work that well.

Then we got air poppers… they worked and were fun. But mom still wouldn’t let me put butter in the little dish on the top. And the popcorn had a tendency to fly out all over…

I remember going to a cabin with my sister and her in-laws when I was about 10. They had ‘Jiffy Pop’ and I’d never seen Jiffy pop before and I was kinda fascinated with the foil bag getting bigger and bigger. I remember her in-laws making sexual references about that. (I don’t remember anything specific, but I knew what they were joking about… and then ‘Grandpa’ grabbed ‘Grandma’ by one finger and kinda tugged on it and kept saying they had to go. People laughed. I was uncomfortable.)

And this one looks familiar. We may have had one of these.

Fourth of July tradition after I met Kelly: Her aunt would pop (in oil on the stove!) a brown paper bag full of popcorn and we’d park on the side of the street right down by Silver Lake to watch the fireworks. Soon as they were over we throw everything in the van because we had to beat the traffic out of downtown.

And then day old popcorn, out of the grease stained bag was THE BEST!

(Several years later… Kelly and I and the kids are trying to get that spot on the street again. Parking rules have changed and parking isn’t allowed. So you have to time it just right that magically ALL the cars will park at once just before the fireworks start and then the cops won’t chase you all away. I, however, have parked in the entrance to the local power plant. The cop asks us to move. I said I thought since it was closed it would be OK. He says there might be an emergency. I said I’d move if there was…..? He smiled. I moved.)

And then came microwave popcorn. How many fire alarms have been set off at work or school from the burned popcorn??

But still, the best is movie theater popcorn. With enough butter to choke a horse.

Sometimes I go to the movies just to buy popcorn. And if you buy a large, you can get a free refill on popcorn. And I got to thinking tonight (remember I was thinking about popcorn) it it’s free refills… do they care if I go to a movie? Is there a specific amount of time that has to pass between buying the popcorn and getting the refill??

You see where I’m going with this; what if I buy a large bag, dump it into some zip lock bags, and ask for a refill? That’s not wrong is it?

Do I have to buy a bag, go into the ‘megaplex’ area to a lounge, fill my bags and find a different clerk to refill? But again, why the bother? I buy a large, dump in a Target bag, and ask for a refill. Am I right??

And now the places that make the cheddar popcorn! Oh My… I could eat a gallon of that without even trying. That is good stuff. I have to forcibly limit myself around cheddar popcorn. Especially from ‘Carrols Corn’ here in Rochester. (http://www.carrollscorn.com/)

Back to popcorn in the freezer. When I was a kid and I was in the hospital, mom would bring me popcorn for a snack. She’d freeze it and bring it to me in Wonder Bread bags. (we were so poor we had to reuse the Wonder Bread Bags).

And now when I bring home extra popcorn, I put it in quart ziplock bags and put it in the freezer. It stays fresh, it doesn’t get soggy, and it’s a nice, quick, easy, cool snack.

GOT A STORY ABOUT POPCORN?

 

 

Family, Food

The Dining Room

52 Comments

We just got back home after a quick trip to Brookings, SD, to visit son and Daughter in Law, and to watch son perform in community theatre production of The Dining Room by A. R. Gurney.   The production was performed at SDSU as a benefit for Habitat for Humanity.  Son was one of 6 actors performing 57 parts in total. It tells the stories associated with a dining room across decades and diners.

Son wrote in his autobiographical blurb his keen memories of our dining room, and the  myriad of dishes that were consumed and the homework that was done there. He also mentioned that one of his most vivid memories of the dining room was a battle of wills he had with me, one that lasted, it seemed for hours, over his refusal to eat a bowl of my famous, homemade, minestrone soup.  After the play I told him that his children are going to LOVE that soup when I make it for them, and he is just being silly about not  liking cabbage in his minestrone.

What are your dining room stories, past, present, or future?

Baboon Achievers, Food, Stories

Memorial Day Leftover Pasta

59 Comments

I’m a weekend cook. On weekdays, all good intentions about cooking and cleaning go out the window by the time I get home.  Heated-up leftovers are about all I’m willing to expend energy on for dinner.  On the weekends I have plenty of morning energy and time for cooking.

One my Memorial Day weekend gatherings was grilling at our house – veggie burgers with all the fixins’, potato salad, pasta salad, grilled corn, watermelon. There were leftovers, but not really anything you could reheat on a Thursday night so I still felt the need to cook something.

I decided to use the leftovers to make a dish. I started with what was left of a large yellow onion and sautéed it in olive oil. Then I cut the kernels off the 3 grilled corns and added them.  I found a can of black beans in the cabinet, rinsed and threw them in. Then I added the leftover pasta (I made WAY too much the night before.  I seasoned it and it tasted ok but didn’t look quite right so I chopped up the leftover 2½ tomatoes and stirred them in.  Then it was perfect.

Memorial Day Leftover Pasta
Olive oil
1 yellow onion (or almost one), chopped
3 ears of corn (grilled OK), kernels cut off the cob
1 can black beans, rinsed thoroughly
4 cups cooked pasta
2½ tomatoes, chopped
Salt, pepper, cumin, chili pepper to taste

Heat up the olive oil and sauté the chopped onions. Add corn and after a few minutes, add beans and pasta.  Mix thoroughly and season to taste.  Add tomatoes at the end and toss gently.  Eat warm or cold!

What leftovers will you have after this weekend?

 

 

 

Baboon Achievers, Business, Fifty Words, Food, Stories

The Mall

46 Comments

We have a variety of shops: cheese, socks, pie, underwear, candy, Cracker jacks, Three Musketeers, peanuts, toast, jam, fish balls, ice cream, chocolate, books, Gold mine stock, swamp real estate, Brooklyn Bridge, air, pet rocks, nails and screws.

