Berries! (Don't even think about skipping the ice cream...)

When I was a girl (oh, hear we go again, the young ones sigh) and we said we were bored on a long, long, long July day (what happened to those July days? They aren't as long as they used to be) my mother, or Alice May's mother, would send us off berry picking.

Glad for a mission, Alice May and I would take a bucket and head out to the woods in search of black berries and raspberries, which grew in profusion in rural Carroll County, Maryland. Back there the woods are thick in the summertime, not only with trees but with weeds and wildflowers, poison oak and poison ivy, brambles and bushes...some of which were blackberry and raspberry bushes.

"Leave some for the birds," mother used to say. We did. We also kept an eye out for snakes, which were purported to like the berries too...

Eureka! Finding a bush laden with ripe fruit was like finding the mother lode -- might be enough on this bush so we can live like kings! Eat our fill and take home enough for our mothers to make into pies and preserves. Enough to make them smile when we returned, hunter-gatherers extraordinaire, hands stained, pants torn, proudly offering them our harvest.

Today I buy my berries at the grocery store, and they're usually from California or Mexico. Sometimes I chance upon them when hiking in Colorado, but I feel bad taking them from the wildlife. OK, maybe just one...

Berry Cobbler

2 lbs. mixed berries
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
a good dose of ground cinnamon, about 1/2 tsp.
1 tsp. ground ginger

For the cobbler topping:

2 and 1/4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking soda
6 Tbsp. chilled, unsalted butter cut into little pieces
1 lg. egg
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup finely minced crystallized ginger (optional, but really adds a nice touch)

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly butter a 9x13 inch baking dish.

Combine berries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and ground ginger in a bowl and toss to coat. Pour berry mixture into the baking dish.

To make topping by hand: In a separate bowl stir flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Scatter the butter pieces over the top and cut in the butter with a pastry blender, or two forks until the mixture resembles coarse meal. In another small bowl, whisk the egg and cream, then pour this mixture into the flour mixture, stirring and tossing with a fork until it holds together. Then stir in the crystallized ginger.

Place dollops of the topping (will be thick and sticky) evenly over the berries. Sprinkle a little more sugar on the top. Place the dish on a rimmed baking sheet and bake the cobbler until the top is golden and the filling is bubbling, about 35 minutes. Take out and let cool for 10-15 minutes.

Eat warm Don't even think about skipping the big scoop of vanilla ice cream that goes with it! Next morning, have some for breakfast, with a little milk poured over.

Bon appetit! Or as the country folk say, Good eatin'!

a dog's dinner?

Ah, the extremes of life; the breadth, the width, the depth of experience!

On the 16th we dined on lobster; the next night we sat on logs in the midst of an abandoned cowboy camp and ate a backpacker's version of beef stroganoff, made with the dried Lipton version which we enhanced with fresh mushrooms sauteed in butter, a sprinkle of freeze-dried onion, and a can of roast beef. The stroganoff, which looks like a dog's dinner (an old sailor's term referring to a tangle of knotted lines)was superflous to the appetizer of wine, cheese, bread... and thou.

Remains of the Day...

We told everyone we were going backpacking but decided to stay home and brave the wilds tomorrow (the weather forecast is better), dining tonight on barbecued lobster tails a la Bob (his choice)in honor of my 56th birthday.

Keep in mind we have never cooked lobster in the 17 years of our marriage,nor during the 5-plus years of our courtship. Not that we haven't had extravagant and memorable meals, but we have never cooked lobster at home. Until tonight. What got into him, I don't know, but he went out in the rain and came home with wild-caught lobster tails, which he then pre-cut (very important, after hearing Rose's story about how Bruce made them for Joyce long ago, but they didn't have the proper implements, didn't pre-cut them, and ended up resorting to hammers, pliers, and frustration...)

Meanwhile, in true Leo style, I lounged my Big Day away, mostly in bed, reading, writing, and taking calls from well-wishers. No, I don't feel guilty at all. Many a year I worked on my birthday, and no lobster for me, so don't even go there.

There was the usual amount of cursing in the kitchen as Bob struggled with the kitchen shears to pre-split the carapaces (can lobster shells be called carapaces?), but I stayed snug up in my lair, content to be waited on. Oh, I did husk the corn-on-the-cob, which he bought to go along with the barbecued lobster tails with chive butter. It was a buttery meal. Lobster and corn were the vehicles for butter...

