3 cheers for OCD!

The compulsion to seek perfection is my downfall...pride goeth before the fall was a lesson taught often in my childhood, always with St. Michael the Archangel as the example of what to strive for.  God created the heavens and the earth, angels and even more important archangels, but He gave them free will just like us.  Apparently God also made them so cool they thought maybe they were better than Him, so the most beautiful of them, Lucifer, gathered an army of other archangels and tried to take over Heaven.  Michael was the archangel that led the battle and drove them out of Heaven and into hell...and Lucifer has been peeved ever since and spends all his time sulking and trying to mess with us.  This is a good thing to remind myself when I'm obsessed with something that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - we're only talking about hummus for crying out loud.

I posted a recipe a long time ago for hummus, and thought it was excellent, best I ever tasted.  I was woefully ignorant and unschooled as I found out recently.  Went to a Greek restaurant...more like a cafeteria really, and ordered a hummus plate for everyone to share while we waited for our lunch.  BLEW ME AWAY.  How they achieved a texture so silky, void of odd aftertaste, and fruity, yet full-bodied explosion of flavor I do not know...and the dude running the place was not willing to give up a clue to his methods.  Others have also tried and failed...the only nugget learned so far is "the secret is very good olive oil".  Pfft....that isn't the whole story by a long shot.  So to the Google I went, researching my fingers to the bone and learning that everyone and his dog has a recipe for hummus.  Sigh...I had my work cut out for me.

One lead took me to SW Portland, just a hop, skip and a jump from the house I grew up in just outside of Multnomah Village.  In the building that used to be the Piggly Wiggly, where my mom and Uncle Bob worked as meat packer and butcher, was Barbur World Foods.  They specialize in Middle Eastern fare, including a lengthy deli case filled with Greek delights and an oven you could order a freshly baked pita from on the spot.  The hummus there was highly regarded, and rightly so - nothing to muck it up, just pure and simple flavors, and only 4.99 a lb...DANG that's cheap!  I asked a couple questions, and found that they cook their own beans daily, and use a particular brand of hummus - took home a tub of already made plus all needed ingredients and experimented until the house was filled with the music of the legume....I really need to buy some more Yankee Candles.

Several blogs and columns mentioned that skinning the beans would make the end product smoother, so after some trial and error, I found that it only took a little more prep - a big fluffy towel is the key.  Good olive oil is also important...the light stuff I always use is not nearly as good, and doesn't have that fruity flavor the good stuff imparts.  FRESH lemon juice...I will never make it with bottled again, and a good quality tahini and you're almost there.  I hear you can use a blender, but a food processor will be your friend unless you have a fancy blender - I would love to know how it compares, but mine is not so much so my Cuisinart rules.

End result?  One friend tried mine, then that restaurant's and proclaimed mine better...I still think theirs is better, but I'm hyper-critical of myself and cheap to boot so I'm not a good judge.  I hate to say it, but try Gyro House on Baseline in Hillsboro, then this recipe and see what you think...I think they're both worth the effort and inevitable after-effects. And never forget, he who smelt it, dealt it.

Hummus Redux

3 C. dry garbanzo beans (fresher is better...go bulk or a specialty store because it's less likely they've been in that bag since 1983

Soak overnight, rinse and cover with fresh water (a couple inches above beans) and a pinch of salt, bring to boil and let simmer for an hour or more, adding water to keep it above the beans and testing until they are quite soft.  And yes, skim the gross foam off now and then.  Drain and rinse in colander, then pour out on a clean towel, folding over beans and rubbing them with towel until most of the skins are removed.  The hard part was figuring out how to separate them...dump all into a big bowl and cover with lots of cold water.  Stir with your hand in a circle, then as the skins come to the top of the beans and form a tornado, scoop them off and repeat until you've gotten as many as you can out of the bowl.  Drain beans again, set aside.

In large food processor, put the following:

1/3 C. GOOD olive oil...extra virgin, spend a little more and you'll be happier

Juice of one lemon, with a second standing by

1/4 C. GOOD tahini...DO NOT buy the kind in the can, it tastes burnt and bitter.  Look for a jar...

1 or more garlic cloves, or 1/2 tsp garlic granules...use what you like

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Fresh ground pepper or 1/8 tsp. cayenne...your choice

Process until smooth and emulsified, then add 3 cups of the cooked, de-skinned beans and process.  (The rest of the beans can be stored in the fridge, covered with water, for a week, or in a ziploc bag in the freezer infefinitely) It will lump up, and look nasty, but keep it running and add 1/4 C. warm water.  It will smooth out and start to look less ragged...keep it running, and add more olive oil if it's too thick.  It should be soft, not clumpy - stop and taste so no one gets a piece of your finger in theirs, and add more salt/garlic/pepper/lemon/oil...whatever you think it needs.  I will use a full tsp of garlic granules, or 2-3 cloves, maybe a full tsp of kosher salt, and 1 to 1.5 lemons...I've even been known to add a bit more tahini, but whatever does it for you is good.  Just let it process while you clean up the kitchen and it will actually warm up and smooth out even more...you can't overprocess it.  

Presentation is key...you are supposed to put it on a plate, spread out and then starting at the center with the back of a spoon, start turning the plate and making a spiral in it to the outside...either that or 4 shallow depressions on top, then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of paprika.  This new and improved recipe has knocked quite a few socks off, and HS has even said he LOVES it...and it had fresh garlic, unbeknownst to him.  It's good with pita, I love it with wheat pretzel braids, not bad with crudite, and has a delightful edge served directly into your mouth off your finger or the Cuisinart blade.  Thowwy...dithwegawd that wast thatement - I bwame luthifer.  Photo will be added at a later date...enjoy!

"I'm older and have more insurance."

Ah...a classic, that one. Fried Green Tomatoes was SUCH a good movie, full of girl power and irony...kind of like me after working all summer cutting down trees, splitting firewood, and in general acting like I had a pair and knew what to do with em only to have to schedule visits with the chiropractor and physical therapist until the end of time. Haha, not really....just until I've had enough back-crackery and decide that I just have to stop acting like some musclebound freak just kicked sand in my face and start acting more like a girl. But not entirely...no one should ever make the mistake assuming I am a helpless female lest I snap them in half to more neatly shove the two pieces into their own...never mind, you get the gist. But I appreciate you opening doors for me, and will turn your spine ice cold with such a look if you don't - didn't your momma teach you any manners?

My daughter has lived "down south" for the last 11 years, and is finally coming home to Oregon in less than 2 weeks. I am wildly excited, and have been keeping it low key because I was afraid I would jinx it and she might move instead to some other back-water state too far away. (And before you make some huffy comment about Georgia being where you were born and raised and how DARE I call it back water, I live in a town where there is a mannequin and a washing machine with mangle on the "cupola"(translation: roof) of the local tavern) But the moving van is on the way, she will be shortly after turning her keys over the a realtor, and now we just have to wait for her to drive from Georgia to Oregon via North Carolina and Chicago where she'll stop to visit friends....it hardly seems real. We are working on some changes to our home so they can nest when they get here - I might actually get bathroom #2 (LOL....get it??) because of this! What WILL I DO with myself??

My little girl left home for the Army the January after she graduated from high school, and has been away ever since save for a few visits back....there were big milestones like marriage, child-bearing, and home ownership in that span of time, not to mention the last 9+ years of direct grandmothering I've missed out on. If I didn't see them now and then, I think my grandson would probably think that Gramma was the mailman, and Gramps was the UPS guy....a LOT of stuff has traveled North to South in the last 10 years. So if you see UPS stock take a dive, or see a sudden rate hike at USPS in mid-September, it's probably their fault. Do I care?? NOPE....I am just tickled that ALL my kids will be home again...WHEEE!

Living in the South introduced her to all kinds of southern delicacies, like Popeye's chicken, Waffle Houses, and Domino's pizza...yeah, pretty much the same crap we have here. Sure there are actual local spots, and a few joints that we don't have here in the Northwest, but if you have decided to go semi-vegan the South is generally not the place to explore those kind of food choices. The south is cooking with lard, bacon, back fat, butter, and enough peanut oil to deep fry a pterodactyl for the Annual Confederacy Pride Picnic - I think the wedge salads down there are battered, fried and served with a side of cornbread to wipe the grease off your face with. During one visit I went to Sconyer's BBQ joint off the Bobby Jones Highway, and ordered up a vat of local specialties to bring back to my daughter's for dinner. At times like those, I wish I wasn't such a good cook...or that maybe I need to open my own drive-thru if they can force people to wait in line for 30 minutes for that crap.

On our last visit, the one where we went to Savannah and I had to confess that I had wrongly judged Paula Deen after visiting her sons restaurant there, a few bright spots shone through the nasty cornbread, watery pulled pork, and horrible biscuits and gravy I've been subjected to in Southern restaurants over time. One was the fried green tomatoes with vidalia onion relish we ordered on a whim at The Lady & Sons that bakin' hot day in Savannah. I'm not eating fried foods anymore, so until yesterday I had not tried to duplicate it at home, but after a trip to my sister-in-law's produce stand and a chance sighting of some lovely green 'maters, I decided to make them as a Labor Day treat for the kids that were here this weekend. You can get the recipe off the internet too, but it doesn't come with a neat story or family dirt and cusses like mine do....but to each his own. These were so startlingly delicious that I had to put them on my cheeseburger, onion relish and all, and I blacked out while I was eating it due to extreme deliciousness....it will be the first special on my flagship restaurant's grand opening menu....I shall call it the Iggy Burger. My lands.....

Fried Green Tomatoes

4 large green or even slightly orangey tomatoes
Salt
2 C. buttermilk
2 C. self-rising flour*
Fresh ground black pepper
Vegetable oil

Slice tomatoes 1/4" thick and salt on both sides; put in colander and let drain for 30 minutes. Heat oil in pan at least 1" deep to medium high...you want it to almost be smoking, and keep it hot. Using a fork, put drained tomatoes in the buttermilk, then into flour and coat well; carefully lay them into the hot oil, grind some pepper over them and fry until browned on the first side. Gently turn so as not to dislodge the coating and brown on the other side. Remove to a paper towel lined platter, then to a cooling rack so the coating doesn't sweat off, or directly onto your serving dish and eat immediately with heaps of vidalia onion relish. Or on a cheeseburger if you got the guts.

