When it's too hot to cook...

It is a cruel trick that during the season that blueberries are at their peak, it's way too hot to turn on the oven to turn them into a crisp or a pie. Best to pack them off to the freezer to be used later in the fall, leaving a few pints back to sprinkle on cereal or mix into the pancake batter.
If I could come up with a way to make a blueberry dessert on the grill, I would be thrilled. Instead, they end up in my oatmeal at breakfast, and they taste almost like dessert.
Here's how to do it:
     Microwave 1/3 cup of oatmeal with 2/3 cup of 2% milk for two to three minutes in the microwave. Keep an eye on it so that your bowl doesn't runneth over. Cleaning up oatmeal goop is a good way to get your morning off to a bad start.
    Use potholders to take your bowl out of the microwave; it will be hot.
     Next, sprinkle about 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries (or thawed blueberries) onto your oatmeal, and add some chopped pecans or walnuts, if you have them. Don't bother with brown sugar or maple syrup unless you have an extreme sweet tooth; the sugar in the milk makes the oatmeal quite sweet, as do the berries. Let the heat of the oatmeal cook your berries for a minute or two, before you dig in. It's like eating blueberry crisp for breakfast, but way more healthy!

Tater Tots: It's what's for dinner.

I am a food snob. Not terribly so, but somewhat. I have never been above making fun of what my co-workers bring for lunch, or talk about cooking for dinner. One particular casserole recipe always made me roll my eyes and feel superior. My friend Kathy calls it “cowboy casserole,” and I used to make fun of her for cooking it. My brother calls it Tater Tot Casserole; he is a big fan. His friend Ben’s dad, who was the epitome of a low life, used to make it for them dinner sometimes when Matt and Ben were kids. The fact that it contains Tater Tots and creamed, condensed soup, and was the culinary signature of a man who ought to have been in jail for child neglect was enough for me to write it off as something that I would NEVER even try.

And then I started cooking for a picky 14-year old boy, who turns his nose up at anything containing onions, spice or anything “weird.” I am used to people loving my cooking. I am not used to people looking like they’re going to throw up all over their plate when they taste what I’ve made for dinner. My brother used to actually do that—throw up all over his plate. At his daycare, they had a rule that everyone had to at least try what was on their plate. But they didn’t make Matt follow that rule.  I have discovered that Matt and Peter’s tastes are similar, so I find myself often wondering, “Would Matt eat this?” when trying to figure out what to make for dinner. I find myself buying mac & cheese, Hamburger Helper, and various other foods that just seem wrong to me.

Tater Tot Casserole has become a staple in the house, though. It’s gluten-free, so my step-daughter can eat it, and the combination of meat, cheese and potatoes is actually pretty delicious. I’ve found that if I chop them finely enough, I can sneak some onion and mushrooms into the ground beef or sausage, while it’s browning, and no one complains.  I’m sure it’s not health food, but it’s not terrible, either. And, no one looks like they’re going to hurl. Success!

It's not as bad as it looks. In fact, it's amazing.

There are some foods that just look disgusting. When I was in college, a friend of mine insisted on eating sausage gravy and biscuits every time we went out for breakfast.  I could barely stand to look at it, and I never, ever entertained the idea of trying it. Lumpy wallpaper paste looked more appetizing.

However, I have been converted. It happened strictly out of politeness.  I was a guest at someone’s home, they proudly served it as a special treat for breakfast, and I have better manners than to turn up my nose at someone else’s cooking.  And now, all I can say is, “Yum!”

My favorite variation involves that scrumptious pairing of pork and apples. While the crumbled sausage is frying, I add some apples slices and shallots, and sauté until everything is caramelized. A little black pepper and thyme go into the mix, and then a sprinkling of flour to make the roux.  Milk or half and half is added to make the gravy, and I let the whole thing simmer while the biscuits bake. I’m a Bisquick girl (or rather, the Aldi version of Bisquick,) while my mom swears by the rolls of refrigerated biscuits from Walmart. A Southern friend of hers tipped her off to the Walmart biscuits, and Mom claims that no one has more authority on the subject of biscuits than a gal from the South.

