May 16

Time Travel

I have a loose-leaf notebook of recipes that had belonged to my maternal grandmother 100 years ago. Grandma was a home economics teacher before she married Grandpa. (Those were the days when women had to quit jobs once they got married.) The collection is an interesting time capsule of foodways in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Examples:

No oven temperatures, only low, moderate, or hot. Probably these recipes were designed for ovens without precise heat settings, such as wood-burning stoves.

No seasonings other than salt and pepper in main dishes. Spices do make appearances in baked goods.

Some recipes didn’t have methods, just a list of ingredients. One had to be a home economics teacher to figure things out.

Lots of white sauces. The most bizarre use of white sauce was a recipe for deep-fried peanut butter croquettes. The most egregious error I saw was in a recipe for baked eggs, where one was to make a medium thick white sauce with 1 1/2 cups milk and 4 1/2 cups flour. That’s more like muffin batter than a sauce.

The only two recipes I found for fish involved canned salmon and salt cod. This is probably related to supply. Fresh fish was not readily available unless a family member caught one. There was a recipe for scalloped oysters, which was one of my mother’s favorite dishes.

Some of the most interesting items in the notebook are the newspaper clippings. I found a recipe for mock chicken loaf that won a $1 prize for Mrs. J.B. Fish, who resided at 134 College Avenue in Ithaca. (Chicken was more expensive than pork or beef back in the day; hence the campaign slogan, “A chicken in every pot.”) I checked out this address on a map app. It still exists, although it’s been chopped up into several student apartments.

I wonder what someone 100 years hence would think of my collection of recipes. The person might find my obsession with Asian cuisine and spices quaint, or wonder why I needed so many cookbooks. Or s/he might wonder what these foods are, since our descendants may be consuming the 22nd century equivalent of Space Food Sticks.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/05/16/time-travel/

May 02

Recipe Rummaging Strategies

As with most things, Julian and I have different strategies to answer the eternal question: What’s for dinner? He goes to the internet first and downloads recipes. Some of them are from reliable websites, such as The New York Times and Washington Post. Other sources can be less trustworthy. Then he’ll go to the cookbook library and look at selected volumes. I tend to be just the opposite: I go to the cookbooks first. I’ll download interesting recipes from the aforementioned reliable sources if I’m just surfing and something catches my eye. If I see something interesting in one of my food porn magazines, I’ll mark it for future experimentation.

The stay home, stay healthy edict has expanded the opportunities I have to search for recipes. (I don’t search the web and drive at the same time.) I can spend a few minutes more perusing cookbooks and magazines at breakfast. If something pops up during my morning news read before I log into work, I print it for future reference.

In the last week or so, we’ve reversed roles. Julian actually went to cookbooks first to find a recipe or two this week, while I used some of the recipes he downloaded. However, I’m back to surfing the library for something to do with the lamb shanks we bought yesterday.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/05/02/recipe-rummaging-strategies/

Apr 17

Be Still, My Heart!

We ventured out to Central Market for the first time in a month to get groceries. We’ve eaten down much of the stockpile in the freezer and ordered some necessities on line; therefore, it was time to replenish necessities and a few luxuries. The market had sacks of mini sweet red peppers on sale. I nearly cried with joy when I saw the label on the sack.

WEGMANS!!!

For those of you who’ve never traveled east of Oklahoma, Wegmans is the 800-pound gorilla of grocery stores on the East Coast. Perhaps Danny Wegman has taken my repeated pleas to heart. If so, watch out, Safeway!

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/17/be-still-my-heart/

Apr 16

The Swimming Eagle

I’m always amazed at the wildlife behaviors we see at Casa Sammamish. This morning I saw one of our neighborhood eagles fishing on the other side of the river from our home. Suddenly it jumped into the water and started swimming. Yes, friends, eagles swim. Badly. They stroke with their wings, a cross between flailing and freestyle. The eagle persisted and got to our side of the river. In its talons was a good-sized salmon or trout. It then proceeded to gut the fish. The crows took over once the eagle had its fill. No trace of the fish an hour later.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/16/the-swimming-eagle/

Apr 14

Social Distancing Demonstration

I was on virtual happy hour with my Cornell classmates yesterday when Julian took this picture of Luka practicing social distancing:

Appropriate social distancing.