*if your self-rising flour has a grey layer in the container that you suspect is the waste of some kind of bug infestation, you can make your own with untainted all purpose flour by adding 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt per cup of flour and stirring it in.

Vidalia Onion Relish

2 Vidalia or sweet onions, peeled and diced
1/2 C. mayonnaise, plus another 1/4 C. later
1/2 C. seasoned rice vinegar
2 T. brown sugar
2 T. chives, chopped (I didn't have any, put in some parsley)

Mix all ingredients and let marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. The vinegar and onion juice make this rather watery, so after it marinated, I dumped it in a strainer, removed most of the liquid, the re-introduced an additional 1/4 C. mayo into it with a dash of salt...voila!! Perfect creamy consistency, and I figured no added fat because I drained a lot of the original mayo out....and this sh** was so good I was eating it with a spoon....Handsome Stranger was horrified, but to me it tasted like candy. I also heaped a big spoonful on the one bite of a hot dog I could get down - I can think of nothing this would not be delicious on. A fudge brownie with peanut butter icing included. So yeah, anyway....serve in large spoonfuls on top of fried green tomatoes, and tell your pants they're lucky that green tomatoes are not available year round. Y'all come back now, y'hear??

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free!

Our mini Oregon summer is drawing to an end, and I never even got a peelable sunburn - while I know that's good for my health, it's disappointing that it never got hot enough to burn the mildew off the gutters and the back of my calves. I swear our AC unit is pouting...and I never once had to get the kiddy pool I bought my grandson out of the shed to cool off. What a gyp!

Summer was so much fun when we were kids - it meant no school, picking berries for enough money to make myself sick for one day on candy from the Rexall Drug, climbing trees, eating fruit in various stages of dead green to ripe enough to fight the yellow jackets for, playing hide and seek with at least 10 neighbor kids well into the dark, and free swimming lessons at the Wilson High School outdoor pools. We went to the library for the max number of books allowed to check out at one time, then back again every 2 weeks for more, rode our bikes endlessly around the neighborhood and to Multnomah Village and back, made forts out of anything we could find, dropped lit firecrackers down manholes and put them in half rotten apples just before throwing them off the neighbors deck.

We went to the beach to play in the surf and roast weenies and marshmallows over a bonfire, experienced hikes at Multnomah Falls, Kings Mountain, Tillamook Head and Saddle Mountain, went camping at Fort Stevens, Honeyman State Park and Barview near Garibaldi, and played ourselves silly doing anything with anyone who didn't have a care in the world. Why would anyone NOT like summer? It's like a spa for kids - instead of a mud bath, you dug a swimming pool in the back yard and tried to fill it after lining it with a big piece of plastic. (OK, that WAS a mud bath), instead of a massage you leg wrestled with your siblings lying in the grass under the cherry tree, and instead of yoga you practiced crossing your legs and walking on your knees and laughed hysterically at each other when you tried (and actually succeeded) to bite your own toenails. The salt scrub was the trip home from the beach with sand in your undies - I never want a real salt scrub.

Like Peter Pan, I don't wanna grow up, but it's too late - summer is full of jobs to do outside when it's dry and warm, events to attend because that is apparently when everyone wants to marry/party/graduate etc, and take the requisite "vacation" that ends up being far more stressful that just hanging out in the tire swing and throwing pine cones at cars from the roof of the shed until someone complained and your mom yelled at you to get down off there. I miss summer....it's just not the same anymore.

My hope is that I can live vicariously through my grandson - if it all works out, he will be here very shortly, and will be as close as he can get - I already told all the geezer nay-sayers that me and Ethan are going tent camping whether they go or not, and I will pretend I am 10 when I'm not busy setting up camp and making sure that he doesn't get so dirty potatoes grow in his ears...we're going to have fun, and he will someday look back and miss it too. I can't wait....

And ooooh baby......there is nothing that screams summer like a bowlful of pico de gallo made with fresh-from-the-garden produce....anything you can get at your local farmstand/farmers market makes it that much better. I prefer to put a twist on my pico, and have developed a heavenly concoction comprised of elements from 3 different recipes, which I personally believe is the best thing I have ever scooped a ridiculous amount of on a chip and stuffed in my chubby little face. Altho pure guac runs a close second, the flavors and textures in this just blow me away. So give it a try, and make sure you have plenty of nice salty tortilla chips on hand - it's just not the same on a stale English muffin.

PicoMole'

2-4 ears fresh corn on the cob

2-3 ish lbs. of roma tomatoes*

1/2 onion, preferably a sweet, but yellow or red will work too

1 bunch cilantro - use however much you like

3-100 jalapenos (OK, more like 3-6 depending on size/pref. heat)

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed*

2-3 limes, depending on size and your taste

Salt & fresh ground black pepper

2-4 ripe avocados

As you can see, amounts are quite adjustable....it's all based on your preferences and tolerance of any/all of the ingredients. So are you ready? Let's GO!

1. Heat grill, brush or spray corn with olive oil/spray and sprinkle with salt, grill over medium high heat until browned/lightly charred on all sizes, let cool. When cool enough to handle, cut corn off the cob using whatever corn-cutting contraption you have, or just a good sharp knife - lay the corn on the cutting surface, and cut kernels off one side, turn a 1/4, then cut another side etc until you've cut it into a square cob. Then gnaw the rest off it and wipe the corn bits off your cheeks before proceeding.

2. Core and dice tomatoes fairly small - nothing should be much bigger than the beans - and put them all in a colander to drain. Let drain as you continue, watery pico is an ABOMINATION.

3. Dice onion small, throw on top of tomatoes.

4. Seed, core and chop jalapenos finely....if you like it HOT, leave some of the seeds, and if you don't want to spend a couple hours screaming and cursing the day I was born after rubbing your eye, picking your nose, or tending to some other delicate skin on your body even AFTER washing with soap and water therefore transferring hellfire hot chili oil there, use a pair of disposable gloves....trust me. Set aside by itself, segregated from the less lethal ingredients.

5. Wash the whole bunch of cilantro (big bowl of cold water, swish it around vigorously and then dry by snapping it like a whip at the nearest mouth breather waiting for you to open the bag of chips), rip off half and chop the main part of the leafy end in a not too big dice. You can add more if you like....just hold up a sec.

6. Cut lime in half, and get ready with whatever you use to squeeze citrus with.

7. Get a large bowl, dump tomatoes and onion, cilantro, drained black beans, corn and a couple big pinches of kosher salt and some grinds of pepper. Put in as much jalapeno as you dare, then squeeze in at least 2 limes and stir to blend. Give it a taste with a chip and see what you think....too wimpy? Add jalapenos. Can't taste the lime? Squeeze in another half. Want to taste more of the soapy deliciousness of cilantro? Chop a bit more and toss it in. Need salt/pepper? Have at it, but not too much. It should taste so good right now you want to make giant tortilla chips out of whole round tortillas and have a mouth-ectomy so you can fit it all in at once. But there's more.....

8. Dice ripe avocados (to prep it, you cut in half around the pit, smack your sharp knife blade across the pit and twist to remove, then scoop the whole half out with a large spoon you usually only use to dish up Lima beans on your kids plate or eat rocky road ice cream right out of the carton at night when no one else is around. Take half a lime and squeeze a little over the cubes, then GENTLY fold all into the bowl of waiting pico.

BAM! You have just created the perfect food to be eaten immediately....tomatoes lose their flavor in the fridge, and the avocado will turn brown and start to break down, giving the whole bowl and unsavory snot-like consistency and color....it's only recommended to eat right then and there. And if you bring to an event, do the avocado when you unwrap the bowl to serve....and you will NEVER have to worry about leftovers. If they run out of chips, they will dip anything they can scoop with in there - celery, hamburger patties, even Aunt Betty's sugar cookies. And knowing Aunt Betty's baking skills, it can only make them better. I'm going to make this when me and E go camping, and maybe that is ALL we'll have for dinner one night....well that and giant roasted marshmallows, that's a deal-breaker for Gramma.

Water, water everywhere, nary a drop to flush

We take a lot for granted in our lives, and are usually pulled up by the short hairs when things go awry and stuff doesn't work like it should. Recently we had such a day at our house....after working all day, then coming home and making pies for an auction, salad for a Cinco de Mayo lunch at work the next day, and throwing dinner together, I walked over to the sink to rinse something off and when I pulled up the handle on the faucet, nothing came out. Brain: "WTH?" Hand: "Do it again...you must have screwed it up!" Mouth: "HONEY....we don't have any water. Crap". Handsome Stranger looks at me from his easy chair with a blank stare. He gets up, follows me to the kitchen, and does the same thing I just did. Nothing. Mouth: "Wow. I never thought to try THAT"; he makes no comment to my smartassery, just shuffles off to find his shoes and a flashlight and heads out to the pump house. Pump comes on, buzzes for 5 seconds then shuts off. Hmmm. No gurgle, splash or trickle of water into the cistern, just a dry silence. Nuts.

We've lived with a well for about 15 years now, and it never ceases to amaze me that we are never prepared for it going down. Altho old-timey wells with a handle are nice at times like this, it's ever so much more pleasant to have one that does all the work for you....pumping enough water to use in a day would probably result in us all being musclebound freaks who have to tear the sleeves off every shirt we own. And it happens more than you'd think....we live in the black forest, have above ground electrical cables, and trees delight in falling or dropping their branches on wires just to pay us back for chopping down one of their friends and cremating the remains just to toast our marshmallows. Once we had one tiny branch that forked itself over the wire right near the house, and ice built up on it until it shorted out, burning entirely through one cable and causing a power surge that made all the lights go so bright that I thought the ATF was raiding us for two pellet pistols and some homemade kahlua in our possession. It was fine tho...the insurance company deemed our stuff too cheap to bother with covering so we cancelled our claim and got some cool new electronics that might be worth 30% of what we paid for it if it ever happens again. Not that I'm bitter...