I love this breakfast when it’s chilly, and I know I have a long day ahead of me. It’s one of those “sticks to your ribs” kind of meals, and feels both decadent and folksy. I've been converted.

No flour OR sugar? You've got to be kidding.

 When I accepted a marriage proposal from a man who had two teenagers, some of my friends and family were a little scared for me. A lot scared, in fact.

"There's a special place in heaven for the step-parents of teenagers," my mother told me, jokingly. However, after teaching high school for 17 years, I was pretty sure I could handle it.

"But they don't go home at the end of the day," one of my friends said to me.

"There won't be 34 of them in the same room, either," was my retort.

I'm only a month into this whole step-mom thing, but so far, the biggest challenge has been cooking. I love to cook, but I am in an unusual situation. My step-daughter, Hannah, who is 15, is gluten-intolerant. For a person who considers her stand-mixer with dough-hook one of her most prized possessions, this was hard for me to take. I didn't realize how often bread and rolls and pasta and tortillas played backdrop to the meals I cook, until they were off limits. And while there are gluten-free alternatives to these items, they are often expensive and a bit questionable in texture. Anyone who has ever substituted a veggie burger for a real hamburger, expecting the same experience, knows what I'm talking about.

But, Hannah loves to cook, and is willing to experiment to find what will work. Last week, she invited a girl friend over to make home-made pizzas for dinner, and while shopping for supplies at the grocery store, she knew exactly which gluten-free pizza dough mix yielded the best results.

Gluten-free cooking often means that instead of pasta or bread, grains and rice provide the new backdrop to our meals, instead. Quinoa and brown rice are becoming my new "go-to" staples, which is probably a whole lot healthier for the entire family.

Add into this mix my step-son, Peter, age 13, who was diagnosed with type one diabetes less than a week after Geoff and I married. The day he was diagnosed, Peter and his dad came home from the hospital with a binder about three inches thick; a how-to manual for managing diabetes. All of the information about testing blood sugar levels, counting the carbohydrates in a meal to calculate the proper insulin dosage, and what and when Peter could eat was absolutely overwhelming. Peter took all of this like a champ, never complaining, and instantly incorporating the numerous blood sugar tests and insulin injections into his routine like it was no big thing. For me, the challenge was to figure out what I could do to make life normal for Peter.

Probably the biggest challenge for Peter was not having to stick himself for his blood tests and injections, but rather that he couldn't eat whenever he felt like it. I don't think any of us realize how much we "graze" during the course of a day, unless we're not allowed to. Peter's doctor told us that he should take an insulin injection before each meal, and before bedtime, to manage his blood sugar. He could not eat unless he took insulin to help him convert the carbohydrates in the food, and he could only take insulin every four hours. So, between meals, there was no snacking.

The doctor did give us a list of "free" foods, meaning they had no carbohydrates, so Peter could eat them without taking an insulin injection. The list read like a manual from those high-protein diets. Hard-boiled eggs, cheese sticks, peanuts and beef sticks were the main items, and all I could think was, "Well that doesn't seem very healthy!" In later weeks, we learned from the diabetes education team at the hospital how to account for other snacks, but at first, things looked pretty dismal.

In the days following Peter's diagnosis, we religiously studied the labels on pre-packaged foods, the nutritional content of different restaurant offerings, and used various internet sites to calculate the nutritional value of different recipes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and we all began to think about the make-up of our food a bit more. Just as Hannah's gluten-intolerance means that everyone in the family is eating a lot less by way of refined flour products, Peter's diabetes will make us all think twice about nutrient-devoid, carbohydrate-heavy food choices.

"What on earth do you cook for them?" one of my friends asked, horrified, when we met for a girls' weekend. In truth, it has been fun modifying some of my old favorite recipes. My most recent success came in the form of gingerbread waffles. I have a recipe in my Harrowsmith cookbook that I have been playing with for years, adding whole wheat, reducing oil, and otherwise trying to improve its nutritional content. The first time I tried a gluten-free version, I used rice flour, but wasn't particularly happy with their grainy texture. This week, I used a mixture of almond meal and gluten-free baking mix, and replaced most of the oil with canned pureed pumpkin. The almond meal certainly changes the protein to carbohydrate ratio for the better, and while there's not enough pumpkin to count as a whole serving of vegetables, I figure that the little bits add up. Besides, they still had that decadent breakfast treat feel to them, which was exactly what I wanted.

