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Posts Tagged ‘Food’

Who can resist a Snickers shaped like a pumpkin masquerading as a Reese’s peanut butter cup?

It’s funny really, I’ve never had a sweet tooth. Never stored bars of candy in a drawer in the kitchen. Maybe that’s why Halloween was so sacred to my kids, and they milked it for as many years as they could. They knew which houses had the full-size candy bars and which gave out bags of raisins. 

The first time I said “No” to my baby Bride was in a check-out line at the grocery store. I was trying to be all “natural mom” back in the 80s. with real diapers and pureeing my own baby food in a Mouli grater. We even joined a food co-op from Vermont! I didn’t think I’d ever have to say the word “No” about anything, after all couldn’t distraction and/or avoidance solve most discipline problems? Turns out, there’s no avoiding that stack of candy within arm’s reach of a toddler determined to get her hands on some gummy bears.

Now put a bag of chips in front of me, and it’s a different story. I’m just a pushover for salt.

Which is fine, since it turns out that Americans ingest about 138 pounds of sugar a year, and that only serves to increase our risk of heart disease. Because a new study in the British Medical Journal suggests that sugar could be worse for us than fat – raising our cholesterol etc. It’s certainly always been good news for dentists,  Sorry Eric. Now we know something I’ve always known intuitively – grass-fed Irish cow butter is better for us than cookies! There, I said it. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/top-heart-doctor-unprocessed-fatty-foods-may-actually-be-good-for-you-8897707.html

Don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather put a little real sugar in my coffee than an artificial sweetener. Sticking with real food can never lead us down that scary grocery aisle with processed homogenized cheese spread. I recently modernized the Flapper’s version of Depression mac and cheese when my Bug was visiting.

Mac and cheese please

Mac and cheese please

Since butter was scarce in the 30s, my Mom used bacon to start her scrumptious recipe and inserted slices of Swiss cheese from the deli. I found some Gruyere and shredded it instead. I can still remember her saying that she made this mac and cheese for my brother Michael, because it was his favorite dish. It turned out he was her favorite child.

And no matter how many times I said it was my favorite dish too, it didn’t matter. So when you watch this video poetry slam by Lily Myers about “The Shrinking Woman,”  “I have been taught accommodation, I have been taught to grow in…to create space around myself.” Think about how we too are entitled to calories, about how we women are worthy of filling that space. And pass the bread and butter please. 

You may have to click over to the wordpress site to watch the video, but believe me, it’s worth it.

 

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This is a letter the Love Bug dictated to me for her parents, who are returning from the Outer Banks today.

Dear Mama and Dada,

OK, first. Life is good here with Nana and PapaBob. I point to things and they get them for me, all the time! Not just sometimes. And we do a lot of walking, I mean a LOT of walking around. And I don’t have to hold hands all the time anymore, get it? Ya!

Mornings from now on will have to start with dog kisses. This Ms Bean dog, she puts her head through the bars in my crib and she kisses me every morning. So even if I wake up with a poopy diaper, the day has a great start. And if I’m really really hungry, they let me have some Puffs in the living room. Get it?

I have learned many new skills. Like how to open and close windows with a crank and crawl in and out of a rocking chair with the dog’s toy and my toy monkey too! It gets crowded but we manage, Nana keeps me from falling out. We also pick flowers on the deck. And we play Mozart and dance in the morning after Sesame Street.

I like to get outdoors in the afternoon. A little fresh air never hurt anybody, that’s what PapaBob says. We watch bees buzz, and clouds and planes fly by, and we like to go see the horses next door. Nana says her friend has alpacas, and I don’t know what they are but I can’t wait to see them.

There will be Mac and Cheese for dinner every night, what’s not to like? And Nana said not to tell, but I DO like chicken mac nuggets. Especially if we dip them in yogurt! And here are some other new foods on my list: Irish oatmeal; white nectarines; hot dogs; cookies. Don’t judge me.

