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Where did the sweet corn come from? Plus an amazing bread pudding.

May 9, 2025 //
2

I went to the farmers market today, as I do almost every Saturday, but I went to Safeway first because I needed tissues and dishwashing liquid and jarred salsa. I vaguely remembered that there was something on special that I wanted, so I cruised the produce section, and there it was: fresh corn, five ears for five bucks. I checked to make sure it had been grown in the U.S. — I don’t believe in importing produce from Mexico.

I last ate fresh corn in October, so I bought five ears and started thinking about what I would make with it, starting with pizza and pasta. I bought a small jar of sun-dried tomatoes to go with the corn. By next year I will be growing and drying cherry tomatoes again once I have a yard of my own.

The new crop in the market today was asparagus. I don’t like asparagus, so I passed it by. But there was a potato farmer so I bought a bag of red potatoes to supplement all of the spring greens: arugula, spring mix, bok choy, radishes. I’ve been eating radish greens lately, sauteed with pasta or in eggs, so I bypassed the bunches of turnips as well.

I picked up a dozen farm fresh eggs, brown and blue. For those of you keeping track, they cost eight dollars, so you can still eat an egg-based meal for two bucks.

I made pizza for lunch with pesto, mozzarella, an ear of fresh corn, feta and some sun-dried tomatoes. While it baked I made a salad of spring mix, arugula and a sliced radish. Then I had not one, but two modest slices of my chocolate beet cake with sour cream frosting, my reward for carrying a heavy backpack all morning.

Tonight I’ll probably eat pasta with Italian sausage, feta, lime, sun-dried tomatoes and more corn. I might throw in bell peppers, bok choy or arugula if I want more greens.

After lunch I found an old Facebook post of mine from today’s date. When I lived in California I bought strawberries, apricots, peaches and artichokes on May 3rd. Sigh. One of Kelly’s friends brought me a basket of strawberries yesterday and they are delicious, but stone fruit is a long way off and I don’t know if we get artichokes in western Washington at all. Two of the things I miss most about my native state is the variety of fresh produce available year-round and the quality of that produce. Here, however, we have utterly beautiful autumns with turning trees and springs full of lilacs, peonies and rhododendrons.

I started researching trees for a home orchard again: I don’t have a house and yard yet, but I will, and I will want to start some trees as soon as I can so that I will be harvesting my own peaches and figs again in a few years.

This morning I turned my gift of strawberries into strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes. I have been making this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for several years (My former partner loved strawberries).

Since I started this post, I have been completing cooking projects: I candied all of the orange peels I had saved in the freezer. I used a vegan vanilla cake mix to make cupcakes and frosted them with some of my leftover sour cream chocolate frosting.

This morning, I needed breakfast because I finished the strawberry pancakes yesterday. I had some milk that is on the verge of turning that I needed to use. I remembered that I had some bread in the freezer. I pulled out the bread, which turned out to be part of a loaf of challah. Good. I would use it to make a breakfast bread pudding with candied orange peel.

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees. I cubed the bread and chopped up orange peel. And then inspiration struck: what if I incorporated the last of my leftover sour cream chocolate frosting? Chocolate-orange breakfast bread pudding was born.

I made it the usual way: put the cubed bread in a bowl. I added the frosting to the bread before beating the eggs in the frosting bowl so as to dislodge all of the bits of frosting and incorporate them into the eggs. I added the eggs to the bread and frosting.

Then I made a mistake: I know to scald milk for bread pudding, but I skipped that step and just poured the milk over the bread, frosting and eggs. I added vanilla.

Then I tasted the custard — don’t do this if you are afraid of raw eggs — I needed to see how sweet it was since I don’t usually put frosting in bread pudding. I added a scant 1/3 cup of sugar and stirred everything together.

The result of my mistake is that my pudding resisted setting. After half an hour, I stirred the top layer back in to absorb more liquid and continued to bake the pudding. Because I did not scald the milk, my bread pudding took nearly an hour and forty-five minutes to bake. But it did finally set.