Sauteed apples make the perfect topping to my modified gingerbread waffles.

Cooking is one of the ways that I show people I care about them. Making my dad his favorite chocolate chip cookies before he went away for a hunting weekend, baking bacon and ham filled sandwich rolls for my brother to take on the Chicago to Mackinac sailboat race, finding an elegant cheesecake recipe for my mom's birthday are just things that feel natural to me. I am finding that this form of affection is also helping me to navigate the tricky terrain of step-parenthood. Catering to my new family's nutritional needs is one of the most non-threatening ways I have found to show them that I care about them.

My toolbox

Today in the composition class I teach at a local community college, I had my students read a section from Stephen King's On Writing, in which he reflects on his grandfather's toolbox, and the tools that he has collected, as a writer. As my students and I wrote, following our discussion, I realized that the closest thing I have to a toolbox is in the kitchen.

My toolbox is in my kitchen. It’s not an actual toolbox. It’s my collection of cookbooks and recipes, passed down and clipped out. It is my drawer full of gadgets, from whisks and spatulas of all sizes to my mezzaluna and hand-me-down rolling pin. It is the knowledge I have gained over the years from Nigella and Julia, as well as my mom, aunts and grandmothers. It is my handwritten notes in the margins, of substitutions, variations and general comments. It is the splash of ingredients staining the pages of the old favorites I come back to again and again.

Not many people seem to cook anymore. I notice that when I’m at the grocery store, I’m one of the few people with actual ingredients, not just frozen items that will go into the microwave or oven. Just like it seems fewer and fewer people know how to change the oil in their own car, iron a shirt or sew on a button, it seems the art of cooking has been replaced by take out. While that makes me a little sad, it also makes me feel proud to be keeping the art alive.

My dad has an actual toolbox. So does my brother. So does my husband. I see the satisfaction they take away from a project well-done. I feel the same way when I have created something amazing in the kitchen. The moment that the castle-shaped bundt cake exits the pan in crisp-angled perfection, the instant the sugar carmelizes on top of my crème brulee. Even something as mundane as a weeknight dinner makes me feel proud when, “It smells like heaven in here,” is the first thing I hear from kids arriving home from school.

I hope that my kitchen toolbox never gets dusty, and that someday, someone else will use it and appreciate it as much as I do. I hope that my grandma’s sour cream cookie recipe, which was printed on the back of the memorial cards for her funeral, will always be the taste of Christmas, and that my mom’s cut-out cookie recipe will always be a part of special occasions. And I hope that someday, the things that I’m cooking for my family right now become part of the traditions they pass on to their own families.

That fine balance...

Once upon a time, I was a canning nut. I scavenged the Boyne City farmers' market for pickling cukes, even though I hate pickles; I bought pecks of tomatoes and peaches, and made more kinds of jams than I care to remember. Everyone I knew started giving me their old jars, and I made things like dilly beans, even though I didn't like those, either. What was I thinking?!
Eventually, the charm wore off. I came to realize that I was never going to have chickens in the backyard, or incorporate the plans from Mother Earth News for building a greenhouse from old windows, or hooking up my exercise bike to power the house. Not that any of those things are bad ideas. I just didn't have the time or the know-how, and it seemed that the pay-off was not worth finding the time or learning how. But, my adventures in canning did teach me a few tricks that have come in handy in the kitchen over the years, and as it turned out, there are definitely some things that are worth making yourself. By the way, pickles are not one of them, especially if you don't like pickles in the first place!

Jam is totally worth it. One of my favorites is apple pie jam. (Thank you, Linda Lou from the GardenWeb site canning and preserving forum.) I'll tell you more about that this fall, when it's time to make it. Strawberry freezer jam; also totally worth it. I like the freezer variety because it tastes more like fresh strawberries, and you don't have to worry about all the berries floating to the top of the jar, in an unappetizing grayish-red mess, leaving a puddle of jelly in the bottom. My completely insane friend, Tressa, made blueberry-lavender jam for wedding favors when she got married this summer. That one is definitely worth repeating, although perhaps not to the tune of 150 half pints cooked in a Chicago-size apartment kitchen.