I still like baths the way you do them, although they can never be long enough, right? Just keep the water warm and wait till my fingertips turn into raisins. But try not to nibble on them please. Nana is always nibbling on me, on my ears and my toes. You’d think she just couldn’t get enough of me.

Kisses,  Your Love Bug who misses you boodles!

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When it’s a glorious Fall weekend, with nights in the 50s and the high for the day is maybe 80, we will always meander our way off the mountain and down into the city, to mix and mingle at the Farmer’s Market, aka Cville City Market. College kids are back in town, and because it’s a big football weekend there are Ducks everywhere (Oregon), so it’s shoulder to shoulder energy.

Breakfast included a locally sourced bacon and egg sandwich with organic iced green tea. This is however a recipe for disaster with my visual field deficit courtesy of a West Nile mosquito. Because the sun was merciless, and live bluegrass music was everywhere, I wore my sun hat and therefore couldn’t see (or hear) anything to the right of me. Needless to say, I bumped into lots of friends and strangers!

What got to me this time was the abundance of heirloom tomatoes. I don’t think I could ever eat another supermarket tomato again. I moved here determined to stay true to the famous Garden State tomato. That and pizza. But it’s time to admit defeat, one out of two ain’t bad. The many-colored and zebra striped heirloom tomatoes in VA are simply divine.

Which leads me to a little riff on loyalty. I’m about as loyal as they come, like James Carville is to Bill Clinton. I still buy Tide and Dove soap. Which is why I’m keeping my options open about Syria. Yes, I’m a pacifist and I detest this run-up to war. You can’t bring about peace by surgically striking Damascus. If I were that opthalmologist-turned-dictator Assad, I’d get pretty darned pissed. But the mere fact that our President has changed his mind, and is asking the Congress to step up to the plate, gives me a measure of hope. This President who stood tall against the Iraq war. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt on Tuesday night.

Because when Virginia’s own President Woodrow Wilson tried to prevent another world war with his League of Nations, he was on to something. And so the world waits for the UN Security Council to vote and for our elected officials to say Yea or Nay. Because Syrian violence is about loyalty – the succession of leadership by bloodline from Mohammed (Alawite a type of Shiite interpretation – 12% minority but ruling class of Muslims) vs a belief in succession by Mohammed’s most able and pious companions (Sunni – 70% of Syrian Muslims).

And btw, 90% of Muslims worldwide are Sunni! Imagine if Jesus had children, and so Christians split into 2 sects; the apostles and saints vs his progeny…instead of say how many? Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Congregational, Lutheran, Baptist….

According to Shiite Islam, Mohammed’s only true heir, imam, was his son-in-law Ali bin Abu Talib. But Alawites take a step further in the veneration of Imam Ali, allegedly investing him with divine attributes. Other specific elements such as the belief in divine incarnation, permissibility of alcohol, celebration of Christmas and Zoroastrian new year. http://middleeast.about.com/od/syria/tp/The-Difference-Between-Alawites-And-Sunnis-In-Syria.htm

Making the world safe for democracy, doesn’t seem to fit in this scenario…at least not without more bloodshed. And unlike my heirloom tomato tart recipe, I can’t envision the end game.

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We’ve been driving home now for almost nine hours. And out of all the Snap Judgement and This American Life podcasts we listened to, one struck home. It was about an Arab who lived on the Jewish side of Jerusalem. His newspaper column was titled “Second Person Singular” and it’s just about his life, as an outsider on the inside.

Probably because that’s been my MO. I was the foster child, the strawberry blond, the lapsed Catholic who married a Jewish guy; somehow or another I just never fit in. Belonging is one of those basic human needs; my psychologist brother or MIL could tell you all about it. It’s Maslow’s rule of thumb. We all need to belong.

And yesterday, for the Love Bug’s first birthday, I had to stay in bed with a bad virus. I managed to bake the cupcakes, make the frosting, and even wrap up a couple of curried chicken wraps. I had a few days beforehand to play and cuddle with her, but I was absent for the big event.

