fauxklore

I have a bunch of other things to write about, but first let me do something that will take less time. Namely, the cooking meme that has been making the rounds.

Have you ever:

1. Made bread from scratch? I used to bake bread at least once a week. I do it less often nowadays, but I still enjoy the process. You can get all your aggressions out in the process of kneading dough.

2. Cooked fresh squash? I’ve cooked both summer squash (i.e. zucchini, crookneck squash, patty pan) and winter squash (like pumpkin or butternut squash or spaghetti squash). The summer squashes are much faster, of course. Winter squashes are interesting stuffed with something like wild rice and mushrooms. I’ve also cooked soup in a pumpkin shell.

3. Made homemade soup? I frequently make soups. My favorite, partly because it is simple, is lentil soup - which I make with just lentils, onions, water, black pepper, and a little bit of ground cloves. I like to make big pots of bean and barley soup in the winter and freeze individual portions. In summer, I sometimes make cold soups, like one with carrots and yogurt and ginger. Or gazpacho.

4. Fried chicken? I don’t think so. I don’t like fried chicken very much, frankly.

5. Made spaghetti sauce from scratch? Yes. It’s easy - just saute onions and garlic, add canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and spices. Let simmer until it cooks down to the right texture. (Note that I use canned tomatoes because most fresh tomatoes are watery and flavorless. I fyou have good home grown tomatoes, use those.)

6. Made homemade rolls or cinnamon rolls? Rolls are the same thing as baking bread - just different shaping and a shorter baking time. I don’t think I’ve ever made cinnamon rolls. Or, for that matter, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten cinnamon rolls.

7. Baked a cake from scratch? Yes, several times. My most requested recipe of all time is my chocolate rum cheesecake. But I’ve also baked lots of other types of cakes. In general, the difference in time between baking a scratch cake and baking a mix cake is just a few minutes.

8. Made icing from scratch? Yes, but I’m more likely to make something like a lemon glaze.

9. Cooked a pot roast with all the veggies? No. I hate pot roast. It was one of the dishes I balked at as a child when my mother made it.

10. Made chili from scratch? Chili is another of my winter staples. Usually, I use dried kidney beans or black beans, but I’ve been known to make a quick version using canned beans. Add tomatoes, onion, garlic, spices and simmer to blend flavors. If you’re doing the quick version, an easy hack is to use the canned rotel tomatoes and green chilis. (Using frozen chopped onions also saves time.)

11. Made a meatloaf? I’ve done it a couple of times. My mother made a really good meatloaf with what was essentially the same recipe she used to stuff chicken or turkey. It has ground beef and matzoh farfel soaked in water and what I think of as Scarborough Fair herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme). Mine doesn’t come out as good as hers was.

12. Made potato salad? I’ve made potato salad, but not in a long time. I’m more likely to bring cole slaw (often with the addition of grated ginger) to a potluck.

13. Made mac/cheese from scratch? I’ve made the cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese and mixed it with spaghetti squash. I’ve made macaroni and cheese a handful of times. But, if I’m heading in that direction, I am more likely to make a tuna casserole.

14. Made any pies from scratch? Yes, though not frequently. Apple pie would be the most frequent. I also make quiche, if that counts. I was in college in the late 1970’s. Everybody ate quiche back then.

15. Made sausage from scratch? No. The closest I’ve come was helping my mother make chopped liver.

16. Made fudge? I think I made fudge from the recipe on the side of the marshmallow fluff jar once.

17. Made cookies from scratch? I make cookies every now and then. The last few years, I’ve participated in a holiday cookie exchange with friends. I also have a lot of cookie cutters, which can be fun.

18. Cooked a pot of dried beans? Yes, though I most often use dried beans for a soup rather than just on their own.

19. Cooked a pot of greens? I am assuming this refers to the Southern-style boiled to death sort of greens. In which case, no. But I do things like sautéing spinach or bok choy with garlic.