And OMG is it delicious! I am not normally a chocolate for breakfast fan, but the richness of the sour cream frosting and the chocolate and orange flavors are marvelous.

I didn’t measure the milk. I used three extra-large eggs because that is what I had. The bread was about a third of a loaf of challah. I would guess there was about a cup of frosting — maybe a generous cup. Candied orange peel to taste. 1/3 cup added sugar. A generous splash of vanilla. If you want a better guideline for proportions or ratios, consult an actual recipe for bread pudding — I usually just throw it together free-hand. Tassajara Bread Book has a good recipe for breakfast bread pudding But do yourself a favor and scald the milk! It will save you time and energy.

Stay tuned for next week’s adventures.

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Categories breakfast food, frugal eating, home cooking, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating

February 14, 2025 //
0

Dear Readers,

We are in a scary time in the U.S.A. The current administration has fired some federal workers and put others on leave. The current administration has frozen funds that had already been allocated by Congress for a number of state programs, triggering more layoffs and potential layoffs. Billionaire Elon Musk, who will not want for anything, likes to talk about how “pain” is necessary for the rest of us. He also likes to talk about cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

I have been living through a frugal period because, right now, I have extraordinary expenses that my income does not cover. I thought I would try to do some good by telling you how I am managing to grocery shop and eat on a limited budget. Perhaps it will give you some ideas that you will find helpful.

The background: I had been living in my elderly mother’s house serving as her primary caretaker 24/7 until she died of cancer in March 2024. In July 2024 I finished packing all of my things and putting them in storage in Washington State. After a period of house-sitting, traveling and bunking with friends, I rented a furnished cottage in Washington in October 2024 while I waited for my brother to sell my mother’s house and distribute to me my share of my mother’s estate.

I teach writing practice and meditation, but my income is not sufficient to pay for rent, storage, legal fees and basic living expenses. First I used some inherited money. Then I used what savings I had. Every month I cut spending where I could.

Food. When I got to Washington, I had no food. And I had Covid. You are not allowed to store any food — even canned goods or foods in sealed packages — in some storage units — so I brought no stored food with me: I was starting from scratch. Fortunately, while I was making my way to my temporary home on the bus, my landlady offered to pick up some basic foods for me. I checked the weekly local Safeway ad for specials and asked her for the following:

Two boxes of chicken broth. Two boxes of red pepper/tomato soup. A dozen eggs. A pound of butter. Five pounds of flour. A package of rolled oats. A pound of sugar. Honey. Baking powder. Baking soda. A gallon of whole milk. A box of Constant Comment tea bags. Frozen raspberries and blueberries. Salt. A hand of ginger. A head of garlic. Carrots. Broccoli. Four pounds of pasta (a weekly special). Whole wheat tortillas. She added two jars of marinara that I did not ask for. And she left me a container of lentil soup thawing on the counter in the cottage kitchen.

These basic groceries allowed me to cook and eat simple meals while I was sick: Oats cooked in milk with berries or carrots. Tortillas and cheese. Broth-based soups with garlic, ginger, vegetables and pasta. I ate the lentil soup the night I arrived, with gratitude, and climbed into my new (temporary) bed.

When I tested negative for Covid nine days later and finished my quarantine I went to Crab Fest where I bought a bottle of blood orange-infused olive oil and three containers of dark chocolate coated English toffee. I gave two of the toffee containers away as hostess gifts for people who put me up in California in November and kept the third one — I dip into it occasionally: it sits on a high shelf in my kitchen.

The blood orange oil is about half-gone. I use it in salad dressings often, along with lime or lemon juice for a citrus punch. This week I put nearly half a cup of it in some carrot-tahini muffins that I have been eating for breakfast, which gave the muffins a wonderful, fruity perfume. I also added some cut-up pitted dates and four crushed cardamom pods to the muffins. I have been eating one for breakfast every day, along with a serving of homemade home fries.

