See, I told you so.

Hey, it’s me again, back on the blog wagon. I’ve enjoyed plenty of good meals in the last five months, not to mention a couple of really bad ones I could have told you about. But although I composed many a blog post in my head, somehow not one of them ever saw the light of day. What finally inspired me to sit down at the computer? Well, it's a rare thing for me to pass up a public opportunity to be right. And since my kids don’t believe me when I tell them something, maybe they’ll come around when they read it here. Everyone knows (especially school librarians) that young people believe anything they read on the Internet.

So there we were at the dinner table on Midsummer’s Eve, the usual four of us (some balancing spoons on their upper lips), plus son Kosta up from Berkeley, also my friends Mimi and Stephen and their little daughter Maddie. Because it was my birthday, the party had mustered their collective (and considerable) culinary talents in assembling a magnificent meal of barbecued tri-tip with Sicilian herb sauce, roasted potatoes, collard greens with bacon, and numerous other delicious things. Andreas had tossed together his signature backyard garden salad, a fanciful 21st century composition of baby lettuces, greens, scapes, shoots, tendrils, herbs, and flower petals. The appearance of this tasty admixture (in the dishy orange bowl, foreground) set off a discussion of good and bad salads. Mimi described a particularly awful occasion in England (which otherwise, I hear, has rather good food these days) upon which she had ordered a salad and been served some gruesome amalgam of apple and mayonnaise (and peas? I can't remember exactly).

So - it being my birthday - I took the opportunity to hold forth on the things that passed for salad in my youth, specifically “molded salads”. Faces around the table stared in growing disbelief as I described the unspeakable childhood horror of taking a spoonful of jello expecting - at worst - a canned fruit cocktail grape and instead getting a mouthful of crunchy vegetable suspended in aspic . “Um, we never had that in my house,” says my husband. Well, I suppose not, with them being immigrants and all. “That would be disgusting,” offers Mimi. What? This doesn’t sound like the voice of first-hand experience. Mimi’s husband Stephen, from Boston, remains silent. Kosta suggests that “maybe it was a Bay Area thing.” So I am left to wonder - does my "recollection" represented early onset Alzheimers? Or possibly this molded salad thing was a unique form of torture invented by Mom?

All is revealed. My mother might not have been the world’s greatest cook, but neither did she invent molded salad with vegetables. While clearing out some clutter from the storage room this week, I ran across Sunday Night Suppers, a small cookbook of World War II vintage that had belonged to my grandmother before being passed down to my mother and then to me. "The scattered remnants from the relish tray make sparkling molded salads" indeed. Thankfully molded salads are not hereditary - and I have the power to break this terrible cycle.

Just in case one of you fearless cookers just HAS to try this at home, here's the recipe, but I most emphatically do not recommend it. And you have to promise not to feed it to your kids.

Molded Vegetable Salad

1 package lemon gelatin

1 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup cold water

1 to 2 cups vegetables (suggestions below)

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add vinegars, salt, and cold water. Chill. When sirupy [sic] in consistency fold in vegetables. Pour into any desired mold - loaf or ring. Chill until firm. Unmold on salad greens and serve with dressing. Serves 6.

Vegetable suggestions:

Shredded cabbage, celery, pimiento and green pepper.

Chopped cabbage, diced celery and sliced stuffed olives.

Shredded cabbage, diced celery and cooked peas.

Grated uncooked carrot, diced celery and diced green pepper.

Diced pickled beets, celery, pickles and 2 teasooons grated horse-radish.

Hey - don't forget to serve with dressing. [shudder]

The exceptionally frugal gourmet, part 2

Two more simple and ultra- economical pasta dishes from my notebook.

Vodka Penne

My son Kosta loves this dish.
It’s another one from the Patricia Wells’s Trattoria cookbook – a great source for quick and easy Italian food. It’s less do-able on an extremely low budget if you don’t already have a bottle of vodka. You only need two tablespoons, though, so you might be able to get a neighbor to donate to the cause. Or call a friend who has a full liquor cabinet and an empty fridge, and maybe you can do a barter.