In between rain showers, Bob lit the grill, broiled the bugs, and at 9 o'clock, we toasted another year, poured a glass of chilled Chateau St. Jean, and ripped into the delicacy. Pictured, are the remains of the day.

Tomorrow night, with any luck, we'll be cooking on a campfire. It won't be lobster, but it'll be damned fine.

Mom's stuffed peppers

I was hungering for my mother's stuffed green peppers, I'm not sure why. As a kid I didn't like them all that well, but the adults did. Especially my father. After Mom died Bonnie would make them for him on New Year's Day.

So I called her the other day to ask her how to make them. And she told me how she makes them, and it's a typical family recipe because you can use this or you can substitute that. There's a lot of different ways to stuff a pepper, but I wanted to recreate Etta Lou's. And Bonnie Lou's.

Bonnie and I were trying to talk but the cell phone reception between Hedgesville, West Virginia and Steamboat Springs, Colorado was sketchy. "You're breaking up, Sis; I'm losing you." "Yeah, you're cutting out too." Anyway, I think I got the gist of the recipe, and the next day she emailed me with some clarifications and possible substitutions.

I love family recipes because they keep us connected in a sensual, visceral sort of way. Just the smell of them cooking evoked a rush of feelings. The memory of our mother's stuffed green peppers is something my sister and I have had in common since childhood and will share until we die. I'd like to pass the memory and tradition on, but truthfully the next generation will likely have their own.

I made them tonight for Bob. Probably not exactly the way my mother made them, or my sister. But I made them with love and left-overs, and we both enjoyed them, Bob and I. We ate them outside on the deck after dark, under the stars. My father would have liked that, I'm sure.


Mom's stuffed peppers for two:

I used ground pork, about half a pound.
bread crumbs and bulgar (I had bulgar on hand, heaven knows why. What could I have possibly made with bulgar? Anyway, it's optional. I think my mother used a little oatmeal for filler.)
one egg
salt and pepper; pinch of oregano or other Mediterranean seasoning.
a tablespoon of tomato sauce and a squirt of ketchup (This was a result of my own indecision about which to use.)
minced onion -- about 1/4
I added a handful of left-over cooked rice to help hold everything together.
2 green peppers washed,and hollowed out.

Parboil the green peppers for about ten minutes.
Place in baking dish smeared with olive oil.
Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl, then fill the peppers with a spoon. Cover top with a dab of tomato paste, or a slice of tomato. Add a little water to the baking dish, maybe a quarter cup.

Bake in a slow oven (325-350) for an hour or until the green peppers are wrinkled with some brown streaks and the topping is nice and brown. I actually cooked mine 1 hour and ten minutes. (It's pork, not sushi.)

Find cuisine?

August 9: Find Cuisine To create a fine meal using random items around the kitchen . This includes never before used spices and the culmination of three different pasta noodles and a can of diced tomatoes thus creating the pasta stew mess.
Stephanie: "What you cooking there?"
Nadine: "Some randomness with pasta. Kind of like a pasta stew. But messier."

Stephanie: "I love your find cuisine, Nadine."

-- from UrbanDictionary.com.

Oh, so there's a trendy name for the kind of cooking I excel at. Back when I was a single working mom, find cuisine was, like, the soup du jour. It's how we lived.

Find cuisine is for foodies on a budget, for busy people with no time to grocery shop, for bachelor-types who don't remember to go to the grocery store until they're starving, for creative stoners with a case of the munchies. In the current recession it's still a good way to keep food on the table. Most people I know, even poor working folk, have enough food in their cupboards and 'fridge to live for a week, at least.

Find cuisine is an art form born of necessity and honed through practice and imagination. To succeed you must develop a certain panache, a devil-may-care attitude. Be bold, be spontaneous, go beyond Urban Trend, and keep in mind there are starving children in third world countries who would cheerfully eat whatever strange fricassee you create and rate it five stars.

One of my facebook friends Neil posted this find cuisine recipe: looked through the pantry and found a 5 year old can of pizza sauce and a long forgotten bag of pasta. Added Tabasco, jalapeño, and a bit of habanero pepper to the sauce...grilled an Omaha steak that I found in the dim recesses of the freezer... and had a delicious Steak Diavolo dinner without spending a penny!

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Bon appetit!