blue artichoke

Five weeks after I started it, I finished reading Andersonville, which was added to my summer reading list by Aqua Melted Butter. Geez. I can't believe this is someone's favorite book. It's good, well written and a Pulitzer Prize winner, but it's so depressing. It's about the Confederate prison in Anderson, S.C. and the squalid condition Yankee prisoners had to live in. Heart wrenching. This is great beach reading for masochists who feel enormous guilt for having leisure time, not to mention access to food, shoes, clothes and a roof. I used to secretly wish for scurvy, just to be able to out-affliction others with my rare disease; after reading the quite graphic descriptions of the stages of scurvy, I'm interviewing other, less offensive afflictions. I forgot to take the book with me to Nashville (probably a good thing. It's enormous and would have weighed me down terribly), so I stopped in at Borders and bought Dry, the sequel to Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I read it earlier this summer and now want to read everything Burroughs has ever written. Even his grocery lists would be entertaining. I finished Dry, placed a library hold on his next book, returned to Andersonville, then picked up Magical Thinking when I returned Andersonville to the library. I read it in two days. I'm a big fan and recommend Burroughs to anyone who likes quirky, gay, dysfunctional OCD stories, or David Sedaris. Or anyone who likes to laugh.

Next up is Purple Fried Okra's recommendation of Prodigal Summer. I was a big fan of The Poisonwood Bible, and this one is set in Appalachia, a place I'm quite familiar with, so I'm looking forward to spending some quality time in the hammock in the back yard, reading it this weekend.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As a kid, I loved Vienna sausages, not so much for the tiny hot dogs, but for the thick goo they were packed in. Now the thought of that stuff totally grosses me out; Vienna sausages are toward the bottom of the list of things I consider edible, between squirrels and salmon. I don't know why I've turned my back on goo. It might just be the texture, or maybe because I heard that gelatin was made from hooves, and that is somehow more bothersome to me than eating the rest of the animal. Whatever the reason, I've never eaten aspic and I have a hard time with Jell-o.

I made brisket for dinner last night. Brisket is a cut of meat from the front limb and breast portion of a cow, beneath the first five ribs. It is a tough and flavorful cut that does well with long, slow cooking, as in a crock-pot. I looked for a regular brisket at the grocery store, but all they had was corned beef brisket, so I went for that, thinking, hey, it's just pre-seasoned. I threw away the seasoning packet. Corned beef brisket has about an inch of hard fat on one side and comes covered in bright red gelatinous goo. I rinsed it off, but it clogged up my sink. A layer of red slime covered the bottom of the sink and red strings of goo were caught sliding through the drain stopper. I had to pull them out; they stuck to my hands. Gross. I scrubbed out the sink and washed my hands, then got on with dinner prep. The recipe I was following came from Purple Fried Okra, and was really easy: layer sliced onion rings in the crock pot, top with trimmed brisket and pour in a mixture of beer, chili sauce, brown sugar and garlic. When I got home from work, the house smelled great. Dinnertime rolled around and I heaped hunks of meat and thickened sauce onto our plates. Hoo boy! Salty! But good, as long as I could distract myself from the memory of the bright red slimy goo clinging to my hands and clogging the sink. PFO loves this recipe; I want to try it again with a regular, unseasoned brisket, or even with a regular roast. Corned beef is dead for me; it now joins Vienna sausages as food ruined by goo. No redeeming value.

The upshot of a queasy dinner is that I had plenty of room for dessert, Purple Fried Okra's French Coconut Pie. It came out of the oven right before we started dinner. It was a bit wobbly in the middle, but the recipe assured me that it would firm up as it cooled. We didn't really give it a chance; we ate it warm and gooey (in a sweet, sugary, good way). Gentleman Caller could only nod his head in approval as he gobbled up his slice. This is a ridiculously easy pie to make, and the world is a better place because it exists. It's just as good the next day, straight from the fridge, but I think I might have to make it again soon, just to see how it is when it sets properly.