20. Made cornbread from scratch? This is another thing I make fairly frequently. Cornbread goes well with chili.

21. Made a pie dough from scratch? Yes. The trick to making decent pie crust is to have a pastry blender tool.

22. Cooked a whole turkey? I believe I cooked a whole turkey exactly once. A long time ago, back in Los Angeles, my brother and his (now-ex) wife decided to visit for Thanksgiving. I also invited a bunch of friends who were holiday orphans. One of my Israeli cousins was there, too. I think there were about a dozen people total, but that sounds like too many to fit into the dining room of the apartment I lived in.

23. Snapped green beans & cooked them? We don’t really have the type of green beans here that you have to snap. We get the ones that you just trim the ends of and maybe cut in half. But, yeah, I use them frequently.

24. Made mashed potatoes from scratch? No. Mashed potatoes fall into he general category of bland mushy white foods, which is a category of food I dislike. I have had edible mashed potatoes now and then at a restaurant, generally with a lot of something like horseradish or wasabi mixed in, but I still prefer other side dishes.

25. Prepared a meal for 30 plus people? I might have helped to prepare a meal for that many people at some point in my college life. But, if so, I have mercifully had that part of my memory wiped.

26. Made homemade tortillas? I was about to say that I hadn’t, but I actually did somewhere in Central America. I don’t remember offhand if it was in El Salvador or Costa Rica, however. Probaby the latter, though we did make our own pupusas in El Salvador.

27. Made pancakes from scratch? I make the European style of pancakes, which just have egg, milk, and flour. And I eat them with powdered sugar and lemon.

28. Roasted vegetables in the oven instead of boiling them? I roast vegetables relatively often. I particularly love roasted carrots with a tahini glaze.

29. Made pasta from scratch? No, and I really don’t see the need to, given that I can buy perfectly acceptable pasta.

30. Made tamales from scratch? I’m pretty sure I haven’t.

31. Made tuna or chicken salad? Tuna salad is one of the essentials of what I think of as Purina Miriam Chow. I’d make chicken salad but that would require having leftover chicken, while I always have cans of tuna on hand.

32. Fried fish? I am sure that I have never deep-fried fish. I also know that I have pan-fried or sautéed fish. That probably counts for a yes.

33. Made baked beans? Uh, many years ago, I probably opened a can of Heinz vegetarian baked beans and heated some up to eat with hot dogs. But, otherwise, no.

34. Made ice cream from scratch? Yes. I used to have one of those ice cream makers that you kept in the freezer for a couple of days, then filled with ingredients and got all your guests to turn the crank of every now and then while they ate the rest of the meal. It was entertaining the first one or two times and too much work after the novelty wore off.

35. Made jam or jelly? When I was a child, my Mom made blackberry jam from the wild berries we picked in our neighborhood. I had to serve my turn stirring. Oh, so much stirring. It was delicious. But it seems wrong to make jam with boughten berries.

36. Zested an orange or lemon? Yes. Particularly for things like lemon cookies.

37. Made grits from scratch? Why would I ever do that? Grits also fall into the category of bland, mushy, white foods. (Along with the afore-mentioned mashed potatoes. And oatmeal, although oatmeal bread is actually edible. And bananas. I don’t even want to be in the same room as a banana. Oddly, I do like rice pudding, but that may be because of the quantities of cinnamon I add to it.)

38. Made an omelet? We made omelets in home ec class in junior high. I don’t really have a good omelet pan or I’d probably make them now and then.

39. Made homemade pizza? I make homemade bread, which pizza crust is just a variant of. And I make homemade tomato sauce. I don’t make my own cheese, but I do assemble the rolled out pizza crust, the homemade sauce, and cheese to make pizza. I like my pizza topped with mushrooms (sautéed in olive oil) and black olives.

40. Lived in a house without a dishwasher? When I was growing up, dishwashers in our house came on two legs and were called children. I’ve had dishwashers in all of the apartments I’ve lived in (including my current condo) but I mostly wash dishes by hand because I’m one person, so that’s faster. I do use the dishwasher to wash the metal burner pans from the stove.