Last week, on my weekly trip to the farmers market, I bought a roasting bag of root vegetables. It costs sixteen dollars and provides enough vegetables for one person for a week with some left for the next week. This assortment contained red potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and a red beet or two. I also bought a couple of onions and some orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. I described the salad I made from thinly-sliced Brussels sprouts last week. I’ve made it twice. I ate two helpings at dinner tonight and it is gone, but I’m going back to the farmers market tomorrow. Sweet potatoes became by go-to dinner this week: I roasted a bunch of them in the oven and then nuked them with red salsa from a jar and ate them with sour cream. For lunches, I mostly ate turkey chili that I had made with onions, garlic, chili powder, dried pinto beans and leftover Thanksgiving turkey breast from the freezer.

The sweet potatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts and root vegetables cost me a total of $32.40. I made the chili last week from ingredients I had on hand except for chili powder, which I bought at the grocery store. If you haven’t moved recently, you probably have some spices and herbs you like on hand. One of the last things I did before I left California was buy a Penzey’s gift card on special ($50 worth of spices for $35): that allowed me to start building up a new collection of spices. I started with sweet spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, crystallized ginger, vanilla because I like to bake.

Monday, because I was running out of milk, eggs, toilet paper, paper towels and sponges, I begged a ride to Grocery Outlet. I brought a list and tried to stick to $100.00 limit. I actually spent $105.00 (pretty close), but that included the paper towels, sponges and toilet paper. I bought mostly protein foods, including cheeses and dry salami, plus pizza crusts (four for $3.79) because I like to make pizza: I can make my own crust, but this is one easy shortcut I’m willing to pay for right now because I can assemble a pizza in ten minutes. I still have mushrooms and sausages at home and I bought cherry peppers to liven things up. I also stocked up on citrus: blood oranges, lemons and limes. And I bought myself two treats: a family-sized box of Cheez-Its (on sale) and a large container of chocolate pudding from a reliable brand. Once again, I can make cheese straws and I can make chocolate pudding, but sometimes I like to give myself a break from constant meal production from scratch.

Here’s a menu of what I ate this week:

Breakfast: decaf coffee with half and half, home fries, carrot-tahini muffin; Lunch: turkey chili, Brussels sprout salad, corn tortillas or homemade bread; Snacks: homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows, toast, butter and jam, carrot-tahini muffin, tea and shortbread finger, Cheez-Its; Dinner: roasted sweet potato with salsa and sour cream OR bread, cheese, salami and cherry peppers.

You don’t have to eat what I eat or like what I like. It does help to save money on groceries if you like to cook, but even people who like to cook don’t like to cook all of the time. My tips for making things better: 1) When you can invest in seasonings that you like. For me, investing in vanilla, nutmeg, cardamom, tahini, tamari, Tabasco and blood orange olive oil has paid off in flavorful meals, which keep me from getting bored. 2) Allow yourself a few treats. Technically, I didn’t “need” chocolate pudding and Cheez-Its, but when you are living frugally an occasional treat helps you not feel deprived or doomed. 3) Try to include some fresh, seasonal vegetables and/or fruit AND make use of dried, canned and frozen alternatives (Right now there is no local fruit here). 4) If you or your family like something, make a lot of it. I don’t mind eating the same things day after day because I like my cooking and I balance my meals, but you can always freeze some of what you make if you don’t like to eat the same thing over and over.

Stay tuned for another installment of frugal eating next week. I already know I’m going to make a beet variation on the carrot muffins. And please feel free to use the comment section to share your own tips and discoveries.

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Categories cooking, frugal eating, grocery shopping, home cooking, Philosophy, Uncategorized

Christmas Cookies, an essay

December 31, 2023 //
2

No one makes Christmas cookies like we do.

My mother baked a lot of cookies when I was growing up: Toll House chocolate chip cookies with walnuts, oatmeal cookies with raisins or coconut, peanut butter cookies marked by the criss-cross tines of a fork, snickerdoodles, butterscotch refrigerator cookies, brownies. She had a cookie press and I remember a few experiments with spritz.