Dinner last night: peppered (corned) beef brisket in beer; creamed spinach; baby carrots; French coconut pie

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

What do you do when you have a self-imposed ban on shopping at Wal-Mart and Target during this back-to-school season and you need to buy tortillas and a cable splitter? Well, if you're me, you drive to the ghetto grocery store down the street and wander around looking at all the dented cans and expired boxes of Rice-a-Roni until you realize that they don't have any tortillas, and, even if they did, the tortillas would probably be stale. Next, you go to Staples to get the cable splitter. Staples is right in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, mind you, but you're so smart and you're going to avoid that crowd. The first sales person to pounce on you as you walk in, as they always seem to do at Staples, tells you that they don't carry cable splitters. Better go to Circuit City or Radio Shack. Uh-oh. There's a lifetime ban on Radio Shack for abominable service in the past and I have no idea where a Circuit City might be. Best Buy is all the way across town. Well. You next head to the grocery store around the corner where they too do not have any tortillas. What is with the lack of tortillas in this town? You know that there are some at Wal-Mart. And a cable splitter too. You've already wasted 1-1/2 hours. Even if it takes another hour to get these two items, at least you're guaranteed success at Wal-Mart. Or you could drive around aimlessly, looking out for a Circuit City. Nope. To Wal-Mart. Ban is lifted! Ten minutes later, you are back in your car, with a package of corn tortillas and a cable splitter on the seat next to you. And no children were hurt in the process. You're smart. You used the self-check-out lane.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Three more banana bread recipes have been tested, but I forgot to tell you about them. Better late than never.
Here goes:

Banana Bread #20, Blueberry Banana Oat Bread
I'm not sure where this recipe is from. It uses Bisquick (which I make myself), quick-cooking oats and blueberries. I used fresh blueberries. The batter was really thick, but baked up to a nice looking loaf with a rough texture. I'm realizing that I don't like oatmeal in banana bread; it gives a rough, scratchy texture that feels so gross in my mouth. This bread wasn't very sweet, but the blueberries added a nice boost to the flavor. Not a keeper.

Banana Bread #21, Best Banana Bread Recipe
Recipe from www.banana.com. I omitted the nuts, as usual. This was a good loaf of banana bread if you plan to devour it immediately upon removal from the oven. It looked nice. It was tender and moist when warm, but dried out considerably after it cooled down. And it wasn't sweet enough. Not a keeper.

Banana Bread #22, Banana Nut Bread
I have a lot of recipes called "Banana Nut Bread." This one came from one of my mom's friends, Rotten Tomatoes. It is a bit different from the rest in that it calls for whole milk soured with vinegar and baking soda. I didn't have whole milk, but added a bit of melted and cooled butter to skim milk, then soured that as directed. All ingredients are mixed by hand, which was really fun. The dough started out as a super thick paste of sugar, flour, salt, oil and eggs. Then I added the milk and it suddenly became more liquid and easy to stir. I stirred in the roughly mashed bananas, which kept some chunks as I mixed them in. This is the best recipe so far. It had to cook longer than directed for the center to set, and the bottom burned a bit. Next time, I'll cook it in the top half of my oven. It looked moist when it came out of the oven, with a dark-dark brown shiny crust. The inside was dark golden brown, with some banana chunks throughout the loaf. The taste was very banana-y and very sweet. In fact, I could probably reduce the amount of sugar, but I don't know why I'd want to; it is entirely too good. There ought to be a law. I can't repeat Gentleman Caller's reaction to the bread, but he seems to be as enamored of this bread as I am. Grandma better watch out; this recipe very well could surpass hers!