I sat on the couch, and texted my boss, hoping for some sympathy and the words "Don't worry about coming in tomorrow, just take care of business and yourself". After several return texts taunting me about moving in with my mother, sharing a latrine in the woods etc, it dawned on me that I had recently purchased 2 cases of bottled water for just such an emergency....thanks to her callous insensitivity I was able to have coffee and a refreshing sponge bath before work the next morning with a bottle of Western Family's finest. I hear you're not supposed to wash your hair every day anyway, and that if you don't shower, eventually your natural musk stops trying to compete with your deodorant, soap and the like, and mellows to the point you only smell like a festering yak on those not-so-fresh days or after bucking hay bales and slopping pigs. And I hate washing dishes, so it's a win-win.

Later that morning the pump guy showed up at 9, did a couple tests and determined that, indeed, the pump was fried. Several hours later, a cute little "skylight" in the pump house roof, 245 feet of pipe, a new pump, and a bill which I have not yet been apprised of, and we are doin' the wave again....I flush, therefore I am. After droughts where we lugged dirty clothes to the laundromat, hauled water in a portable cistern with our truck that subsequently got a new transmission (You haul heavy water over the Sylvan hill every day and that is inevitable), and have to wash dishes BY HAND for months, and you too will tell The Man to do what he needs to get your water back, please and thank you very much.

Think of this as part service announcement (ALWAYS have a case of bottled water on hand, you will not begrudge one drop of it when your 23 year old son who lives at home and eats a lot of cheese and beans comes out of the bathroom and says "I wouldn't go in there if I was you" because the remaining water in the pipes was frivolously used by his elderly parents to take their medication). Also, make sure to pay the pump guy on time with a smile and write "THANK YOU" on the check - I"m sure they can find stock rooms to clean and company trucks to wash and detail before they come help you next time if you bitch about the bill. And how about a recipe that fits right in with this subject? Yup...it's got beans....

Chili Corn Bread Salad

This sounds really weird, and it's less like a salad and more like....well....I don't know, it's just weird. But if you never gave me a chance after my first post, you wouldn't be reading this right now, so see? Weird CAN work....

1 package corn muffin mix (8.5 oz?), prepared as per directions
1 can chopped green chilis (4 oz), undrained

1 C. mayonnaise
1 C. sour cream (I always use light...if you can find Breakstone it's da BOMB)
1 envelope ranch dressing mix

2 cans S&W Pinquitos, drained (you can use chili beans, just make sure they have sauce)
2 cans corn, drained, or 4 C. frozen corn, cooked, drained and cooled
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 C. green onion, thinly sliced (optional if your man is all whiny about it)
10 bacon strips, cooked crisp and crumbled
2 C. cheddar cheese, grated OR mexican blend from a bag

Mix cornbread according to instructions, but stir in the chilies and then spread in a greased pan the size the box says. Bake at 400 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, let cool a bit. In a small bowl, combine mayo, sour cream and ranch mix, set aside. When cornbread is cool enough to handle, cut in half and break up half of it into another 9x13 pan or dish. Layer with half of EACH of the beans, mayo mixture, corn, tomatoes, onions, bacon and cheese; crumble the other half of the cornbread on top and then the other half of beans, mayo, corn, tomatoes, onion, bacon and cheese. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, then have at it. So many flavors, but it just works....I just haven't figure out why they call it salad because it has everything to be a one dish meal - just extra delicious!

I have just succeeded in making myself very hungry, and Handsome stranger is gonna be late tonight...I gotta stop blogging before dinner. Maybe I should have a nice big glass of.....WATER?? Thanks pump guys!

Weenies & Gravy

As hinted at, I am coughing up the sausage gravy recipe to go with biscuits from the last post - not because you deserve it, but because I cannot help myself....I live for the power and the glory I get from sharing my innermost secret recipes. And because a biscuit without gravy is like a day without sunshine, i.e. pretty much any day in Oregon between September 12th and April 23rd. Also, it's Valentines Day, and nothing says "I love you and every single one of your chins" like gravy.

I thought my mom made good gravy - she would bring drippings to a boil, add water if it wasn't enough for the 7 of us (it never was), then mixed together cornstarch and cold water and poured it in, whisking until it became a clear-ish brown stuff (beef) or yellow stuff (chicken) that filled up the hole we had all made in our scoop of instant mashed potatoes. When she went all Health Nazi, she made her own, using brown potatoes and leaving on the vitamin-filled peel - nothing more disgusting than sucking dirty potato peels out of your teeth after dinner, nor more satisfying than spitting them on the back of your brother's crew cut when he was sitting in front of you watching TV. We liked it, didn't know any better, and some of us were adept at making a scoop of mashed potatoes accept an entire cup of gravy by making the bottom and walls so thin the potato dam threatened to buckle and flood your hamburger "steak" or fried chicken and green beans from the can with it's gelatinous oozing-ness.

When we were very small, we lived in St. Johns, and lived in a neighborhood teeming with other rug-rats, carpet-crawlers and curtain-climbers. Once one of my parents (I forget which one) overheard a nearby Mom calling her kids to dinner, and one of them responded with "What are we having?"....the Mom hollered "Weenies and gravy!", which made them forever and with hilarity wonder how you could get gravy out of a hot dog....it was Dad's favorite guess when Mom said dinner was ready.

Handsome Stranger grew up on a farm, and if a farm wife doesn't know how to make gravy, she is labeled "progressive" and can only thread needles for the real women at the sewing bee. So he was learned early on how to whip up what can only be described as something very naughty, and that would just make all you women even more jealous that he only has eyes for me....suffice to say, I always have a smile on my face well into the next day when he makes gravy for dinner. My Mom took to saving the drippings until we arrived on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and he would make it for her...his sister did the same thing. And it was a far, far better thing that putting a scoop of gravy on your plate, and pouring the mashed potatoes in the hole you made in it....trust me, that HAS happened.

Gravy is usually deemed a "You can" or "You can't" kind of undertaking - if you don't understand the science of it, most won't even try - that is why they make jars and packets for poor unfortunate souls without mad gravy skilz. And oh what an insipid and uninspired covering for overcooked pasta, instant mashed potatoes, or burnt toast cubes THAT produces! So start small...sausage gravy is hard to screw up, but I've said that before about lots of things, and there are always droves of people at the ready to prove me wrong...but really, it's not that difficult, so quit whining and get out your frying pan!

Handsome Stranger's Sausage Gravy

Bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4" strips (1/4 lb, or even just bacon grease will help)
Sausage - maybe 1 lb? You can use any mix of the following:
Bulk breakfast (like Jimmy Dean or whatever your meat dept. has)
Brats of any kind, remove casing
Kielbasa (it's harder to smash up)
Brown & Serves (I like mixing these in with others)
Italian or spicy - personal taste
1/3 C. flour
2 C. milk
Half & half or cream or evaporated milk if you like it richer
Salt and FRESH GROUND PEPPER to taste ( I like a little season salt too)

In your large skillet, heat bacon and saute until it starts to get brown around the edges and leaches out a fair amount of bacon fat. Add your sausage, and pulverize it with a potato masher or fork (that will make your hand hurt) so it's broken up quite small. The kielbasa is harder to smash up...if you dice it first it helps, and the brown & serves (maple are our fave) can be microwaved in the box for a minute, then sliced up and THEN smashed. Cook until any sausage that was raw is no longer pink, then sprinkle flour over all and continue to stir and scrape the bottom until flour is absorbed and starts to brown. Add some pepper, a pinch or so of salt, then start adding the milk, whisking as it heats and starts to boil. Add more milk, or the half & half, cream or evaporated milk, alternating with more regular milk depending on how rich and creamy you like it. Boil and whisk, and when it gets really thick, turn heat down and keep stirring and adding milk until it's like pancake batter, then salt and PEPPER to taste. It will thicken as it cools, and sometime seems to never stop taking milk...just season accordingly.

We have two schools of thought in our kitchen - he likes it THICK and FULL of meat, and VERY peppery, I prefer it a little thinner, with less meat and edible. So it's usually thick and full of meat and pepper. You can double the flour, add a lot more dairy, and you will need to bump up the salt and pepper, but go with what you like - if your sausage ends up being too weenie and you end up with bland gravy, that's what you get in restaurants....if you want more flavor, you can punch it up with ham base if you ever got it like I told you...and a pinch of MSG (oh geez, get over yourself - it's in EVERYTHING) will boost the flavor too.

Serve hot over biscuits, eggs, omelets, toast, pancakes, waffles, Krispy Kremes, green beans, jello, ice cream...you get the drift, it's good on anything. Except weenies.

Mmmmmmm....Chocolate-Covered Zucchini!

Today at a meeting my boss made us introduce ourselves by giving our name, job, high school graduated from, the mascot of said school, and our favorite candy bar growing up. It made the intros less painful and I learned stuff about people I work with I did not know....and that I'm not the only weirdo when it comes to candy bars.

I think most kids love candy, and will stoop to even mints, ribbon candy, and those white and pink hard lozenge thingies that are made out of the same stuff conversation hearts are, strictly due to the fact that they are made of sugar. I loved Necco Wafers...I have since broken up with them because after becoming an adult and gaining a more discriminating palette, I determined that I was hooked on the cane monster and would eat something that I now realize tasted like what a poker chip covered with toothpaste would. Especially the "chocolate" ones...why, as a kid, would you eat pretty much anything that was brown thinking it would taste like chocolate? Blech.