¼ C olive oil
4 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed hot red pepper flakes
Sea salt
1 28 oz can plum tomatoes, or 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, or 28 oz frozen peeled homegrown tomatoes (thawed).
1 lb dried penne
2 T vodka
½ heavy cream
¼ C chopped parsley

In a large unheated skillet, stir to combine the oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and a pinch of salt. Cook over moderate heat until garlic is golden but does not brown (2 to 3 minutes).
If using canned or frozen whole tomatoes, chop them with their liquid in a food processor or put them through a food mill. In any case, add the tomatoes to the pan. Stir to blend and simmer uncovered about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile boil the penne in salted water until al dente. Drain thoroughly.
Add the penne to the sauce. Toss. Add the vodka, toss again, then add the cream and toss. Cover, reduce heat to low, and let rest 1 to 2 minutes. Uncover, add the parsley, toss again. Serve immediately with a green salad on the side.


Spaghetti with Browned Butter and Mizithra Cheese

We used to like to eat out at the Old Spaghetti Factory. In the days when we were traveling frequently to Oakland or Portland with four small children, it had exactly what we needed: noise, lots to look at, and an inexpensive kids menu with something everyone would eat. The kids ordered spaghetti and meatballs, but this dish was my personal favorite.

The menu still features it with the interesting assertion “Legend has it that Homer lived on it while composing the Iliad”. My first thought was, what was Homer doing in China? But I looked it up in Meals and Recipes from Ancient Greece and it seems those guys did have a kind of pasta - made of spelt, wheat, and water - which they served with sauce (don’t tell my husband, or we’ll never hear the end of it; like the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," he thinks the Greeks invented everything). Clever fellow, that Homer, composing orally with a mouth full of pasta while strumming his phorinx at the same time.

Anyway, I buy mizithra at the Ashland Food Co-op, where it’s $8.99 a pound. It is almost certainly cheaper at Costco.

This is about the easiest recipe you’ll ever find: Boil a pound of spaghetti in salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, melt and then brown half a cube of butter in a pan (watch it – golden brown is good, but dark brown will make it bitter). Grate the cheese – maybe about 4-6 oz. for this much spaghetti. When the pasta is done, drain it well and toss with the butter and cheese. Sprinkle some chopped parsley on top if you’re feeling fancy. Also good with a little ground black pepper. Serve with a green salad.

At about a dollar a person, no wonder the Old Spaghetti Factory promotes it – they charge $10 plate.

Poor planning

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
-Wilkins Micawber

Oops. The untimely confluence of UC tuition and co-op payments this week has resulted in a serious cash flow problem.

I’m no stranger to radical fluctuation in my bank balance, and over the years I’ve developed some pretty effective coping strategies for avoiding kitchen misery. Not that anyone is likely to go hungry around here, what with the 200 pounds of local organic meat in the deep freeze. But we do want a little variety and I like to provide it without breaking out either the credit card or the Top Ramen.

When I was a kitchen manager at Andres Castro Arms in the 70s, my profligate ways once caused the budget to run out two weeks before the end of the semester following a special dinner involving caviar, steak, and (aptly named) chocolate decadence cake. A letter went out to the 52 residents and 2 boarders that we were now on poor-house rations. No more Captain Crunch. No more pork chops. No more guacamole. Necessity is the housemother of invention, though, and new challenges for the resident cooks resulted not only in numerous interpretations of classic vegetarian Hippie Hash, but also innovative dishes like “Zesty Lymph Gland Whoopee” - a casserole of rice and tomatoes, onions, peppers, and chorizo (read the label sometime). Some of us revisited this infamous creation at a co-op reunion years later – ah, the memories.

In Washington in the 80s I discovered bulk potatoes, which at 10 cents a pound provided many a Thursday-night mashed-potato meal for me and my buddy Kelly after we’d squandered our weekly Commander Salamander commissions on Mary Quant eyeshadow and Betsey Johnson fashion accessories. Desperate times, desperate measures, but fortunately my housemate Ira never noticed the missing milk – at least he never mentioned it. Thinking back on an hour-long house meeting (presided over by Ira and endured by me and the four other residents) concerning the fate of a pot of soup left on the counter to cool, somehow I think he would have said something.

These days I’ve got a ready list of dinner possibilities for when the funds run out. As most everyone knows, pasta is ideally suited for such times. Here’s one of my end-of-the-month standbys, which you can make for under a dollar a person. It’s from Patricia Wells’s Trattoria.