So, now you're updated on the Snackdown. Sleep easy.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When we were in Nashville, Gentleman Caller's mom told the story of when she asked GC, about four months after we were married, what kind of food I cooked regularly. He said that in those four months I hadn't repeated a recipe yet, that we ate something different every night. GC's dad chimed in, saying they couldn't do that because there aren't that many choices on the menu at Sonic. I know he's kidding, because GC's mom is a great cook and is known for several dishes. It's true that I rarely repeat recipes. It's because there are so many recipes I want to try that repeating one seems wasteful.* But it's also true that someday I'd like to hear GC say, "My wife makes a mean (fill-in-the-blank)", and that probably won't happen unless I develop a repertoire of outstanding dishes that we enjoy regularly. So, in the spirit of achieving notoriety, I'm trying to work some of our favorite recipes into the nightly recipe testing (a.k.a. "dinner"). Last night, I made pork tacos, using the same recipe I used for our Cinco de Mayo party earlier this year. Deeeelicious! And, just so the night wouldn't be a total waste, I tried out a new recipe for black beans (bland) and Mexican rice (better than the rice I made for the CdM party, but probably not the best I can do). Everyone wins. And next time we have pork tacos, maybe I'll try a new recipe. Who knows? It could be even more delicious.

*I'm the same way with movies. There are so many that I'd like to see, watching one I've seen before seems like a bad use of time. Opportunity costs, yo.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The guest beds at Gentleman Caller's parents' house are some of the most comfortable beds I've ever slept in. Dangerously comfortable. I always take my own pillow if traveling by car, because I'm persnickety about the size, density and firmness of my pillows, and I usually sleep extraordinarily well there. Somehow, though, I managed to get a crick in my neck on this last visit that considerably limits my range of motion. I bought a tube of Icy Hot at a gas station on the drive back to MO, and have been using it recreationally ever since. I'm not really sure that it is helping the crick, but I like the way it feels and I don't mind smelling like an old person. For the past two nights, I've been sleeping with Ben-Gay patches on my neck and shoulder. I can't tell if these treatments are helping; I still have a sore neck, but get increasingly more mobility as the days pass. I'm tempted to try covering myself head-to-toe with patches and cream. Bliss?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gentleman Caller and I just returned from a weekend trip to Nashville for his granny's 80th birthday bash. We ate so much of the kind of food that lingers around your waistband, as proof of down-home cooking. GC comes from a long line of good cooks. For the six years that I've known him, I've heard tales of his Granny's country ham breakfasts. Sunday morning, I had my first taste of this legendary breakfast. A platter of country ham and bacon, red-eye gravy, about two dozen fluffy biscuits, honey, cherry preserves, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sweet cantaloupe and sliced tomatoes, all this for five people! What a feast! This isn't an everyday breakfast, but for special occasions like Christmas or Easter or days when you can push yourself back from the table and shuffle over to the couch to sit and stay a while. And unbutton your pants.

Dinner tonight: sauteed chicken with sweet potatoes and pears; artichokes

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes a great idea makes so much sense that you're a bit embarrassed that you didn't think of it sooner. Such is the case of the crock-pot. I rediscovered my crock-pot last fall and used it quite a bit throughout the winter. Spring came and I zipped it up in its neat storage case and forgot about it. Now, all summer, I've been moaning and carrying on about how it’s too hot to turn on the oven, but it wasn't until yesterday that it occurred to me to get out my crock-pot. Duh! I can cook good meals without heating up the kitchen, and I don't even have to spend much time sweating over food prep. Shameful, really, that it took so long for me to turn to the crock-pot. But that's another great thing about crock-pots: they are there when you need them, and never complain or nag when you neglect them.

Last night I made barbeque beef sandwiches, cooking the beef roast in the crock-pot with cabbage, onions, rice and barbeque sauce. When I got home from work, the house smelled great, but faintly of sauerkraut. And, because dinner was ready to eat whenever we were, I could sit outside on the porch with Fat Larry, drinking iced tea, visiting with my neighbors and enjoying the relatively cool summer evening.