Once again, I suspect my parents used weird candies as a kind of evil torture they could snicker about when they were locked in their room...what ELSE would they be doing in there for heaven's sake? I remember my dad sharing pieces of Callard & Bowser candies with me - stuff like horehound, black licorice and something that looked like amber or that soap you used for zits...but they came in a cool box that looked just like a cigarette hard pack, and was a solid brick you had to break pieces off of. I can recall a little muslin bag that hung from a yellow drawstring that swung from one of the myriad of knobs on the green station wagon with fins on the back fenders that I was SURE was full of delicious multi-colored candy until the day I snuck in and tried it. I then determined that if that WAS candy (it was actually tobacco they used in the olden days for air freshener), I was ready to quit cold turkey. Do you KNOW how many days little pieces of tobacco will surface in your mouth after just a little pinch? I do...

My favorite was not an easy pick - I loved Rocky Road, filled with marshmallow, a few nuts and chocolate that more resembled brown wax, Payday because it was like eating chips AND candy at the same time, and the 7-Up bar that had 7 sections, each with a different flavor filling. Once a friend and I devised a plan to get even with my little brother who would sneak into my room and eat my stash when I wasn't around, and we carefully cut the bottom out of one of the sections, removed the filling, then packed it with black pepper and sealed the bottom back on. Brilliant, but of course he never took the bait, and eventually I re-opened it to find a fine mist of mold over the entire candy bar EXCEPT the pepper section. Go figure.

So, the answer you ask? It was the cherry Mountain Bar. As I explained to those who were under 40, a Mountain bar was about yay big (approx. the size of a goose egg...a Leggs egg...shit, it was about the size of a computer mouse) and looked a lot like a big turd but with pink filling. It had a nougaty, cherry flavored filling, and was coated with chocolate mixed with chopped nuts. They also had vanilla and peanut butter, but it was all about the cherry for me. It's still a fave flavor...nothing like red fake cherry taste to make you enjoy koolaid, popsicles, nyquil and ludens cough drops. I had one a few years ago and came to the conclusion that those stories we heard about rat hairs in 'em would have been a plus...how did we ever make it through childhood?

So this has absolutely nothing to do with the recipe I am about to post - the only connection I can think of is that there is cocoa in this, a dab of sugar and the sweetness of butternut squash. Back then if I had two pieces of candy and one fell on dog poop and the other on squash, I would probably have only picked one up and eaten it, and it wouldn't have been the one on the squash....but I have become decrepit and my tastes have changed. Now that I am eating healthier, I am striving to find and try recipes I would never have dreamed of giving a shot before, and have found some real winners - this is one! And I LOVE mole' - the spiciness and subtle chocolate flavors are so warm and appealing to me, and squash carmelized in the oven where the natural sugars are given a platform to really shine TRULY blows my dress up. Simple but delightful, and surprisingly complex in flavor, it also comes in at 3 Weight Watchers Plus Points for an entire 3# squash....and SO filling! O freakin LE!

Butternut Squash Mole

1 butternut squash, approx. 3#
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper (you know I'm a wimp and just sprinkled a tiny bit on...and it was HOT)
1/4 tsp. cinnamon - use the mexican kind if you have it
1 T. sugar
1/4 C. cocoa powder (I use a wickedly extra-dark kind I find on a website...see below)
Olive oil spray or mist

Heat oven to 375. Generously spray a cookie sheet with olive oil spray. Peel entire squash, and it's a pain in the arse - squash is really hard. Cut off ends, quarter and scoop out guts/seeds with metal spoon, then cut in 1" chunks. Or you can go to Costco and buy a tub of it already cubed up if you have nothing better to spend 7 bucks on. Put in large bowl, spray liberally with olive oil spray, toss and spray again, then add pepper, cinnamon, sugar and cocoa powder and stir or toss until evenly coated. Spread coated cubes over the oiled cookie sheet, making sure you scrape every bit of cocoa-ey goodness out of the bowl, and pop in the oven and roast for 45-60 minutes, or until fork tender. I have fantasized a bit about getting my hands on some roasted salted pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) to chop a bit and sprinkle over the top, but it's more points, I don't need it, and I don't know if I can still get those at Winco. But since pumpkin seed are normally ground up and put in a traditional mole sauce, it makes sense, si?

Let me know what you think - now I'm getting an urge to make a chicken mole soup...it's freakin' cold today and anything turned into soup sounds like the next greatest thing to me. With the exception of Cherry Mountain Bars and Necco Wafers. GROSS. Don't live to eat, eat to live....but have a candy bar once in a while!

*I get my extra dark Ramstadt-Breda Rich Dark Cocoa from www.preparedpantry.com - they are in Idaho, and have TONS of amazing stuff!

Waking Up: Better Than the Alternative

Restaurants are something I frequent far less than I used to - you have much less control over what goes in your food, and it doesn't seem like a treat if you have to order salad with no dressing, or fish broiled and your potato with no butter on it. Going out to eat is a treat, not a necessity when you know what you're doing in the kitchen - I've been out of town long enough to crave making my own meals, and it's because I'm just a better cook than most restaurant staff. That sounds kind of snobby, but I've been a line cook myself, and I'm pretty sure that most restaurants shouldn't be calling their staff cooks, and certainly not chefs - altho there are those who are much better at cranking it out than others.

My station was primarily eggs - I also did lunch, but mostly breakfast, and I got really good at it. With a good pan, I can still turn out an exceptional omelet - and I am so picky about eggs that when Handsome Stranger is cooking the first meal of the day, he waits until he's done cooking everyone's eggs before he picks which one's I'm getting. It's a lot harder to make them right when you use spray instead of butter...slippery is good when you flip 'em. And I remember my dad refusing to eat eggs with any scorch whatsoever on them....I'm the same way. I used to get a horrendously delicious sandwich at Jack in the Box for breakfast, and I swear they deep fried the eggs...they were CRUNCHY. I would open it up and start peeling the brown skin off, and by the time I was done I would end up with mostly just a hard yolk...mmmm, yolk.

A couple egg tips: Heat your pan and melt the butter, coating the entire bottom of the pan before you put the eggs in; if you don't like runny whites, use the tip of a fork to break the membrane that holds the thick part of the whites around the yolk - it is runny because it's too thick to cook through before it starts to brown; For perfect eggs, flip em and remove from the burner....they will keep cooking but it will slow it down and they won't scorch if they're not on the heat.

I make omelets by beating the crap out of 3 eggs, then adding about a Tablespoon of milk - water will work too - AND a little salt and pepper. Salt makes your eggs tough, blahblahblah...it does NOT. You pour it in your medium hot skillet that is well oiled/buttered, and swirl it up the sides, then use a rubber spatula to push the sides back down and create an "edge". Then you start in one spot by lifting the edge with the spatula, then tilting the pan so the egg runs underneath. Keep going around the pan doing that until there is no longer any runny eggs on top, just a wet surface. Add a little butter, lifting the edge so it goes under, then shake the pan so it's all loose (use the spat to unstick any problem areas), then pick up the pan and hold it about hip level and give it a flip. If it sticks together in a fold, you can use the spat to gently pull the fold out from underneath...it does take some practice. Do not put back on the burner - it's already done.

Put your fillings on it, then fold the left side over the top, then tip the pan over your plate and slide and roll it off the pan so it forms a burrito shape right on the plate where you wanted it. A little cheese, a few pieces of whatever you put inside and voila! We used a white sauce in the restaurant, which would cover up some boo-boo's....but it was gross, and if you totally screw it up, just call it frittata and keep trying.

My most FAVORITE omelet in the WORLD, and actually the ONLY omelet I like, is one we used to get at Sweet Oregon Grill. It was housed in a big old renovated barn, and one night it unfortunately burnt down...I miss that place because it had cool old kitchen dinettes and one of the best chicken fried steaks I've EVER had. Altho the cream gravy, as creamy and delicious as it was, still wasn't as good as my sausage gravy. I forget what they called this offering, but never forgot how it was made - it is worth the time and effort, and if you bugger it up, it will still taste heavenly...and cream cheese is KEY. I love, Love, LOVE this omelet....I may have to save up some bonus points and make it this weekend!

The OMGoodness Omelet

Eggs (3 per person)
Milk (1 T. per omelet)
Salt & Pepper
Butter
Home fries (recipe follows)
Bacon
Cream cheese
Mushrooms (optional)

You will need to make home fries first - it's essential, and you must use red potatoes. Onion is optional - in my house they were a point of contention, but it was finally determined that cooking them this way would result in a product that was guaranteed no longer crunchy, therefore more acceptable than sprinkling eggshells in the potatoes. (funny tho, he likes the crunchy part of burnt EGGS, but not onions...what a weirdo).

Home Fries
6 red potatoes, scrubbed, quartered and sliced thin to moderately
1/2 onion, quartered and sliced thinly
Olive oil

Rinse sliced potatoes and shake dry in a colander, heat oil in large skillet (preferably cast iron) and add potatoes, spreading out evenly over the bottom. Sprinkle with kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper, add 1/4 cup hot water and cover, then leave them alone on medium heat for at least 5 minutes or until they get a nice golden brown on the bottom and the water has steamed the spuds and evaporated. Turn potatoes and add onion, let alone again for another 5 minutes, and turn when nicely browned again. It will take 20-25 minutes to cook them properly - check them by tasting to see if the potatoes are done. There is nothing grosser to me than raw potatoes in a cooked dish...that is why I do not buy potato salad from a deli. (Except Elsie's potato salad at the Canby Thriftway...that woman is magic!) Onions should be nicely caramelized and potatoes tender and bronzed...you will want to eat them right then and there, but patience, grasshopper....

Now you can cook the bacon. A whole package if you dare....this should be enough to make 6 huge omelets, so adjust amounts according to the size of your group. I cut it crosswise in slices and fry it that way, it's easier than crumbling and it cooks faster and more evenly. Drain on paper towels and hide it from the mouth breathers. I am notorious for nibbling the fat off bacon, so if necessary, hide it from yourself.

Soften the cream cheese by scraping it off the foil and into a freezer ziploc bag, then either knead it until it warms up and softens, or zap it in the microwave for 10 seconds. You are going to use the bag to pipe the cheese out of, so don't seal it or it might blow up in the mic. Cut off the corner fairly large unless you want a hernia like Uncle Ernies...too small and it's gonna be like sucking an orange through a straw, but backwards.