When November came each year she chopped pounds of dried and candied fruit and nuts for homemade fruitcake, soaking the baked loaves in brandy. And in December she began holiday cookie production. Her specialty was thin, crisp cookies, rolled, cut and decorated with colored sugar. She made Moravian ginger cookies. She made butter cookies flavored with lemon and vanilla. She rolled her cookies out on flour-sack dishtowels on a wooden cutting board with a wooden rolling pin. The recipes made at least six dozen each.

I don’t know how she did it. I began apprenticing with her as a Christmas cookie baker when I was perhaps twelve years old. The floured cloth would wrinkle. The dough would stick to the rolling pin and tear. Some of the cookie cutters would not pick up the cut cookies and if I forgot to flour a cutter between each use the dough would crumple. The thin cookies had to be watched in the oven, pulled at the first sign of browning. Moravians burned really fast.

My first efforts were lackluster. I would use too much flour to try to control the sticky dough. The room would be too warm. I would not roll the dough thinly enough — usually Mom would take another pass or two with the rolling pin, or even take over, stretching the dough further than I could.

When I was in my thirties, I bought Mom a marble slab and a marble rolling pin to make cookie-making easier. I had read somewhere that working on chilled marble helped keep cookie dough at the correct temperature. She didn’t use the marble much, not liking to pick up the heavy slab. I used it at her house, clearing a shelf in the refrigerator to hold it, putting the metal bowls of cookie dough on top of it. I found it easier to roll cookie dough on marble than on cloth and when a construction crew was demolishing the old Cogswell College building in San Francisco I carted home a piece of marble from the walls. My boyfriend at the time cut it into a baking slab for me.

By the time Mom was eighty, she had ceded thin, crisp Christmas cookies to me. She still made dream bars and Russian teacakes, Rice Krispie candy, poppy seed bread baked in old coffee cans, and fudge. I spent long hours in the breakfast room rolling, cutting, decorating with colored sugar, ferrying finished trays to the oven and then to cooling racks.

One Christmas a friend gave me a silicone baking mat, a tool which made it possible for me to master Mom’s thin, crisp pie crust (Mine had always been too thick). A floured silicone mat will not stick, allowing you to roll thin sheets of pie dough, cookie dough, noodles. I acquired a bench scraper, which I had seen on some cooking show, and a microplane zester. My baking life got easier, although Christmas cookies still required long hours of work.

Somewhere along the line, I invented a third rolled and cut cookie: cocoa shortbread. I had the thought to swap one half cup of cocoa powder for one half cup of flour in a classic shortbread cookie. Those joined the roll and cut Christmas cookie line-up, but did not have to be rolled as thinly as butter cookies and Moravians. Then I read about Deb Perelman’s butter cookies made with maple syrup and nutmeg. I made them one year instead of our traditional butter cookies. My brother and I preferred them, so I swapped the maple recipe for the older one and never looked back.

I added one more cookie to our permanent Christmas cookie repertoire. One day twenty-some years ago, my mother was reminiscing about pfefferneuesse, a cookie they bought from the store during her childhood. Pfefferneusse are traditionally made with ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon and allspice and candied orange peel. I remembered those tubs of commercial candied mixed peels from the days of fruitcake and shuddered. But both of us like candied ginger, so I decided to substitute that for the candied peel. Later, I started candying my own orange peel and made the cookies with a combination of the two ingredients.

The first time we made pfefferneusse they lacked something. Mom thumbed through some old cookbooks and discovered that the cookies used to contain ground white pepper. I threw some white peppercorns in the coffee grinder and added the fragrant powder to my next batch of dough. That was it — the “pfeffer” in “pfefferneusse.”

Most of our cookies are plain, not frosted, topped only with a sprinkle of colored sugar, but pfefferneusse require a coat of royal icing flavored with anise. I still struggle with getting the icing to set properly and watch for a dry day to make it.


* * *

Fast forward to 2023. My mother is ninety-three and has severe dementia and terminal cancer. I became her primary caretaker some months ago and do not have the time to bake Christmas cookies. I bought some chocolate stars she wanted from Trader Joe’s. We’ve eaten a few, but we don’t really like them: we miss our traditional cookies.