Even though the house smelled like sauerkraut, the bbq didn't taste like it at all. In a lot of bbq places, coleslaw is served right on the sandwich, on top of the pulled or shredded meat. That's what I thought the recipe was going for, but adding cabbage at the very beginning kind of takes away the cabbage flavor as it soaks up the bbq sauce flavor. It stretched out the meat quite a bit; I could use a small roast and still make a whole lot of bbq. Plus it makes the bbq a bit healthier. All in all, I think I've found a good friend in the crock-pot, and will be seeing a lot of it in the next few weeks.

Barbecue Beef Sandwiches

1 ½# beef boneless round steak
½ t. salt
¼ t. coarsely ground pepper
2 c. coleslaw mix or shredded cabbage
1 med onion, coarsely chopped (1/2 c.)
¼ c. uncooked regular long-grain rice
½ c. barbecue sauce
½ c. water
8 sandwich buns, split
8 slices (1 oz. each) Colby-Monterey Jack cheese, if desired

Spray inside of slow cooker with cooking spray.

Remove fat from beef. Cut into 3” pieces. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix coleslaw mix, onion, rice, bbq sauce and water. Layer beef and coleslaw mixture in slow cooker.

Cover and cook on low heat setting ~8h or until beef is tender and falls apart when stirred with fork. Fill buns with beef mixture. Top with cheese.

Makes 8 sandwiches.

260C, 5g fat, 34g carbs, 2 starch, 2 very lean meat, 1 veggie

*Substitution: can make with tomato sauce instead of bbq sauce for a milder flavor.

Can also use bone-in round steak instead of boneless steak. Cut the steak into 3” pieces, leaving the bone attached to one of the pieces. The bone adds flavor. Be sure to remove bone before serving.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I think my annual back-to-school shopping boycott begins today. I went to the mall this morning, and folks, it was not pretty. Though I often fantasize about barreling through crowds and steamrolling anyone in my way, today I almost did it. I tripped two kids and clotheslined another. Seriously. But I refuse to accept the blame for any of these incidents, and instead of apologizing, I glared at the parent "in charge." Why can't parents control their kids in public? I’m going to start lobbying stores to install a kids play zone, where parents can dump their kids while they shop. It would make shopping more bearable for all of us.

Dinner last night: Tuscan Spelt and White Bean Soup; popovers
Dinner tonight: Italian Squash Pie

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's the recipe requested by Red Momo:

Edamame Dumplings

http://www.recipezaar.com

Adapted from the April 2006 issue of Cooking Light.

Adjust the seasonings to suit your own tastes.
25 minutes 15 minutes prep

2 tablespoons green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
1 cup frozen edamame, shelled
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
3 garlic cloves, minced
20 wonton wrappers
2 teaspoons cornstarch
cooking spray
1/2 cup water, divided

1. To prepare sauce, combine the first 3 ingredients in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.

2. To prepare dumplings, cook edamame according to package directions; drain. Rinse edamame with cold water; drain well. Combine edamame, juice, sesame oil, cumin, red pepper flakes, garlic, and salt in a food processor, process until smooth.

3. Working with 1 wonton wrapper at a time (cover remaining wrappers with a damp towel to prevent drying), spoon about 1 teaspoon edamame mixture in center of each wrapper. Moisten edges of dough with water; fold opposite corners to form a triangle, pinching points to seal. Place dumplings on a large baking sheet sprinkled with cornstarch.

4. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Arrange half of dumplings in a single layer in pan; reduce heat to medium. Cook 1 minute or until bottoms begin to brown; turn. Add 1/4-cup water to pan; cover. Cook 30 seconds; uncover. Cook 1 minute or until liquid evaporates. Repeat procedure with the remaining dumplings and water. Serve immediately with sauce.