OK, this is where my memory escapes me. I swear it had sauteed mushrooms, but I could be so wrong....but since I love mushrooms, I'm going to add it anyway. I put some in my shepherds pie tonight, and used my egg slicer to cut the mushrooms - DAMN that worked fine! Saute over medium high heat, stirring occasionally until browned and cooked through - do not add salt until they're done or they will lose all their water and just boil in it and you'll lose the brown.

OK, now you're ready - line up your filling: cream cheese, home fries, bacon, mushrooms. Now start cooking your omelets, and have someone else man the toaster. When you flip your first omelet (after you're done cursing), squirt a nice healthy squiggle of cream cheese across the center, then a layer of home fries, bacon and mushrooms. I suppose you could use cheese as well - but cream cheese is what sticks it all together tho and give it it's signature flavor and texture. Fold omelet onto first plate, garnish with a little smudge of cream cheese, a potato or two and a piece of bacon and mushroom slice, then start on the next while your homie slathers the toast with butter ALL THE WAY TO THE EDGES PLEASE (when I worked as a cook my toast was ALWAYS buttered to the edge) and puts it on the plate. Continue until everyone has one, then make your own, putting all the hidden bacon fat on it, then make the toast man cry if he forgot to put some down for you.

Family Hazing: Sport or a Test of Character?

I thought with Christmas winding down the the last few minutes, and the New Year fast approaching, that I should suggest a family tradition so you don't have to wait until Easter to foist a new one off on yours. We all have ours, from dressing up in old-timey clothes and caroling to neighbors who will hide behind the curtains rather than open up their door to a bunch of dorks that don't even sing "Santa Baby", to Advent calendars that teach children that Jesus coming to earth as a flesh-and-blood human being is always predicated by a delicious chocolate for 24 days prior. Good luck getting those kids through an entire Christmas Mass....

I have to tell you that when I was a kid, we actually did go caroling door to door - we lived in a suburb of Portland and my parents thought that was a keen idea. Most of the time people did not come to the door...I mean really, it was the 60's, and I mean NINETEEN SIXTY'S you smart ass...we did not drive sleighs or wear top hats, and it was just a weird thing to do then. Sometimes I wonder if our own parents sent us out with our musty-smelling songbooks they must have rescued from a moldy church basement and giggled furiously thinking how stupid we must have looked to all the neighbors. Luckily I was young enough to think it was fun, and that I could actually sing....and sometimes they would open the door and give us a piece of candy or something - it's a good thing kids are stupid.

We have a family tradition that is at least as old as me - a half a century or more qualifies it as official in my book, and no newcomer to this clan can escape it entirely - it has been handed down generation to generation, and all those born into it accept it like taking breath. It's like having two arms, freckles, or pasty white skin - you can't imagine being in our family without it. The newcomers, those who marry into it, tend to look at you like you are trying to kill them, or perhaps playing an elaborate prank where they ingest something that makes them projectile vomit until they can no longer stand on wobbly knees, then vow to never eat any of the products that make up the whole of this recipe....I KNOW, how could something so delicious seem so bad?? This tradition, one that I have never heard of anything that even remotely resembles it, is what we simply call "Polish Dish".

As I may have mentioned, my great-grandparents, Peter and Tecla, came from Poland originally - not sure how far back this recipe dates, and if it was translated from Polish as that is what Tecla wrote her recipes in, but I am guessing it goes back at least to their generation. And since my grampa was born in 19somethingteen, that makes it an antique. I did some research online, and finally found some references to a similar product, and the most common name for it was "White Borscht". Which is weird since borscht is made with beets...maybe they were so poor they didn't even have those? Dunno....but it is what it is, and most of us LOVE it...the best part is foisting it off on the latest fiancee and watching them take the first bite after you've told them what's in it. Now there's a Kodak moment....

Polish Dish

1 quart (that's 4 cups to you who are measurement challenged) water
1 polish sausage - they usually call them kielbasa nowadays, 12-16 oz.
2 tsp. salt
3 T. white vinegar
1-2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 small onion, cut in half again, or 1 tsp. onion salt (cut salt to 1 tsp. if you use)
1/2 tsp. sage
1 C. milk
4 T. flour
1 egg

12 hard boiled eggs
Horseradish root or the stuff in the jar if you can't find it

Put sausage in water, bring to a boil and cook 20 minutes over medium heat uncovered. Add salt, vinegar, onion and spices, bring to a boil, remove from burner and let stand 1-2 minutes. Remove sausage and set aside on a plate. Mix milk, flour and egg in blender, dump into soup all at once and stir, whisking over medium high heat until it comes to a boil; continue to whisk for one minute to cook the flour, remove from heat. Cut sausage into 6-8 pieces and add back to broth.

To prepare soup, serve broth at the table with a bowl of hard boiled eggs, cutting boards or plates you can cut on, and bowls for eggshells. You also need to peel the outside skin off the horseradish root (if you found some) and include that with a microplane or fine grater for guests to add it to their soup. Each guest takes a piece of sausage, cuts it up in small pieces and puts in their bowl. Then they crack and peel one or two eggs and chop, adding to sausage, then ladle broth over all and grate fresh horseradish on top to their liking. It's also kind of fun - interactive eating per se.....and yes, it's a bit odd and unconventional, but then so was milk the first time someone pulled on those dangly things under a cow and drank what came out. Be a pioneer - start a trend! Polish Dish bars will start popping up on every corner, and you can say you were there when it started. And you're not even Polish!

OK, here's a couple super secret tips in case you are really going to try this and not just make a face and say "She's GOT to be kidding...no one would really EAT that crap". My mother bucked tradition a few years ago, and due to a less than flavorful sausage pick, started adding "Ham Base"...not sure where all you can find this, but I get it at Cash & Carry in Aloha. It's a concentrated paste that comes from boiling a bunch of ham products into soup and then down to a paste, and will really pump up the volume for this, pea and bean soups, and country gravy if your meat has less "flavah" than Vanilla Ice. If your broth is wimpy, add maybe a teaspoon and see what it does. Also, she started experimenting with different kinds of sausage - we've tried mixes of kielbasa, brats, other smoked sausages, and even little smokies to great effect - just don't use the kind like they put on the buns at Costco...they don't exude enough juice to flavor it worth a damn. I think beer brats are always good....and I think I'm going to try the chicken apple sausages just for shits and giggles - a little apple never hurt anyone, and I think it sounds "Old Country", so what the heck.

Hey, look at that - Christmas is officially over! Better get crackin and find you some good sausage....PD is also a great hangover cure. It'll either snap you back to life or make you puke so you can start to feel better....one way or another! Happy New Year!!

The 8th Deadly Sin....Cheese

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways....I love thee on a cracker, in tacos, on bread delightfully grilled with sinful amounts of butter and a sprinkling of garlic powder, in, on and under potatoes, drowning macaroni with your greasy goodness, in salad, dressing, celery sticks and melted in a toasty tortilla, and even just shaved right off the block and stuffed in my round, fat little face. I think I was a milkmaid, or possibly a rat in a former life...cheese is one of the things I miss the most now that I'm cutting back.

For Christmas this year I said I was going to make a German feast, with all the usual trappings and not without the most important element, melted cheese. I have seen travel shows between the ever-increasing fund drives (pretty sure they're every other weekend now), and would someday like to go to Switzerland so I can go to a restaurant that serves cheese that you cook on this little iron thing on your very own table so you can scrape it up and eat it all melty-like. "Alps? There were mountains there??" Oh yum, how I love cheese.

So anyway, shit happens and things change, and now it does not appear we will be having fondue....which is more painful now that a friend has requested the recipe for holiday use. I may find an excuse to drop by when they are having dinner - maybe a QC check to make sure the thickness is correct, possibly to ensure that the bread cubes are properly toasted, or maybe just to see that the fondue forks are forky enough so a dipper is not lost in the maelstrom of cheesy delight....we can't have that. Maybe for New Years?? Sigh...it's just not in the cards, I will have to be content with the fabulous scalloped potatoes we will enjoy with our ham at our family feast....I have a petite block of Gruyere and Fontina to that end, and it WILL be delicious too!

This recipe came from the Rheinlander Restaurant in Portland - the one I also got the lentil soup recipe from I've already shared. I guess if you're a fondue snob, you will turn your surgically altered nose up at this - the cheese used is processed....but I say if it looks like cheese, smells like cheese, tastes like cheese, and makes fondue that is so good you'd swear it would make a dog turd taste good (no, I don't know for sure...you are welcome to test that premise yourself tho), it's cheese to me! Enjoy, and besides the bread cubes, be creative with your dippers....steamed veggies are excellent in it, and will help to balance out the constipation factor - every little bit helps!

Rheinlander Fondue

5 C. processed Swiss/American Cheese (that is 20 ounces)
2 C. water
1 C. chablis or moderately dry white wine
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 T. butter
1/4 tsp. MSG (I suppose you could replace with salt if you are opposed to it)
Dash each nutmeg and white pepper (I've used black too)
3 T. cornstarch mixed with small amount of cold water
1/2 loaf each sourdough and dark rye, unsliced (good luck with the rye..more later)

Preheat oven to 325. Cube bread in 1-2" pieces, spread out on cookie sheet and set aside. Grate cheese, set aside. Bring water, wine, butter, garlic, MSG or salt, nutmeg and pepper to a boil in a large skillet or saucepan, add cheese one cup at a time, stirring until melted; whisk until smooth and no more cheese lumps. Turn heat down to medium low and add cornstarch/water mixture, whisking until smooth, and cooking a couple minutes until thick enough for dipping - if not thick enough to coat bread chunks nice and thick, you can make more cornstarch/water slurry and add until it's as thick as you like. If it gets too thick, use water or wine to thin a bit, whisking to smooth after each addition. Remove from burner and place in fondue pot or over double boiler with hot water to keep warm and fluid...it thickens when it cools. Put bread cubes in oven and heat maybe 10 minutes....they should be lightly crispy but not browned. Serve with a basket of bread cubes, a tray of steamed veggies, or whatever you feel like dipping in it's wonderful cheesy deliciousness. I think squares of grilled cheese sandwich would be juuuuust right....oh BABY!