I put out a plea on Facebook, describing our Christmas cookie traditions. A friend offered to send us some cookies, to order them from a local bakery. I began to look at bakery menus. No one made the right things: there was too much chocolate, too many year-round cookies. My friend Kate offered to bake us some cookies if I could come up with something simple. I assigned her Russian teacakes, sending her the recipe that Mom had used for years. She brought them by a few days before Christmas with a small bag of her traditional homemade Christmas cookies. The teacakes were almost right, but a bit underdone and sporting only a thin and mottled powdered sugar coating (What we would consider the first of two required coats). Someone else dropped off first a bag of gingerbread cookies and then a bag of cut out cookies and rocky road fudge. A third friend, an experienced baker, volunteered to bake a batch of cookies for us. I sent her the pfefferneusse recipe and the maple sugar cookie recipe. When no one chose the pfefferneusse, I candied a batch of orange peel, hoping to make just that one cookie before Christmas Day (That is as far as I got with that project, but several of the twelve days of Christmas remain).

Alice chose the maple cookies and brought them by on the evening of Boxing Day, along with lemon biscotti, anise biscotti and stamped gingerbread that she had made. After she had gone, I opened the boxes to look. I found small maple stars, at least a quarter-inch thick, bearing marks of flour, sans decorative sugar. You could stack four of our cookies in the space of one of hers.

The flavor of the maple cookies was good, but, alas, they were not our cookies, rolled so thin as to be almost translucent. The lemon biscotti, however, were delicious. I might ask Alice for the recipe.

After sampling Alice’s cookies and Peg’s cookies and Kate’s cookies, I realized that our Christmas cookies, which I have always loved, are truly special. Other people make thick cookies, doughy cookies, under-baked cookies, when they make cookies with cookie cutters. Some of them apply white icing. I have not tasted a single cookie this season like our cookies.

In the past, only two people have come to bake Christmas cookies with me. The woman who is now my brother’s wife came to learn to bake them, spent a long afternoon with me in San Leandro cutting and decorating one year. She never came again. And an old friend came to take part in the holiday cookie marathon. She enjoyed decorating cookies with colored sugar, but soon suggested we abandon the project and walk to the mall instead. “This is a lot of work,” she said.

Indeed. A more recent friend suggested that I develop a sideline in baking cookies. “I would buy them,” she said.

“Too much work,” I responded, “I would never do production baking.”

At my current age of sixty-five, it probably takes me two days to make the four main cookie doughs and perhaps another two or three days to roll, cut, decorate and bake three kinds of cookies, plus a half-day to ice the pfefferneusse. It is a lot of work, special to the Christmas season: I only make these cookies once a year in a year when I have time to bake. I enjoy baking them and baking them tires me: once a year is enough, but I miss them in years when I don’t make them. Sometimes I pack up tins of them to send to friends or send them home with Christmas dinner guests.

I don’t know whether I’ll get even the pfefferneusse made this year. Yesterday I made homemade noodles and cloverleaf yeast rolls. I have not made any Christmas pie yet (twelve days remember) and I still have to bake my Mom an elaborate lemon-filled coconut cake for her 94th birthday. I’ll make Christmas cookies again though in some less busy year because their absence has taught me how unique and wonderful they are.

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Categories Christmas baking, seasonal recipes

Stone Fruit Crisp

July 1, 2023 //
3

This post is a throwback to my old style of blogging when I posted recipes each week. As I mentioned recently, I am doing a lot of cooking these days, just to get three meals on the table and to provide food that my aged mother might eat.

The hit of the summer has been a simple fruit crisp. I make it with whatever stone fruit is languishing here: I’ve used cherries in every one, along with white or yellow nectarines, peaches, apricots that are too mushy to eat out of hand. You can use plums if you like them (I don’t, but if someone gives me plums or pluots they are probably going into fruit crisp). You can supplement with frozen fruit or canned fruit as stone fruit season fades, but it is glorious right now made with fresh fruit.