But still, what’s important about one day? Every month since she was born, I’ve managed to visit with her, either in TN or VA. Almost every day I talk to her and we FaceTime all the time. I just have to get her to say “Nana” and not mean “No” or “Maybe!”

I listened to her party from my feverish upstairs in-law suite. I felt like an Arab living in the wrong part of Jerusalem. But it was all good. The Bride brought her up for a last minute night night before the festivities, before a little boy knocked the baby gate down on my steps and yelled. “It was an accident!” I snapped this picture.

Happy First Birthday Love Bug.

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I’m sorry to say, that while perusing Twitter I lacked the energy and inclination to watch SyFy’s new show Sharknado. It was all over my Twitter feed, but instead I linked to @KosherSoul’s Washington Post article in the first person singular. The man’s name is Michael Twitty, and I somehow found him when he wrote an article about Paula Deen. He is a Southern culinary historian and food blogger http://afroculinaria.com with a remarkably astute point of view!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/first-person-michael-w-twitty-36-culinary-historian-and-food-blogger-from-rockville/2013/07/10/a9ac8d08-d91f-11e2-9df4-895344c13c30_story.html

“No one had to tell me about “organic” or “sustainable,” because that was the tradition that was passed down to me. My authenticity is not based on food trends; my authenticity is based on what August Wilson once called the self-sustaining ground of the slave quarter.”

His intention is to bring an awareness to our white Euro-centric society of our gastronomic roots in Africa. Most food cooked on plantations in the Antebellum South was not done by French chefs – even though Mr Jefferson did have a French chef give his slave/cook Edith Fossett  instructions: “1862 He (Jefferson) had a French cook in Washington named Julien, and he took Eda and Fanny there to learn French cookery. He always preferred French cookery. Eda and Fanny were afterwards his cooks at Monticello.” So you can see how French cooking did influence Virginia and Louisiana chefs in the future.

But mostly today’s Southern cuisine is the result of black enslaved women, who created wholesome, real food;  locally grown and harvested. They raised the cows, chickens and pigs that were slaughtered without drugs. They grew the vegetables and fruit without pesticides.

So I began to think of my own culinary history, born in PA coal country and nurtured in rural NJ. How is it that I managed to raise 2 children who became healthy, real food-types despite my own upbringing? My foster mother Nell cooked by can, usually Campbells. She was of that new-fangled, post-war generation that was sold a bill of goods. Look, we created a frozen TV dinner for you to just “heat and serve” to your family! Marketing was focused on making the happy 50s housewife’s life simple and easy. Where do you think that canned green bean special swimming in soup came from on Thanksgiving?

But Nell was first generation Yugoslavian, and she talked about her father keeping barrels of sauerkraut in their basement. Sometimes she would fry pork chops, but for special occasions, she would make “halupkes.” These are the most delicious little pillows of ground pork and rice, rolled in a cabbage leaf and simmered in sauerkraut. I adored this Slavic stuffed cabbage, with a passion. Even today, comfort food usually involves pork. But lucky for me, the Flapper loved to cook.

The Flapper was married first to an Italian man, then widowed and married to my Father, an Irishman. She married my step-father, who was Jewish, after I moved back into her house. Consequently, she was a proper global chef de cuisine. My pre-teen and teen years were filled with lovely aromas and real food. She baked banana cream pies, deviled eggs and put together a proper meatball and tomato sauce. She could roast, fry and broil just about anything using her Fanny Farmer cookbook. In fact, I think she only opened a can to get at some stewed tomatoes for her famous Depression-era mac and cheese, with bacon!

Nell taught me to cook with love on special occasions, and my MIL Ada taught me how to make a proper seder dinner. But the Flapper taught me to cook with alacrity, with whatever is in season, using the freshest possible ingredients. And this led to the Bride winning her Kindergarten Mother’s Day essay by “writing” about my mac and cheese and how I cook “from scratch,” even when I make PB & J sandwiches! Here are my herb planters on the deck.

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The best thing I learned from the Flapper was always adding some TLC to any dish. What is your culinary history?