A couple tips: I get my cheese at Costco - those big 5# packages of food service slices are da bomb; if you don't have access, I've seen a box of cheese that also works in larger grocery stores, but it's been so long I don't know if it's still out there...seems to me the box was blue? Also, rye bread is not a deal breaker, but it is just so damn good with this - finding it unsliced is akin to uncovering the Holy Grail when digging with a plastic pail and shovel at the beach. BUT....if you go to the bakery at Fred Meyer, and ask nicely, you can usually order a full or half loaf of a beautiful dark rye for I think 5.99 for the full and quite big loaf...it comes frozen and you just throw it in the oven. I've done that and cut it in half, saving part for the next time. Good luck, and happy dipping....and rub some butter on your chin in case you have an errant flow hit you there...it'll slide right off onto your shirt for later snacking!

A momentary lull....

Now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is nearly upon us, my motivation to write blogs has all but flown out the window, got caught in the power lines, and been fricasseed into a smoking, steaming and unrecognizable lump of imagination that was. I have SO much to do this time of year, which really starts 2 weeks prior to Halloween and my grandson-who-lives-far-away's birthday, and will not end until after Mass on January 1st. Work is horrific the first half of December, but I still have to do my shopping for the Georgia branch so it can be shipped in time so E still knows we love him, and I am quite peeved at my employers for no longer giving us the minimal perk of letting us ship UPS through them. USPS apparently straps their packages in the roomy seats of business class, either that or they're having lavish parties and romps to tropical places for their employees from charging me as much as my fancy car payment to ship a cardboard box filled with stuff that costs less than the postage will.

I need to figure out what we're going to have for Christmas dinner, and see if my family will even be here for it. Son #1 has a GF who is sweet as pie, but her family likes her too, so I have to share him now. Son #2 will probably be here, but he tends to flit off at the drop of a hat to one of his friends, or friend's family that wants to adopt him (NO, he is still OURS...get your OWN Kenny...) - if I cook something good tho, he will be here at least for dinner. And my baby girl? I think someday she will miss us bad enough to move back to a non-brown state, but is taking her sweet time. I've only seen my SIL a couple times EVER...geez, you'd think he spends all his time overseas....wait....

So I thought I had been making it clear that I wanted to have a German Feast for this important occasion, and make all my favorites - Sauerbraten with gingersnap gravy, potato latkes, Rheinlander Fondue with that delicious dark rye and sourdough cut in big chunks and toasted ever so slightly in the oven, and of course the most delicious lentil soup EVER. Now I'm getting dissension in the ranks....someone in my house mentioned doing "Ham and mashed potatoes with peas" for dinner...really? Just because you get a free ham from work, and you could eat your body weight in peas and mashed potatoes every single day for the rest of your life?? That sounds SOOOOO boring to me! So now I have to make a decision; make what I want, make what HE wants, or see what everyone else wants and play eenie, meenie, miney, mo. DAMMIT don't you people KNOW that I know what's good for you??? But a people pleaser I am....you just have to put up with my shenanigans to get what you really want.

Now for some serious silliness....I am now following a program to make myself even finer than I already am, and to prolong my life beyond the 47 years that those crazy life calculators are always malfunctioning tell me I won't last beyond....HA, I'm already 50, so take THAT, you cheap dime-store hood. Anyway, butter and mayo and cheese, oh my....all things I have put at arms length, and we're talking arms of that giant mutant Asian dude who plays basketball - I"m scrappy and even chubby white girls can jump if you put chocolate too near them. So finding acceptable treats to reward myself for not eating the things I truly love but that were slowly killing me was quite a daunting task. But here is one...and you may scoff, but to me it's like a cannoli stuffed with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate, or a giant wedge of mile high mud pie...um, no it isn't. But it's good, and I highly recommend it....and you know I like good stuff!

Hunka Hunka

1/2 multi grain sandwich thin (OK, they look like a wheat hamburger bun that an elephant sat on....no, they are NOT corn pads for NBA players)
1 T. peanut butter, SMOOTH (chunky will not spread far enough...get over it)
2 T. marshmallow creme (FAT FREAKIN FREE!)

Spread peanut butter on your piece of bread. Put marshmallow creme on top and spread to edges. Eat around the edges until you have a circle about the size of a silver dollar (alright, you whippersnappers that have never seen a silver dollar, about the diameter of a shot glass...and I KNOW you've seen a LOT of those), then say to anyone around "look what I got!" and pop it in your mouth, chewing audibly and making yummy noises. 4 points, and if you use almond butter it tastes like divinity with nuts....oh crap I want some divinity with nuts. Be back in a bit, after I'm done with reporting, shopping for Georgia, shipping said booty, and figuring out what the heck I'm gonna wear to my nieces wedding on New Years Eve...hopefully it will be a size smaller!

"You got chocolate in my peanutbutter..."

I love stories about how couples met - everyone has one, unless perhaps they married their brother, which is a thought that makes my brain punch itself. Unless you're like Cain and Abel, and there isn't anyone on earth other than your sister or your mom (*punchpunchpunch*), there are TONS of available mates out there, just go to your local library where they congregate at the free computers that can't be denied porn because of our second amendment rights. Just make sure you set your standards to "sub-basement".

I met my husband through my brother - they knew each other from mutual friends, and I don't know if my brother was trying to hook me up, or perhaps just show me he had friends...I leaned toward the latter since he never showed me particular deference when handing out childhood beatings, and, after causing me to develop a perpetual flinch until I was 23, I couldn't imagine he had real friends unless he paid them. (I kid...somewhat) It was a painful and awkward due to our mutual paralyzing shyness (DAMMIT, I'm telling you I WAS...) and that was about it.....took a few months and a chance meeting at A&W to get the ball rolling. And a LOT of onion rings.

My gramma met my grampa at a dance....back then they didn't "date" so much as they did "group activities"...they would go to USO type dances and meet other groups of crazy kids who probably jitterbugged and watusi'ed like George and Mary Bailey right before they fell in the swimming pool. I love that movie.... So after several dances, my grampa stopped showing up, and the next time they ran into each other, my gramma asked him why. He said that he liked her, but that he could not marry a girl who wasn't Catholic (I think she was Lutheran?), so he couldn't keep seeing her. My gramma, who I'm SURE was shy too, told grampa "Oh, is THAT all?", and promptly converted. They were married close to 60 years....

I think my mom and dad met when my dad was skipping school and went to the theater where my mom was an usher...y'know the person in the olden days who helped you find a seat with a flashlight in the dark theater. Mom had dropped out of high school, so marrying my dad dashed her dreams of working her way up to popcorn girl....she threw it all away for a measly 54 years and counting. Sheesh. I have more, I just hesitate to share in case it would embarrass one of my children....but I think it is my favorite, so maybe he'll let me share it someday. Kids are so darn cute, even when they get all big and old and hairy!

So where am I going with this? No clue. Right now my brain is racing through all my cookbooks and my trusty recipe box, wondering if there is anything that would follow my theme of either "first meetings" or "couples".....hmmmm. Eureka! Here is an offering of just 4 ingredients, that don't really seem to complement each other, but when put together create a perfect marriage - sweet and salty, crunchy and creamy, carbs and proteins! I had these at our annual church bazaar a few years ago, and they are the most addicting, cannot stop eating, share with your friends so you're not the only one hooked snack I think I've ever found...I have guards in place to make sure I never have all 4 ingredients at the same time to avoid all hell breaking loose....along with the elastic in my buffet pants.

Tumbleweeds

12 oz. salted peanuts - the regular kind or dry roasted...what do they put on those anyway?
7 oz. french fried potato sticks..y'know, the kind that are hard and crunchy?
3 C. butterscotch chips
3 T. peanut butter

Mix peanuts and potato sticks in a big bowl; resist the urge to rub peanut butter all over your face and stick it in the bowl to make yourself a human tumbleweed. In a smaller bowl, put butterscotch chips and peanut butter in the microwave for 1 minute on high and stir, put back in on high for 30 seconds and stir again, continue 10 seconds at a time if it's not melted and smooth. Pour over nuts and spuds and stir to completely coat. Drop by spoonfuls on wax paper, and I dare you to walk away without picking off the random clinkers and eating them while your fingers burn from the melty chips and peanut butter. Let cool until hard, peel off paper and share, Share, SHARE!!!

I just had a revelation....I kept thinking "what if you've never heard of potato sticks? They are kind of weird, and an old timey food - I don't know if all grocery stores carry them, so what if you can't find em? Well, I thought about describing them, but realized immediately that part of that was "they taste just like a potato chip"...DINK! (that's a light bulb going off over my head) SOOOOO....I say if you can't find potato sticks, buy some nice ruffle potato chips! You will want to break the big ones up a little, but it should work....different shape, same taste, let me know if you do how it works! Cheers to the happy foursome, may you be together on one plate for at least a nano second!

Mother may I not eat this crap?

An innocent question started me thinking about sacrifice, and how, growing up Catholic, we actually abstained from meat products on ALL Fridays, not just during Lent and Advent. I'm pretty sure my folks were dyed in the wool, John Birch Society (yikes, just let the oldsters in on my age) card carrying, pre-Vatican II holdouts, at least as far as fish Fridays were concerned. During Lent (the 40 days before Easter for you heathenish), sacrifices were encouraged because if Our Lord could go without food and water in the desert for an entire 40 days and nights, we could certainly live without hot dogs and Hamburger Helper one measly day of the week.