Serves 4.
191C, 3.3g fat, 8.2g protein, 31.2g carbs, 2.9g fiber, 4 mg cholesterol, 2.4 mg iron, 65 mg sodium, 47mg calcium

This recipe was easier to make than I expected, and tasted like something I'd get in a nice restaurant. When I make this again, I'll probably double the dipping sauce. It seemed a bit scant for four servings. I don't usually have dark sesame oil on hand, but I found a small 2 oz. bottle at World Harvest a while ago. I hate buying a large amount of an ingredient I rarely use, especially when I just need a tiny amount; in this case, though, the sesame oil adds a lot of flavor. You could substitute regular olive or canola oil, but it won't be nearly as good.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think it would be very easy for me to become a hermit, and now with Amazon.com Grocery Store, it just got a whole lot easier. I spent the greater part of the morning searching the site and wondering how long I could go without leaving my house/yard/neighborhood. I don't think I'd last very long. It's nice in theory, but I get restless staying in the same zip code for too long. I'd turn into a Martha Stewart just for something to do. Want a blueberry cobbler? I'll pick the berries from the vines I planted for just this occasion, fire up the kiln and make a ceramic casserole dish that I'll glaze with natural pigments found on the property, mill the flour for the cobbler topping and milk the cow to make some homemade ice cream. We can sit on the rocking chairs I just whittled and sit out in the gazebo I built. No problem!

Dinner last night: skillet orange chicken; herbed apricots & carrots; blueberry grunt*

*This grunt was the opposite of the plum grunt I made two weeks ago. This grunt was made on the stovetop in a covered skillet and had a fruit base topped with dumplings. The recipe said that the steam makes a grunting sound; hence the name. I did some digging to find out which dessert is the true grunt, and it turns out that this one is. The plum dessert I made is actually a buckle, because the cakey bottom layer buckles under the weight of the fruit topping. Confusing this further, though, is the fact that the buckle grunted and the grunt was silent.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You all know by now that I'm quite the connoisseur of diet carbonated beverages (I'm from the South, so all carbonated beverages are "Coke" to me, even though I rarely drink Coca-Cola. I just can't bring myself to say soda, soda pop, or, worse, pop). I ran across the new diet Pepsi Jazz at Target over the weekend, and bought both flavors in stock: Diet Black Cherries & Cream and Diet Strawberries & Cream. Gentleman Caller and I shared them and came to the same conclusion: two thumbs down. The strawberry flavor is too artificial and cloyingly sweet. The black cherry is better, but not even close to being as good as the diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream (my current favorite). For now, I'll keep my diet caffeine carbonated beverages jazz-free.

I hear rumors that another jazzy flavor is out, or will be out soon: Diet Pepsi Jazz LimeBerry. Intriguing. Anyone else tried any of these new jazzy flavors?

Dinner tonight: tomato pie; skillet roasted broccoli

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I went to the farmer's market yesterday, looking for some ripe, juicy peaches and found a big box (25#!) of tomatoes dirt cheap. I tried out several recipes for fresh tomato sauce to freeze for the winter, in preparation for the Great Tomato Sauce Snackdown. I made a thyme tomato sauce and a basil tomato sauce, and ran out of onions. I'll get more tomorrow and make a few more batches this week. 25 pounds is a lot of tomatoes, so in addition to the various sauce recipes, this week is Tomato Week!

And, in honor of Tomato Week, here are a few fun facts about tomatoes:

*Botanically, tomatoes are fruits, more specifically, berries. Legally, though, tomatoes are vegetables. Yup, that's right. Our illustrious Supreme Court got bored interpreting the Constitution and decided to answer the old question of how to classify tomatoes. In 1893, they decided that a tomato is legally classified as a vegetable for purposes of applying shipping tariffs.

*The early Spanish thought tomatoes were poisonous; early French thought them aphrodisiacs and called them "love apples."

*Peak season for tomatoes is June through September.

*There are at least 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.

*The South Arkansas vine ripe pink tomato is Arkansas' official state vegetable.

*Tomato juice is the official state beverage of Ohio.