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Finally, Fall has arrived. Someone once said that a person’s favorite time of year is related to their birthday, which makes sense. Our whole lives we have been celebrating our birthdays, or at least until we’d rather forget them, and so we’ve become conditioned to “like” that time of year. It’s true in our family; the September babies love the Fall and the August babies adore Summer. Thought I would share this little kitten’s morning picture. She was born on a seasonal cusp, but I can already tell she has a preference for furry sweaters.

I wonder, will the Love Bug’s birthday party happen before school starts or after? This is a very big question since school levels the playing field and expands potential invitees. It will most likely depend on which part of the country our children decide to live in, whether school begins before or after Labor Day. I have pictures of birthday parties in 1950s Victory Gardens, they were small affairs with everyone wearing pointy hats, sitting around the kitchen table. Think about your Mother’s kitchen table. You’ve started back in school and the days are getting shorter. You joined a bunch of kids off the school bus, kicking leaves and slowly meandering your way home. You walk into the house and it’s warm, almost too warm compared to that crisp Fall day. But the smell of cooking is the first thing to hit you. It surrounds you and you melt into it.

My foster mother Nell stayed at home. Her generation was almost required to stay home if the husband could provide for the family. She once told me she worked for a short time at a store before she married, but she never learned to drive and so she was marooned in our little house. She seemed happy to me, but I wonder now. Her gift to me is priceless. Taking me in, loving me like I was her own child. And her comfort food can still make a bad day better. She made “Haloopkeys” (I have no idea how to spell it) – a Slavic dish of stuffed cabbage with pork and rice and cooked in sauerkraut, served up on a formica table with chrome legs. Every culture has a stuffed vegetable delicacy. And every person on earth has a memory of their mother’s kitchen table.

My Fall Table

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“What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman’s mind?” Don Quixote

The Bride and the Groom are very evidence-driven. While I was visiting for the Love Bug’s birth, a Food Truck festival just happened to coincide with her first weekend on the planet. What better way to introduce a newborn to her Nashville environs! But I was conflicted. Do you dare take a 5 day old out among thousands to a public park, in 90 degree heat? My first thought was “No.” Absolutely, positively no…and it reminded me of our first ‘almost’ outing with the baby Bride in the Berkshires.

A friend was hosting a big end of summer party that was going to have a hot air ballon tethered to the ground. Bob was very hot on going and taking our newborn up, up and away. Or somewhat away since the ballon was tied to the earth. I was hormonal and irritable. The more pilot Bob was insistent, I became more intractable. It was my first sign, married life with this man was going to be one long negotiation. But I dug in my heels, and we stayed home. There is nothing quite like parenthood to bring out the mama grizzly in a once perfectly calm, sane woman.

So I stepped back. The Groom was in my camp; thankfully his first reaction to the Food Truck idea was similar to mine. My daughter, however, desperately needed to get out of the house, and of course Grandpa Bob was all about food en plein air, with trucks! It was a stalemate. But, I was also on a many year quest to find the Grilled Cheeserie Truck! Like the famous windmill, this particular phantom truck was widely known throughout the Music City, and I had either just missed it, or passed it by unknowingly, or on one particular occasion, it just never showed. All indications were that the Grilled Cheeserie truck was going to be there. http://thegrilledcheeserietruck.com

What to do? Well, back in the day we didn’t have google with expert opinions on childrearing at our fingertips. We had grandparents, and aunts and friends we could call; I would sometimes consult Penelope Leach’s book. Instead of Apps, we had age-old parenting myths to rely on. In some ways, I think that may have been easier. But after a quick search and texting some friends with a 2 week old baby about meeting up, we hitched that Love Bug up, way up on her Daddy in a Becco baby carrier and headed out to slay the dragon of food trucks. The Grilled Cheeserie truck was there! Unfortunately, the lines were so long and the heat was so hot, we only managed a quick walking tour and went home. My quest continues. On balance, I always like to weigh the good with the bad and the grilled cheese, which I am determined to find on my next trip!