Mom was, shall we say, not a terribly adventurous cook, but she got the job done. I recall a lot of oven fried chicken (NOT shake 'n bake, do we look like we're made out of money?), spaghetti and mysterious things in gravy on toast cubes. That was termed "shit on a shingle" for reasons you would quickly discover if you ever ate it. Yes, we were poor....I remember we dined once on steak when I was a kid, but only because they found a great deal on horse meat - good thing I never associated it with the ponies we got to ride on an occasional trip to Alpenrose... Anyway, there were several different Friday meals, and they were rotated regularly so we would not rise up and revolt...or just be revolted (to revolt was confession fodder). The ones that stuck in my head the most were grilled cheese or tuna, tomato soup and popcorn, which we still enjoy to this day on those special Fridays, and the other was egg foo yung.

When I say "not adventurous", I mean making Chinese food involved soy sauce and canned bean sprouts...that is what was added to many scrambled eggs, and was made in the giant aluminum frying pan that only had the handle stub left, and was so disfigured from overheating that it sat on a point on a flat surface like a top....it had the natural shape of a wok, but it wasn't one. I vowed silently while eating that vomitus pile of steaming ova and wormy sprouts that I would NEVER EVER EVER make my family eat that crap. But shit happens and things change, and after ordering it at our fave Chinese restaurant when I had no choice (it was Friday, and Lent) and discovered that my mom's version was nothing like the dish was intended to be, I decided I had made an edict based on faulty information. So after some extensive research and a killer recipe for the gravy she neglected to realize was required to make ANY version palatable, I came up with the following - it's a little work, but so good you may not want to wait until Lent!

Moose Foo Yung

1 dozen eggs
1/2 C. cooked white rice
2 T. cornstarch
2 T. soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
Oil for frying
1-2 C. FRESH bean sprouts (if you use canned I will give you SUCH a frowning)
1/2 to 1 C. grated carrot
1 can water chestnuts, coarsely chopped
2 to 4 green onions, sliced
1 C. chopped mushrooms IF you want...don't be a baby
(PS...you can use whatever veggies turns your crank, I do not care)
1/2 lb. baby shrimp, or imitation krab, cut in smaller chunks

And AWAAAAY we go! Crack all the eggs and put into a blender with the rice, cornstarch and soy sauce, liquefy with the lid ON....you don't want kitchen cabinet foo yung. Pour into a large bowl and throw the shrimp or krab in (you could go without either...it still qualifies as meatless, duh) and set aside.

Cut bean sprouts ever so slightly - just try to make sure the bulk of them are cut in half-ish. Nothing more disgusting than taking a bite and having one hanging down your chin, unless perhaps it's a canned one doing the same thing...yeeeeeeech! Heat a large frying pan or wok with a little oil until SMOKIN' hot, then toss in the garlic which will burn almost instantly, then the carrots, mushroom and onion right behind to cool it off enough to not torch your garlic and start tossing. Keep flipping it around for about a minute, then throw in the water chestnuts and bean sprouts or whatever veggies you decide to use and stir fry another minute or two. Immediately dump into the egg mixture and stir quickly to cool it down fast and keep the eggs from cooking into curds. Now the fun part....

I never said this would be easy, and I added another variation of the process below to make it a bit more user friendly. I think restaurants have molds or rings to cook these in...that would be nice, but none of my pans were ever flat enough to create a seal and all the eggs would flow out from under the rings and really piss me off. So, if you want to make patties, here's how I do it: Put a half a ladle of egg/veggie mixture in a hot oiled skillet, repeat with as many as will fit in the pan. Using a spatula, immediately start corralling the egg back into each patty by pushing it into a rudimentary patty shape. They won't be perfect, and no one cares but me so don't worry about it. Let them cook until most of the liquid has set and they are slightly browned on the bottom, then flip it over and press down to distribute the veggies and let cook until a little browned on side two. If you aren't sure, press down and if any egg juice comes through the top, flip and cook another minute. Keep going and try not to curse the day I was born until the entire bowl is empty.

NEWS FLASH: For the lazy and overworked, I occasionally like to make it down and dirty - I use an egg pan (sometimes TWO), which is a small skillet, heat it up with oil and put 2-3 scoops of the egg mixture in it and make one giant patty. Like you weren't going to eat 3 or 4 of the little ones anyway...you know you were. Same process, but you can just flip the whole darn thing...I don't even use a spatula, I just flip in in the air like those Asian dudes at Benihana. Except I'm not Asian or a dude, and if you want me to flip it onto your plate you best be wearing something that does not require dry cleaning.

And there you go, a nice big steaming plate of Friday food, all ready to go - except for one last thing.....

Gravy

Yes, I said GRAVY. Don't bother without it, why would you want to eat a bunch of veggies and eggs unless it had a delicious sauce to pour all over it?

1 C. chicken broth (YES, during Lent use vegetable broth or water)
1/4 C. oyster sauce
2 tsp. cornstarch....maybe
1 tsp. sugar

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil, whisking constantly until it boils and thickens...add more cornstarch mixed w/cold water if you want it thicker, more water if too thick. And you may want to double it....then you can just chunk up the "foo", throw it in a bowl of this stuff (just don't tell your doctor if you're on a low sodium diet) and eat it like soup. You'll be sick, but it'll be SO worth it. Just kidding.....;-p

So thanks to Alecia's question about oyster sauce, which does BTW contain oyster juice, but tastes nothing like them...and I DO know because I love them as long as I don't look at their disgusting guts when I eat em fried ONLY, you now all have something new to try for Lent. And if you dump the whole wad into a giant misshapen skillet and cook it like scrambled eggs and pour the gravy over the whole mess, I will not report you to the ACOA (Anal Cooks of America); just don't tell anyone I said to do it, and for gosh sake, at least sprinkle some green onions and maybe even sesame seeds over the top so it looks like you did it on purpose and not because you were lazy.

Looks can be deceiving

If you were to ask me what kind of a person I am, I would tell you I am shy. If you tell that to anyone I know, they will look at you like you're nuts, and most likely laugh their arses off...they see the person on the OUTSIDE, I see the one on the inside. I am an observer - I like to sit in a corner of the room facing out so I can see everything that's going on, keep a "finger on the pulse" so to speak. And also so that no one can get the drop on me. That comes from growing up with 4 siblings, and never knowing what is going to be around the corner or behind the next door.

The big old house I grew up was great fun for scaring the crap out of each other, which we did frequently. There were many scary dark corners in the basement, and you only had to wait a few minutes before some hapless victim would stumble along, intent on some mindless task, or possibly just avoiding one by staying on the move and out of mom's sight. Then you would spring out at the perfect moment, emitting a sound that was supposed to sound like a monster but was more likely just a really loud yell - regardless, startling a fellow slave child into chasing you around the neighborhood was a delight that was hard to top.

Ocassionally you would get the "reverse thrill"...once I waited around the corner in the laundry room (I use that term loosely as it was just a vast and very dark part of the basement that had a mountain of dirty clothes on the cement floor and a washer, dryer and big cement sink that grew the worlds biggest and hairiest spiders), and giggled silently while I waited for a victim to fall into my trap. Suddenly I heard footsteps on the stairs, then continuing around the corner where I leaped out and yelled "AAAAAHHHHHHH!"........right in my mom's face. I think we might have pee'd our pants at the same exact time, and she almost threw the full laundry basket she was carrying over her head. I was rooted to the spot - flight was useless, as I knew, unless I never came back home again, that she WOULD get me - and my short life as I knew it flashed before my eyes. My only guess is that she somehow found it amusing, so the worst of it was a strident warning to NEVER do that again. Luck was with me that day, my friends....

And I don't care what anyone says, I AM shy. I just hide it with obnoxious, juvenile and loud behavior, a finely tuned sarcasm gene and a seriously twisted sense of humor. Otherwise I'm just a shrinking violet. Stop laughing....you fruiter head. As usual, this has nothing to do with that, just a wild hare (or is it hair?) - this is such a bad for you, full of stuff you shouldn't and individually wouldn't DREAM of eating recipe, so you know it's gonna be good. "Corn Thang" is actually a recipe we heard about on Mark & Brian - KLOS jocks in sunny Cali. one of the crew brought it to a potluck and they posted it on their website...it's ridiculous how good it is. So sit back, RElax, and ENjoy......

Kelli's Corn Thang

1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin mix (don't use anything else, doesn't work)
1 can cream corn - the CHEAPEST you can find
1 C. sour cream
2-3 T. sugar
2 eggs
1 cube cheap REAL margarine (oxymoron) - don't use "spread"...too much water.

Heat oven to 375. Put cube of margarine in a 8x8 square glass pan, a round cake pan, or an 8" casserole and put in the oven while it's preheating to melt. Dump all the other ingredients together and mix with a fork, a mixer or a wooden spoon - just get the eggs well beaten and everything combined well, I don't care if you use your brother's toothbrush or that wire thingy with balls on the ends you use to massage your scalp. (be prepared for a noogie or wet willy if you use the toothbrush)

When the margarine has melted completely, pull rack out and pour batter directly into the melted margarine - DO NOT STIR. It will cook into the batter, but envelop the entire dish in the sweet embrace of molecules you want to know nothing about. Bake at 375 for 35-45 minutes, or until it's cracked and golden brown all around the edges and a toothpick comes out clean and it only has a hint of a jiggle overall - there shouldn't be any spots that look like they are just crusted over lava with a secret liquid center. Let cool a bit - good luck with that - then cut in smallish squares and serve. I am a middle child, and a middle girl....I like the nice clean cuts, no crusty edges and believe the center is the choicest cut (just like me). Of most things, that is....the outside of this is so good I wish there was a pan that only made outside pieces. (LIGHTBULB!!!) And if you put butter on it, you will go straight to hell....OK, I didn't, but my feet got really, REALLY hot when I did.

You can do this in muffin tins, you just need to divide the butter by 12 muffin tins and start checking it about 20 minutes in. Then you could use them for gambling money to play black-jack with your siblings and threaten them with indian burns and bloody knuckles if they beat you even after you made up your own ruled and cheated so you would win. Or you could just eat em. I vote for that.