Spaghetti con olio, aglio, e peperoncini

(note: kitchen manager experience taught me to bolster morale by making sure your bargain basement dinner has a fancy name)

1 lb dried spaghetti
½ C plus 2 T olive oil
6 large garlic cloves
½ t crushed dried red pepper flakes
½ C chopped parsley

Add the pasta to a pot of boiling salted water and cook to al dente. Drain well.
Meanwhile, in a large unheated skillet, combine ½ C oil, the garlic, the red peppers, and a pinch of salt. Mix it around with a spatula to coat the garlic with oil, and cook over moderate heat until the garlic just turns golden but not brown (2 to 3 minutes). Add the drained pasta to the sauce. Toss, add remaining 2 T oil, toss again, and cover. Let rest off heat 1 to 2 minutes. Add the chopped parsley and toss again. Serve immediately, with a green salad on the side.


Pasta 79 cents
Garlic 25 cents
Oil 50 cents
Parsley maybe 25 cents, or grow your own like we do
Salt, pepper flakes – under 5 cents
Salad (from a head of lettuce, with homemade Italian dressing) 1.25
For 4 people: 77 cents each. At that price, two of you can each have a glass of two-buck Chuck and still keep the average at just about a dollar apiece.



After dinner, make a bowl of popcorn, open up the latest red envelope from Netflix, and snuggle up with somebody to watch a movie. Don’t worry about the cashflow –as Mr. Micawber assures us, something will turn up.

I love Eric

Today’s post is not for vegans. My animal-loving friends, your hearts are in the right place, surely, but we’re unapologetic omnivores here. We love animals… for dinner.

I am not without ethical scruples, however. I would much rather eat a chicken that's seen a little bit of life, been around the barnyard a time or two; a cow that’s spent some time in a grassy field and been spared the horrors of the feedlot and slaughterhouse; a lamb that's enjoyed quality time with mom. So my strategy is to go with local, sustainable producers. I sleep easier, and we certainly don’t regret the difference in flavor.

Apparently the law makes it difficult for beef ranchers to sell individual cuts by the pound to the consumer. Instead, you need to place an order with the rancher for a whole, half, or quarter animal. A few years ago I got my hands on a 5-foot freezer that a co-worker was giving away. This made it possible to really buy in bulk.

The way it works is you call the rancher (if I'm buying beef, that’s Larry Martin in Central Point) and tell him what you want to order (quarter, whole, or half beef). He’ll give you a rough idea when the meat will be available; this depends on whether the animals are ready, the kill dates, some time for aging, and processing (cutting, wrapping, and freezing). He’ll give you a per pound price and an approximate weight so you’ll know about how much it’s going to cost. If you're buying a half or quarter, he will have to arrange for the other parties who are going to buy the rest of the animal before he can proceed. He’ll also quiz you about what cuts you want: how thick to make the steaks, what percentage of fat to put in the hamburger, how much you want as stew meat versus hamburger, and so on.

The first time I bought beef I got a quarter, to see how it went. We used it all within a few months, so this year I went with a half beef, yielding about 200 lbs. After the animal goes to the processor (Larry Martin uses Jerry’s Custom Meats in Central Point) he will call with the price, which depends on the final weight. For my half beef this year I sent Larry a check for $880. A week or so later when I picked the meat up at Jerry’s I wrote a second check for $250 for the processing. The price works out to about $5.65 per pound. It may sound expensive, but I’ll tell you that included in the deal was a gigantic 18 pound rib roast. We cut that roast beast in half for a family feast on Christmas and then had a second one for guests on New Year’s Eve, easily $200 in prime rib if I’d bought it at a retail meat counter.

In addition to the Martin Ranch beef, I have purchased lambs each of the last two years from Tim Franklin of Yale Creek Ranch in Jacksonville. Lambs are small and yield about 30 lbs of meat after processing. For our current lamb I paid a $100 deposit, then $180 more to Tim when the meat was ready. Price of processing was included, so there was no additional payment when I picked the meat up at Jerry's. That works out to $9.30 a pound, close to the retail meat counter rate but so much tastier.