There's a scene at the beginning of the movie Julie and Julia where Julie says something about cooking being reassuring because if you do it right, it always works. The same idea is behind the "Plant a Radish" song from The Fantasticks, which is on my mind because I am seeing Arena Stage's production of it tomorrow night.

On those grounds, I am really glad we have a potluck at work tomorrow. I had a very frustrating and tedious meeting this morning in which it took us about 6 hours to dry run a 2 hour briefing. That was followed by a credit card fraud notice, which means the whole hassle of updating automatic payments and such.

I am making fresh vegetarian spring rolls. I did all the ingredient shopping yesterday. Cook the bean threads. Soften the rice paper. Arrange the bean threads with the cabbage and carrots and herbs (scallions, cilantro) and star fruit and vegetarian chicken on the rice paper and roll up. Cut in half. Mix the sauce. Simple, mechanical, and guaranteed to work.

I volunteered to bake bread for a potluck tomorrow. I had planned to clean the oven first. I did not realize that the self-cleaning cycle on the oven takes over 4 hours.

I turned off the cleaning, but I still have to wait for the oven to cool before I can bake the bread.

Aargh!

I decided it was too frigid outside to do a long walk today. Especially as I have been fighting off a cold for the past few days. That gave me time to catch up on some reading and do a few errands.

One of those errands was going to the bank to deposit coins. You can't give them wrapped coins nowadays. But they have a coin counting machine which is free for customers. I ended up pouring in about $183 worth. Apparently, I should get to the bank more often. Annoyingly, you can't put the coin receipt on the same deposit slip as a check. Had I known that, I'd have put the check in a different account.

I also decided that the wintry weather was a good reason to make a pot of soup. I soaked beans overnight and the soup is simmering nicely on my stove right now. I used kidney beans, white beans, and chick peas, since that's what I had on hand. I also threw in lentils and split peas (both green and yellow), which don't need to soak, as well as barley, potatoes, onions and carrots. Had I thought of it, I'd have bought some dried mushrooms, but it doesn't really matter. Going through the spices (which are still not on the spice rack because the spice rack doesn't quite fit where I want it to and I can't quite decide which of three solutions to that will be best), I discovered that I have multiples of some things and none of others. What went into the soup included bay leaves, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, black pepper, cayenne, garlic (from the jar in the fridge, not the spice rack, as dried garlic is an abomination), cumin, and a pinch of cloves. There should be marjoram, but there was none. There was also no fenugreek, which is easier to live without. But I have multiple jars of curry powder and ground cinnamon. (Ground and whole versions of the same spice don't count as duplicates, of course.)

The house smells all spicy and cozy. I should also make soup more often.

1) Are prescription drug vials recyclable?

2) Is there any reason to bother thawing frozen berries being put into muffin batter?

3) Is there any way to disrupt the reproductive processes of ragweed?

By the way, I recently learned that eating certain foods can exacerbate allergic reactions to ragweed pollen. I sort of knew that both chamomile and echinacea were problematic for me. I am going to try avoiding cucumbers, summer squash, and melon as well and see if that helps.

Every now and then, I decide to do some more elaborate cooking than my usual stir fries or pasta. Admittedly, I do make my own spaghetti sauce, but that's the sort of thing that one does in relatively large quantities and sticks in the freezer.

What inevitably happens is that, by the time I am done cooking, I've lost any interest whatsoever in eating whatever it was I just made and I end up opening a can or soup or making a tunafish sandwich for supper.

At least now I have a big bowl of tabouli and a small bowl of baba ganoush in the fridge to eat over the next few days. The latter is disappointing, however, as I put in too much tahini for the size eggplant I had. The former may have too much tomato, but that's a minor flaw. I may end up needing to exercise my usual rule of rescuing anything Middle Eastern - namely, there is no such thing as too much garlic and lemon.

I was also going to make a Thai-style curry (largely because of a can of curry paste I have had on hand for a while) but I think that will have to wait until Wednesday because after chopping more parsley than any one human should actually possess at a time I couldn't face cutting up the vegetables.