Poulet: Round Deux

I was in a hurry this morning. A big FAT hurry. I stayed up too late, then everytime the alarm went off I slapped the snooze bar and went back to sleep like the dead for 9 minutes. 5 times. Doh. Finally got up, fixed my hair, got my clothes..dammit. Big stain that went unnoticed on my top, had to go find another one. Socks? SOCKS? How is it possible I can't find socks when the last time I bought some I got a dozen pair? That with what I had before should have resulted in socks coming out of my arse, but no....finally found #2 in the bottom of the basket and completed my look that will never appear in Vogue - not even as a "before" picture.

Instead of leisurely enjoying my husband-made veggie sausage and english muffin with coffee, I wolfed it down and commenced to making my lunch so I could fly out the door and be late for work anyway - my speedometer goes up to 160 I think, but I've already been enlightened by my spouse that a ticket for going over 100 mph is 2 grand, and I think they take away your license for a while. And I love my car. No, trying to eat better takes longer than heading to the car with nothing but my purse and the fall back of at least 20 restaurant/fast food joints that I am sick of within 2 miles of my work - leftovers from the night before make it painless, but when there's nothing left over you gotta work at it. But I had chicken...remember the Costco chicken? That and some of the other things I bought culminated in a beautiful and healthy lunch - and saved me 7 bucks and another stained shirt in the process! Yay Costco....

Meal #3

Garden Chicken Sandwich

2-3 oz. roasted chicken breast, sliced
1 slice Tillamook swiss cheese, cut in half
1 small carrot, shredded
1 mushroom, thinly sliced
1 small handful baby spinach
2 thin slices multi-grain artisan bread
Artichoke-Pesto spread (see below)

Spread a tablespoon or so of artichoke pesto spread on each slice of bread, layer chicken, cheese, carrot and spinach on one piece and put the other on top. Cut in half. Eat, perhaps with a nice apple and copious amounts of water - I'm telling you, spinach and water is a colon's best friend - BOOYAH!

Artichoke-Pesto spread

1/2 C. mayonnaise
3 T. pesto
1/2 C. artichoke tapenade (they used to have it at Costco, I found it at Grocery Outlet - if you can't find it, you could use marinated or plain artichoke hearts and just chop them coarsely)

Mix together and keep refrigerated. This stuff is perilously close to artichoke dip, but with a basil kick from the pesto - I think you could easily use it for a veggie dip, or with crackers, or perhaps to use as mortar with french bread slices to build an igloo that you could then eat your way out of. But that would be wrong. So if you do anyway, say an Act of Contrition and get thyself to a confessional as soon as you can move again.

So was Underdog at the first Thanksgiving?

They said on the news this was the last weekend of summer, which is a prompt for Mother Nature to dump a record amount of rain in as short a period of time as possible in Oregon. Funny thing is, the temp hasn't gone down that much, so we have this nasty, sloppy, FAT rain all day long, but it's still hovering around 70 degrees. Sheesh, make up your mind - the best way to protect yourself is to dress in shorts or capris, slip a pair of rubbers (haha, GRAMMA rubbers!) over your flip flops and carry a golf umbrella. Sure you look stupid, but you won't be melting from the humidity and sweating through your Secret, right?

I wore a sweater to church tonight and thought I was going to pass out it was so warm...but I didn't want to take it off for fear my shirt would stick to it and I would end up with it stuck on my head with my black bra out there for everyone to see since we sit up front in "no one wants to get that close to God-ville" If they only knew I do it so I don't look at all the people in front of me and imagine what kinds of un-Christian things they've been up to...that and if they have a hairbrush or know that their shirt tags are hanging out for everyone to see they wear a size XL Old Navy 100% cotton machine wash cold tumble dry low iron as needed hoodie. Or that their cute little girl in the Hello Kitty dress picks her nose and wipes the boogers on the back of her brother's shirt.

But yeah, Thanksgiving is coming...maybe not next weekend, but soon, and to a family near you. So what do you want to hear about that? Hilarious stories of past Thanksgivings? Special dishes made with love that went oh-so-wrong? Maybe some family traditions so you can see that we are just a different kind of weird and that most people don't resemble the fakey Thanksgiving feasts they show you on TV and in movies? Or maybe you're a Jehovah's Witness and don't want to hear anything about it - I'm open to anything, just let me know! (OK, I lied...if you're a JW, I will make sure the Title is Thanksgiving-ey so you don't have to sin by accidentally reading it, but I'm still gonna write about it). Wait, I think that's just Christmas and Easter and birthdays...sorry if I am ignorant, but when you're raised by far, FAR right Catholics, you really aren't encouraged to research other religions, otherwise you might be tempted by churches with cushions on the pews and no kneelers, the absence of confessionals and a laid back attitude about making it to church EVERY Sunday (or whatever your holy day of the week is) without bursting into flame.

If you think back to my first post, it might give you a hint on one specialty - I am almost ALWAYS in charge of pies. And someone who shall remain nameless (Shannon), commented this week that some pie "fact" was from Marie Callendar, who knows EVERYTHING about pies....well my response to that is she might know everything about pies (NOT), but she sure didn't pass that along to those who make 'em for her. She sold out.....now her not very good pies are made by machines and put in boxes and sold in supermarket freezers, not in a cozy, warm and floury kitchen with a fancy wooden rolling pin with ball bearings from Williams Sonoma and the thump of bass from the stereo playing classic rock in the next room.

So let me know if there's anything you want to hear about - I have personally attended at least 49 Thanksgivings, and can dish a LOT of dirt....let the stuffing fly, and the pumpkin pie hit the fan!

Momma Moose

You will "relish" this one....

Groooooaaaan. Sorry, sometimes it's easier to go with the obvious even if it's stupid. My sister-in-law is a stay at home mom, but don't make the mistake of thinking she doesn't have a "job". She works harder before most of us even get up than I do all day - you have to when you're married to a farmer. Deb is my produce Goddess from May to October, and trips home from the produce stand at her home are now filled with sinful thoughts of what I"m going to do with the prize submarine-sized zucchini I just scored for only 33 cents...GET your mind outta the gutter, I MEANT Sweet Zucchini Relish!! (Yes this is a canning recipe, but you have to start somewhere, right?)

She gave me this recipe a couple weeks ago, and I am determined to make a butt-load of it - she had me try it and THEN gave me a prized jar to take home...I was slightly nauseated when she told me she had a craving and ate some recently just spread on a piece of bread, but when I tasted it I realized the error of my ways....this stuff would be good on ice cream! Not a big fan of sweet relish, but somehow the zukes do something to it that makes it magically delicious....but without the marshmallows.

Before I pass it on, I will offer 3 fun facts about my sister in law: 1. She is deaf in one ear due to mumps when she was a kid, so if she's on the phone you can talk about her and she won't know unless you're pointing and laughing; 2. One time when she was babysitting her siblings, her evil younger brother (I MAY be married to him) scared her so bad with a fright mask she peed her pants; and 3. Deb won't eat eggs, and will ONLY drink milk in her coffee....this always makes me chuckle since she's married to a DAIRY farmer and her daughter was a DAIRY princess! Love ya Deb....and the rest of you go to Mike and Debbie's Farm Fresh Produce on Cornelius Schefflin Road between Cornelius and Verboort - you won't be sorry unless a giant poop sprinkler goes rogue all over your car! (does that ever happen?? I would laugh if it did, as long as it wasn't me..)

Sweet Zucchini Relish

12 cups shredded zucchini, peel and all (great use for those the pickers miss that then morph overnight into buick-sized missiles)
4 cups chopped onion
5 T. canning salt
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
6 cups white sugar
2-1/2 cup white vinegar
1 T. cornstarch
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. turmeric (the yellow curry stuff)
1-1/2 tsp. celery seed (if you don't normally use these spices, buy in BULK, just what you need!)
1/2 tsp. black pepper (everyone uses pepper for cryin in the rain...)

Put the zucchini and onion in a LARGE non-metallic bowl and sprinkle salt over the top. Use your hands (wash them first please, and don't ruin it by drying them on your pants) to evenly mix the salt throughout the zucchini onion mixture.

OH YEAH....I forgot. You need to clean out your fridge so you can fit this giant bowl in there overnight - time to make "Goulash" for dinner and get rid of all the leftovers and bits and pieces of stuff you were sure you would use for something before they went bad - as Miles stage whispers to his sisters in Uncle Buck, "He's cookin' our GARBAGE!!". Three birds, one stone - delicious relish, a clean fridge AND more room in the garbage can!

After the zucchini sits overnight, drain zukes and onion in a colander and rinse well with cool water. Squeeze as much water as you can by the handfuls (if you want to be a sissy and use cheesecloth, go ahead. But that cheesecloth could cover naked children in China so wouldn't you be ashamed?) and set aside in another large bowl. Put red and green pepper, sugar, vinegar and cornstarch into a large pot. Add spices, stir to combine and add DRAINED zucchini/onion mixture. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce to medium low and simmer 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, during your SPARE TIME, sterilize 7 one-pint jars and lids to hold relish. Pack finished relish into jars, running a butter knife around the edges to release any air pockets or bubbles. Fill to the top, wipe edges of jar with a wet towel and screw on lids.

Put a rack in large stockpot or canner and fill halfway with hot water, lower in the jars and place at least 2" space between jars. Pour more boiling water in if needed, tops of jars should be covered by at least 2" of water. Bring to full boil and process COVERED for 30 minutes. (that means boiled...keep the water boiling for the full 30 minutes...you can turn it down, just make sure it's still bubbling)

Remove jars from pot and put on towel lined surface or wood cutting board, several inches apart until cool. When completely cooled, take rings off, clean tops of jars and make sure they sealed and the lids don't "pop". Mmmmm....if any didn't seal, those are ready to eat NOW...no waste!

Now you need to figure out how often you can make hot dogs, hamburgers and macaroni salad to put this stuff in....or you can always use Deb's fall-back and just spread it on bread! I swear to you, if I had ice cream right now I would be trying it that way....dang ice cream hogs!