Taking advantage of the blanching water to get some peaches ready for a crisp.

Blanched tomatoes waiting to be peeled. Look at how those skins are splitting!

Some things I have found to work best as kind of a blend. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, some of my book club girlfriends and I got together to make the tomato sauce recipe from the book. We started early in the morning, and finished late at night, completely bespeckled with tomato bits. All that work rendered not nearly enough sauce, and we found ourselves judging which of our dinner guests were "sauce-worthy," kind of like Elaine from "Seinfeld"'s judgement about the "sponge-worthiness" of her various man friends.

With the tomato sauce, I have arrived at a compromise. Each fall, I still go to the farmers' market and buy at least a peck of Roma tomotoes. I faithfully blanch them (although I did a few peaches first, for a peach crisp to go with dinner), peel off those skins and squeeze out the seeds. Then, into the blender they go, sometimes with a bit of jalepeno, for winter chili. I fill up those rectangular freezer containers, label away, and everything goes into the freezer. Mason jars have been known to be called up, too. I've had great luck freezing these, as long as they're not overfilled.
 No standing over a hot pot for hours, waiting for the sauce to boil down, and more hours over a hot pot to can it. In fact, the only hot pot is the one for the blanching, and I only had that going for 30 minutes or less. I worked out quite the little assembly line this year, of coring and "x-ing," into boiling water, into ice bath, into colander, where I amassed my tomatoes until they were all blanched. And from there, I finished preparing them from the freezer, while watching The Travel Channel. If only Anthony Bourdain had been in Tuscany, my life would have been complete!
I love being able to take these containers out of the freezer all winter long, instead of buying cans of tomatoes. They make great sauce, chili, vegetable soup base, and the list goes on and on. Yum!

Labeling the ones with jalepenos!

Adventures in grocery shopping by bicycle

It'll be so European...
This is what I thought when I hopped on my bike last week and headed to the grocery story a mile or so away from my new home. When I moved to Holland, MI from the northern part of the state, one of the things that I was looking forward to was riding my bike more. Holland has bike paths everywhere, while the road that my old house faced didn't even have a shoulder.
So I packed up my shopping bag and put a few dollars in my pocket, and headed to the grocery store to get some produce to go with that evening's dinner. Things began to fall apart after I came out of the store and loaded my purchases into the bike basket. My combination cable wouldn't come unlocked. I'd had that moment of "maybe I should test this first" when I had locked the bike up; I couldn't remember the last time I had actually used the cable. But I hadn't tested it. I had just hoped for the best. Now I couldn't get my bike free, even after trying the lock a dozen times, and enduring the stares of people who thought I might be doing something untoward, like stealing it.
After a hot and dusty walk home, and waiting for my husband to come home from work, we returned to the store to "steal" my bike back. His tin snips did the job on the cable, and my bike was free. I felt rather silly, getting locked off of my bike.

Today, I redeemed myself. With a new lock coiled around the frame of my bike, I took off for the Holland Farmers' Market this morning. It was a mostly flat, uneventful ride, only made challenging by the wierd barriers the Padnos metal recycling plant has placed near all of their driveways, which form a little obstacle course/maze for people walking or on bikes. I guess they're to keep people from driving on the sidewalks, but really, who does that?
At the market, I tempted fate and bought a dozen brown speckly eggs, in addition to a pint of blueberries and a little box of raspberries. A quart of green beans filled the rest of the space left in my bike basket. As I unlocked my bike and wheeled it back from the bike rack, I had visions of spilled berries and cracked eggs on the road if I took a tumble. But luckily, it seemed that I had used up all my bad luck on my previous outing.  As I rode home, I thought that what I really needed was one of the gorgeous boquets of sunflowers I had seen, sticking out of the top of my basket. That would have been just lovely. Instead, I settled for the satisfaction of making it back home, with my bike, all in the same trip, and not cracking an egg or spilling even one berry.