It's kind of cool to know that all the meat you're serving is from the same animal. It's a sort of personal relationship that might even inspire you to give the critter a name. Ours is Eric (as in... Eric the half a beef. OK, I guess we're are not as repectful as we might be).


Breaking news... as I was googling for a web address for my pork source, Bickle Family Farm, I discovered this - which apparently came out January 18 but vanished into the recycling bin before I had a chance to see it. Check out the article for a rundown on the health benefits of natural meats, as well as contact information for local producers, including all those I've mentioned in this post.


If you want to argue with me about the meat-eating thing, I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer's book. It will give you plenty of ammunition. But remember, I've got 200 pounds of frozen meat. With a small trebuchet - or some homemade sauce Bernaise - I am prepared to defend my position.

Robert Burns night

Maintaining a full-blooded Ikarian in the family requires a lot of Mediterranean cooking. But we’re not all Greek around here. Personally, I’m a Heinz 57 in the heritage department, which means I get to cherry-pick from the family tree. Once a year on dear Rabbie’s birthday I take the opportunity to let my tartan freak flag fly and honor the Scottish ancestors with a special dinner.

Scottish cuisine is pretty simple stuff, as you might expect from a hardscrabble northern country. Key dietary components are fish, game, sheep, oats, dairy products, and root vegetables. For our Burns dinner I went with Scotch eggs (hardboiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat, rolled in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried), salmon steaks, rumbledethumps, and boiled kale. For dessert, shortbread and a dram or two of Glenmorangie for toasting the bard while reading (and singing) a few of his fine works aloud in our best accents. Mark it on your calendar: it's the best way to spend January 25th.

No doubt you’re wondering about the rumbledethumps. They are a vegetable side dish prepared as follows: peel and cut into chunks 1 lb. each of potatoes and turnips. Boil together until soft (as for mashed potatoes). Drain and mash with 2 T. butter. Slice thinly ½ lb savoy cabbage , also chop up 1 small onion. Fry cabbage and onion together in 2 T. butter until soft. Mix cabbage with potatoes & turnips. Grate ¾ cup cheddar cheese; mix ¼ C in with the vegetables and spread in a buttered glass baking pan. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Bake at 350 until cheese is well melted.

Rumbledethumps, by the way, are Gordon Brown’s favorite food – a wise choice, because in these thrifty times the populace will find fault with mealtime extravagance in its leaders. Look at what the Globe is saying this week about our own head of state: “IMPORTED BEEF!” (it's in the red circle emblazoned on the Prez's chest).
Lay off, tabloids: these folks grow their own vegetables. I am a little concerned about those “crazy conga lines” though.

Many Scottish dishes have odd names: cock-a-leekie, crowdie, cranachan, tuppeny struggles, roastit bubble-jock, Forfar bridies, inky-pinky, bawd bree. Some of these are corruptions of French words (a legacy of the Auld Alliance with France back in the late Middle Ages – for instance, Old French hutaudeau became “howtowdie”, escalope became “collops”) but personally I think some were invented to make bland dishes sound more interesting. If you can’t enjoy your food, at least you can laugh at it.






I need to check with my lamb source to see if I can procure the required ingredients locally for a homemade haggis next year - apparently the USDA thinks lamb lungs are not a foodstuff. I’ve actually eaten haggis on several occasions and and I can concur with the 2001 Larousse Gastronomique that "although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour". Kind of like lamb stew. There was a baked potato franchise in Edinburgh that I frequented for a short while called Spudulike, and one of the tastiest tatty toppings on offer was the haggis.

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

The food resolution

Poor Foodlandia, all overgrown and neglected. I must have known deep inside that it would come this when I named you. Time to get out the machete and reclaim my little chunk of the blogosphere.

Posting every day was, of course, at the top of my annual things-to-do-better list. It’s hard to defend a New Year’s resolution wherein I promise to do a thing every day, then don’t get around to doing it - even once - until it’s almost February. Let’s just say I was waiting to start until I was pretty sure I would follow through. I think the key might be to keep the posts a little shorter.

So that’s my (short) thought for the day. You’ll be hearing from me again tomorrow.

Voodoo Donuts: the video

I should have put this in my Voodoo Donut post. Better late than never. You know it's cool because it's got Anthony Bourdain and Chuck Palahniuk in it. The actual donut part starts about halfway through the clip, so hang in there.