The Fall Menu

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Normally, you would find some smart-alec retort here about politics. Normally, I would try and weave some family story into my opinion, hopefully with a dash of humor or at least a dollop of wit. And don’t get me wrong, I watched a few snippets of both conventions. I loved the nun and the ex-President, and even Mrs Mitt wasn’t too saccharine sweet. But life stopped being normal on August 25th, when I found myself transformed from the Mother-of-the-Bride to the Grandmother.

Nothing really prepares you for this stage in life. Gone are the black shoes and stockings of my Nana from Scranton, PA. I’m not pickling things and storing cans on the shelves leading down to the basement. I still have the sacred memory of Nana taking me to my very first movie – Picnic, starring William Holden and Kim Novak. In 1955 I was 7 years old when this classic was released and Nana told me only big girls are allowed in a movie theatre and that I couldn’t leave my seat and run up and down the aisles. Of course I can’t remember the plot, but something “big” was happening in the grass and I was praised for staying put.

Can you remember your first anything? The first time you rode a real bike, the first kiss? Mine happened on the Kindergarten school bus. A boy named Lloyd, who’s mom was what we called then a “war bride” from London, cornered me and kissed me. i remember feeling somewhat terrified and proud all at the same time. Growing up can be challenging. The simple courage to try something new has prompted Jamie Lee Curtis to write her latest children’s book, “My Brave Year of Firsts.” Curtis said, “I started thinking about how often we ask children to try things, and it brought up to me the bravery of being a kid; for a child, jumping a rope, riding a horse, tying shoes, going to school — all are new activities. But adults don’t naturally choose to do something brave. We’re afraid we’re going to look foolish.”

It’s true. We ask our young children constantly to just try some new food, while we are content to eat the same old thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But last night I tried something new, and it was delicious! The Rocker rolled into the Music City with Aunt Cait and made us dinner. We feasted on yummy quinoa cakes with a cranberry curry and yogurt remoulade, all made from scratch! The kale salad on the side was the best I’ve ever tasted. Later we watched the documentary “Babies” and that was illuminating and fun!

The Bride gave her brother his first lesson in diapering. As I watched, I felt true bliss. My baby boy had cooked for his sister and his new niece. Better it couldn’t be.

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What’s a person to do when they’re lying awake in bed at midnight buzzing with happiness and the let-down of a stressful but fun weekend? Why, get up and watch Pierce Morgan interview the Dalai Lama of course. Oh, and check in on my friend Karen’s Daughter-in-Law. I mentioned this gal before, Kath Younger (KERF) is our town’s famous food blogger, as big online as that Pioneer Woman out west, except that Kath is adorably real! And yesterday, she and her husband Matt documented the Bride and Groom’s baby shower here http://www.KathEats.com/party-hoppin

It all started on Friday, like any good Jewish celebration relatives started streaming in from points north and festivities were planned. The Rocker got his first glimpse of his sister’s 30 week belly at Barbecue Exchange in Gordonsville, a truly unique and delicious experience!

Saturday night we met friends on the mall for dinner. The weather couldn’t have been better and my Grand Dogs were very well behaved. How long does it take for the conversation to turn to medicine when 4 doctors walk into a restaurant? I always try to postpone the inevitable, but it never works. Once, when the band stopped by on a grand tour, we played a game of Trivial Pursuit with a group of medical students after dinner. I called it the artists vs the scientists, and the artists won! Ah those were our glory days! But this weekend the doctors were in; so sprinkled among the baby talk were consults on broken fingers and poison ivy.