*Lycopene, a carotenoid that contirbutes a red pigment to foods, is a powerful antioxidant that combats all types of cancer, raises SPF of skin and indirectly lowers risk for age-related macular degeneration. Lycopene is rare in foods, but is rich in tomatoes and red watermelon.

Dinner tonight:

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I got a spider bite on my neck. This really freaks me out. It happened when I was asleep, which means that there are spiders (or at least one spider) in my bed. Where did it go? Did it crawl across my face? Into my mouth? Nose? Ear? Is it still in my ear? What kind of spider was it? A mean one who bit me out of spite? Or a benign explorer who got trapped beneath my chin and bit in self-defense? Did it have a best friend named Wilbur? Is it still on me right now? Will Gentleman Caller wake up to find me perched on the ceiling, sleeping in my freshly spun web? Will my new spider-like abilities freak him out, or will he be cool with it?

Dinner tonight: grilled steak; spelt, pesto and tomato salad; whatever poor creature gets trapped in my web

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Despite the sweltering heat, the Snackdown continues, though at a much slower pace. I made two loaves of banana bread last week. I think we're starting to get tired of banana bread because after we try it fresh from the oven and again cooled, the rest of the loaf languishes in the fridge for many days. I'm going to attempt to make banana bread French toast this weekend. Anyway, here are the reviews:

Banana Bread #18, Orange-Spice Banana Bread
Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, which is usually really good. This one, however, stinks. The article it came from states the problem as "too many banana bread recipes turn out bland, flat, heavy, dry and/or gritty loaves." That's true. But this loaf didn't correct those problems. It was bland, with not enough banana or orange flavor to stand out and be recognized. The texture was okay, not too flat, heavy, dry or gritty, but had a pocket of teeth-shattering hardness from I don't even know what. This was a most unpleasant loaf of banana bread. To the trash bin!

Banana Bread #19, Bisquick Banana Nut Bread
I don't know where the recipe came from. I make my own Bisquick mix using flour, dry milk powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and vegetable shortening (no trans-fat Crisco). I almost always have these ingredients on hand and I've never had a problem with the homemade mix. I was a bit worried this time, though, because the batter was super liquidy and really lumpy (even though I omitted the nuts). But it baked up just fine. This was a good-lookin' bread: pale yellow in the center with a thick brown crust and a satisfying crack down the top of the loaf. The texture was moist, light and springy and the flavor was banana-y with a light bright sweetness. This was a darn good loaf and might just squeak into the second round.

Almost 2/3 done with the qualifying round!

Dinner last night: edamame dumplings (homemade), leftover chicken rice pilaf, asparagus

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know if it's the heat or the healthy influences of the Maxilla Crown, but I've been a fruit-buying fool this summer. I've never been opposed to fruit on principle, but I've also never been such a champion of fruit. The problem is, I feel righteous and healthy when I buy it, but after I get it home, I abandon it to the fruit drawer in the fridge or the fruit basket on the annex table. I don't eat it. And it's so hot and humid in my house that fruit goes bad very quickly. We all know that the best thing to do with borderline fruit is to bake it into some sort of tasty dessert and... ah, now I get it! I suspect the Mandible Crown is behind this, subtly brainwashing me to avoid healthy fruit until it is too mushy to eat as is, but perfect for a sweet, sugary dessert. Oh, that's a sly one!

So, I made a plum grunt last week. A grunt is a fruity dessert made of a bottom layer of cakey batter topped completely with slices of fruit. Almond cake bottom and slices of plum, in this case. The bottom layer tries to rise, but the fruit is so heavy on the top that it forces the air bubbles in the batter to pop, making a grunting noise. I knew this, yet I was surprised to walk through the kitchen and hear these noises coming from my oven. I opened the door for a peek just as a little eruption splattered a bit of batter and let out a loud fart. It turns out that "grunt" is a delicate euphemism for farty and burpy sounds. Something to keep in mind...

Dinner tonight: grilled pizzas, grilled corn

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)