What should we name our little mall? Should we open on holidays?

Food, Travel

Sardines and Only Sardines

71 Comments

Our last day of the cruise was really just a quick ride from the Port of Lisbon to the airport. No statues, no scenic tour, no talkative guide with plenty to say on the current political climate in Europe (or America).  The Lisbon airport is quite large and getting through the duty-free shop before getting to the gates is like a trip through a perfume-drenched Ikea.

Just after escaping the duty free, as we walked down the hallway, hoping to find our gate, we saw the brightest, most colorful shop ever – it looked like a carnival inside – with rows and rows of colorful tins. After a bit we realized it was shop full of sardines – just sardines.

Apparently Portugal is known for its sardines and from what we could tell from the shop, aged sardines are a real treat. The tins are marked with years on them, although I find it hard to believe that there were 50-year-old sardines in the tins marked 1967.  The shop was busy so we couldn’t get anyone to confirm if they were really that old or if it was just a marketing gimmick.  Both of us are vegetarians so even though it initially seemed like a fun thing to buy at an airport, we both passed.  But even a week later, I’m still amazed at how one product can keep a store open, especially such a big store!

If your store had just one product, what would it be?

Family, Food

Begging for S’More

28 Comments

I started becoming a vegetarian when I was four. My Aunt Effie served lamb for Easter and when I discovered what was on the plate I promptly threw up.  At the age of five I had to be taken out of a seafood restaurant when I realized the lobsters in the tank at the entrance were becoming the meals at the tables around us.  When I was six I found out that venison was Bambi.  And so it continued.

I gave up the very last bit of meat left in my diet (ground beef) when I was 16. Even after all these years there still a few things I miss.  Tuna salad on a tomato on a hot summer day, sizzling bacon on a cold winter morning.

And marshmallows. No yams with marshmallows at Thanksgiving.  No Rocky Road ice cream.  No s’mores. That’s the one that really hurts. In the past few years there have been a couple of companies that have tried vegetarian marshmallows but they weren’t very good to start with and not good at all for s’mores: too small, too sticky, too melty. Over the years I’ve even tried s’mores with marshmallow cream.  If you think regular s’mores are messy, marshmallow cream is messier.

So when I saw the Trader Joe’s has come out with vegetarian marshmallows I was skeptical. But I figured if they were terrible it was only a couple of bucks. Over the weekend, Young Adult and I made a little fire in our pit and gave them a try.  Imagine my surprise when they turned out to be great.  Not quite as soft as your basic Stay Puff, but great for s’mores.  They stayed on the skewer until they were done and tasted just fine.  They did go pretty fast from light brown to bubbly but that might have had something to do with the impatience of the s’more makers.  Guess I’ll have to try marshmallows on yams next!

What have you given up that you miss?

Fifty Words, Food

As the Crow… Buys

82 Comments

Went to Trader Joes to pick up a few things from their flyer.

I’m sure the pasta tastes just like, well, pasta – but the colors were so pretty that I bought TWO!  I felt like a crow attracted to a shiny object.

What bird would you be?

Family, Food, Uncategorized

Flour Power

26 Comments

Husband and I were delighted to find a bag of Swany White flour recently in a natural food store in Fargo. The store owner told us that Nicole, of Nicole’s Fine Pastry in downtown Fargo, won’t use anything but Swany White. Nicole makes great pastries. He also said that Nicole and the mill owner were cousins.  (I love the small town angle in these conversations.) I hadn’t seen any Swany White since the Freeport, MN mill burned down a few years ago.  We had heard rumors that the mill was operating again. We snapped up a 25 lb bag, and hauled it home. I baked French bread with it this past weekend. I used a combination of Swany, Artisan flour, and Bread flour.  We froze all the loaves as we had too much bread already to start another loaf, so I can’t say if the flour quality is the same. It doesn’t have the same bran flecks the original flour had. It is just as finely ground though, like silk.

I think we have more kinds of flour than most people. In addition to the Swany White, we have King Arthur all-purpose white flour and King Arthur bread flour. We have King Arthur artisan flour, French flour, whole wheat flour, and white whole wheat flour.  We also have a bag of White Lily flour for Southern-style biscuits and white wheat berries for a rustic Italian bread we like to make.

Husband is a real fan of baking rye bread, so he has white rye, pumpernickel, medium rye, rye flour blend, rye chops (coursely ground rye berries), rye bread improver, deli rye sour, First Clear flour (it increases the gluten content in rye breads), and frozen rye sourdough starter. He tries to replicate the wonderful rye breads we found in Winnipeg.

On Sunday, Husband bought Rose Beranbaum’s The Baking Bible for me as a Mother’s Day present. I think he had ulterior motives for me to bake pastries for him. Rose is an absolute fanatic about flour, and compares the protein content of various flours and likes to balance the proteins in her breads using bleached and unbleached flours for just the right results. I think she goes too far, but who am I to judge. She really likes Gold Medal bleached flour as a basic baking flour.

Husband’s brother-in-law has tried for years to replicate the hard rolls baked in their home town of Sheboygan WI that are used for bratwurst. They are wonderful rolls that I have not encountered anywhere but in Sheboygan.  Batch after batch has been baked and deemed lacking. I convinced him that the problem is in his home oven, and so he is thinking about a wood fired clay oven in the back yard.  He is also thinking about apprenticing himself to a Sheyboygan bakery to finally solve the problem. If you knew Husband’s  brother-in-law, you would agree that keeping him busy with this is best for all concerned.

We read at Easter about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness when he says to Lucifer that man doesn’t live by bread alone. I think the Devil has a point, though. Bread is wonderful. I don’t see our going overboard over bread or flour as sinful at all. There are worse things we could be doing.

What makes you go overboard?