Many thanks to the Groom’s Mom for co-hosting a great baby shower; and to Ashley East, Dinner at Home for the yummy salads. The baby-clothes-line-art-activity went particularly well (thanks Pinterest), in fact we couldn’t decide on a winner. And I am humbled by Kath’s opinion of my carrot cake. (photo courtesy of KERF) This 3 layer, toasted coconut, cream cheese frosted carrot cake has a special meaning for us. I found the recipe years ago in a Junior League cookbook, and I would make it once or twice a year with my daughter since she could stand on a stool and help. We’d bring it to birthday parties, we’d deliver it to a funeral, we’d demonstrate its deliciousness to visiting French students; its secret is that it is overloaded with carrots. I still use the 1960’s avocado green Sunbeam hand mixer to whip it together. Of course, the Bride would always get to clean the frosting bowl. Baby girl was kicking up a storm this morning as they packed up all their presents and the dogs for the return trip to Nashville. Sweeter they couldn’t be!

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Have you ever tried to lose weight? And when you did, have you slowly watched the pounds pile back on? Yesterday, my recumbent bike reading at the gym included the latest installment of The Atlantic. It’s the June issue with a big ice cream cone on the cover that is crossed out by a black mark and titled, “The End of Temptation.” I thought it would be all about how Bloomberg is trying to demonize giant-sized Slurpees or something similar. Instead it was simple – it was about B F Skinner, behavior modification, and weight loss.

Did I mention I was a Psych major back in the day? I absolutely loved behavior modification, but unfortunately during the Cold War Skinner’s ideas came under attack for being too Fascist. It was perfectly OK to reward rats for a certain behavior, but manipulating people with psychological strategies was thought to be a no no. Study after study showed that his techniques worked well on annoying habits like nail biting. Then Skinner’s theory made headlines in the treatment of autism. Now in light of our current obesity epidemic, a leading researcher in weight loss, Jean Harvey-Berino, said it best in the Atlantic article; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-perfected-self/8970/ by David Freedman, “The Perfected Self.”

“Willpower doesn’t work…What works heavily relies on Skinner – shaping behavior over time by giving feedback, and setting up environments where people aren’t stimulated to eat the wrong foods.”

Oy there it is again, “Wrong Foods.” So there’s right and wrong foods. I overheard a woman next to me at the gym on the same day say to her friend, “The kids love going to Denise’s house, she doesn’t lock her pantry.” Her little group laughed and I silently cried for her children with a locked pantry. They were a modern day Hansel and Gretel. Should we all turn Vegan and eat only raw food? Is it time for parents to become the food police? How do you think of food? If food = love, which is kinda how I think of it, then withholding certain foods would not be a good thing. I chose never to have candy in the house when the kids were growing up, so going out to the candy store became an event….and seeing Grandma Ada who always had a little candy tucked away somewhere was equally thrilling. Making candy forbidden may have caused problems, but it wasn’t absolutely forbidden.

Getting back to willpower and weight loss, Freedman writes poetically about the current apps and programs that actually work. He talks about scales that are wired to our computers, the “Lose It!” app, and the one affordable program that seems to work, Weight Watchers. He says it is very Skinnerian only with gossamer walls. Skinner’s subjects were kept in a glass cage, where everything they did was monitored, every behavior they wanted to reinforce was rewarded. Who would want to live in a glass cage? Well it seems we do, remotely at least! More and more people are using these computer programs to lose weight. Take a look at Shape Up RI http://www.shapeupri.org/ started by some Brown medical students. And even good ole Weight Watchers has joined the fold and has added a bar scanning app to their online program. Thank you Jennifer Hudson. Yes sir, we can “share” every pound lost, and every exercise point gained with everyone!

I say if it works, Bravo! Go ahead and manipulate your environment and your smart phone to lose weight. But I am reminded of that little girl, the Bride’s friend who didn’t see the need for going on a walk to nowhere. Remember her? Well, her mom (my friend) was a lifer at Weight Watchers, and she told me once that her problem eating started in college. It seems her mom doled out only 2 Oreos at a time; so, when she was on her own in college, she ate the whole bag! This made me happy I didn’t dole out candy from a locked pantry!

Our Bride loves yoga, and our Rocker loves the holy guitar. Unfortunately I love to cook and I hate tracking everything I put in my mouth…maybe I’ll just walk more to start! And put on my gossamer wings and dance, dance, dance!

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