In contrast, here’s a photo I took last week of Neli doing quite the opposite:

Neli, practicing inappropriate social distancing.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/14/social-distancing-demonstration/

Apr 12

Not Canceled

This spring has been a series of cancellations. March Madness. In-person religious services. The annual Mixed-Marriage Passover Seder. However, there is one thing that I refused to cancel: The annual hot cross bun bake.

Hot cross buns are a British tradition on Good Friday. I wind up making them on Easter weekend. I’ve used several recipes over the years. This year’s recipe came from the same cookbook where the hamburger buns I made two weeks ago originated. I used dried cranberries instead of raisins; otherwise, I followed the recipe. The amount of dried fruit seemed a bit excessive. The dough was also extremely sticky. I added a little more flour, but not much. After a 2-hour rise, the stickiness had abated a little.

In this recipe, rather than making the cross with a confectioners’ sugar icing after baking, the cross is made with a flour and water mixture piped onto the buns just before baking. I cut too large a hole in the plastic bag I used to squirt out the mixture, so the crosses were pretty crude. No matter – Julian declared the buns excellent.

A handy little cookbook.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/12/not-canceled/

Apr 12

A COVID-19 Playlist

Here are some songs apropos of the pandemic. (OK, Millennials, I know these tunes come from before you were born. Deal with it.)

  • Are You Lonesome Tonight, Elvis Presley
  • Someday We’ll Be Together, The Supremes
  • Splendid Isolation, Warren Zevon
  • So Far Away, Carole King
  • Get Off My Cloud, The Rolling Stones
  • Invincible, Pat Benatar
  • Paranoia, The Kinks
  • Rescue Me, Fontella Bass
  • Mr. Lonely, Bobby Vinton
  • Fever, Peggy Lee

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/12/a-covid-19-playlist/

Apr 08

Cooking as Comfort

In these times, having something under your control is essential to one’s sanity. Even better if it doesn’t require potential pathogen exposure. Julian and I have been cooking and baking up a storm with ingredients we have on hand.

Last week I got some burger out of the freezer. I didn’t have any buns in the house. No worries, I made my own. I found a recipe for Turkish breakfast buns in a little book I bought at 75% off several years ago. The dough included crumbled feta cheese, which I had in the fridge. I topped half of the buns with za’atar (Middle Eastern spice and sesame seed mixture). Julian approved.

Kahlavi buns for burgers.

On Tuesday I made an adaptation of an Egyptian lentil and rice recipe that Melissa Clark published in the New York Times. This is part of a series she’s running of adaptable recipes that utilize pantry ingredients. The critical part of the recipe is caramelizing the onions. Given that my commute these days is one flight of stairs down from the kitchen, this was fine by me. The results were very tasty. It would have been a more Instagram-worthy dish if I’d used red lentils, but I had French green ones. Clark just published a pound cake recipe that I may try later this week.

On Sunday I made some meat sauce for pasta, along with focaccia from Jim Lahey’s My Bread. Lahey is the originator of the no-knead bread that’s the most downloaded recipe in the history of The New York Times. The dough was nice and springy, and spread into the half sheet pan easily. Yesterday we both had focaccia poor man’s pizzas with the leftover sauce for lunch. A riff on nostalgia food.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/08/cooking-as-comfort/

Apr 03

The New Toilet Paper

As Covid-19 cases increase exponentially and more people are forced to stay home, the shift of shortages has switched from paper products to flour. It’s as if all of the keto and paleo enthusiasts have said, “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die eating real cake and cookies, dammit!”

We noticed the lack of flour at Central Market two weeks ago. Last night Julian ordered groceries through Instacart – no flour. I checked the Costco, Bob’s Red Mill, and King Arthur websites this morning. All were out of wheat flour. Many of the non-gluten flours were also out of stock.

I’m okay for the moment. I have some bread flour and a little whole wheat flour. I even have a little gluten-free flour mix in the freezer. Things could get desperate if Julian gets a hankering for onion pockets or cobbler in the next few weeks.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/04/03/the-new-toilet-paper/

Mar 29

Bad News, Good News

Julian was compiling a list of items to order from Amazon/Whole Foods. He came upstairs while I was working on some bread dough. “I have bad news and good news,” he said. “The bad news is there’s no unbleached all-purpose flour to be had.”

“What’s the good news?” I asked.

“Caffe d’Arte is still shipping orders.”

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2020/03/29/bad-news-good-news/

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