Here is how I make it:

I get out an 8″ x 8″ Pyrex pan and make sure the middle rack in my oven is available. I assemble all eligible fruit on the counter by the cutting board, giving cherries a quick rinse in a bowl of water. Keep that bowl handy — you will use it again.

I put the 8″ x 8″ pan on the counter and start slicing fruit into it. I start with cherries, halving them, removing the pit with my thumb and dropping the halves into the pan. When I have used up whatever cherries I have, I cut up nectarines, apricots or peaches into the same pan, in chunks or wedges — it doesn’t matter. I do this until the pan is three-quarters full of fruit — I don’t measure the fruit: if you don’t have enough, you can add a can of sour cherries or peach slices or apricots, or some handy frozen fruit.

When I have cut up all of the fruit I turn the oven on to 375 degrees F. While it heats, I make the topping.

I empty the cherry-washing water into our waste-water bowl. I take the now empty, damp bowl and add

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup almond flour

1 Tbsp unbleached flour

2/3 cup brown sugar

Dashes of cinnamon and freshly-grated nutmeg. Sometimes a dash of ginger.

Using a pastry blender, I cut in 1/3 cup unsalted butter. That I measure using the handy-dandy guide on the butter wrapper. I blend the butter and dry ingredients until the topping looks uniformly crumbly. I drop the topping by large handfuls on top of the fruit, trying to cover the whole top. It always works — this is an easy recipe.

Carry your assembled crisp to the preheated oven. Bake on the middle rack for 35-45 minutes, depending on how much browning you like: we like ours brown.

Some notes: I use almond flour here because I think the flavor enhances stone fruit and also because it adds a bit of protein to dessert. You can use white or whole wheat flour instead if you like. I add the tablespoon of unbleached flour for binding the topping — you may not need it. I use unsalted butter because that is what we buy. I like cinnamon and nutmeg with fruit. I also like ginger. I haven’t tried cardamom, but it’s only a matter of time.

For me, the level of sweetness in this crisp is ideal. You don’t have to sweeten the fruit because some of the topping sifts down during baking and does it for you. Similarly, the topping thickens the juices. I like the crisp warm or cold. I usually eat it plain, but you could eat it with ice cream, whipped cream, yogurt. I’ve been known to reheat it topped with milk in the microwave, or stir a serving into oats as I cook them. If you like fruit desserts, give it a try.

Just a reminder: I still have openings in my July 15-16 Natalie Goldberg-style writing practice retreat, so, if your idea of a treat is two days devoted to writing, reading aloud and meditation, please consider joining us for $80.00 USD. I also welcome new students to my ongoing Monday AM Practice Group for either July 10, 17, 24 and 31 or August 7, 14, 21 and 28. Each four-week session costs $100.00 USD payable via PayPal at PayPal.Me/yourbusker. Yes, you can sign up for both July and August and the retreat as well if you are hot to write this summer. And no one says you can’t eat stone fruit crisp during your meal breaks!

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Categories baking, desserts

Wanting Mind and the Gospel of Seasonal Eating

July 18, 2012 //
41

Original watercolor self-portrait with produce and guitar. Sharyn Dimmick.

Self Portrait with Wanting Mind. 8″ x 8″ Gouache and acquarelle.

Recently, I have been reintroduced to wanting mind. You know, the voice in your head that says life would be glorious if the day were sunnier, if there were more space in the freezer, if he would call. Wanting mind is a tremendous source of suffering because when you are listening to its siren song that something different would be better you can miss the opportunities that surround you right now, at this moment. Wanting mind likes to whine about the small thing that it has focused on like a high-powered laser directed at a spot of brain cancer, but whereas the laser may do you good, wanting mind will not.

It does no good to whine about what you don’t have or what you wish you had, dreaming up imaginary improvements to the present moment. You can put those on the page or the easel: often I paint things to look better than they actually do: my favorite is inventing backgrounds so that I don’t have to paint the same walls and windows over and over — I create wallpaper, wooden counters, checkered floors never seen in my actual house. It is alright to imagine improvements that you can create, but it is better if they don’t depend upon the actions of others or require removal of reality: thirty years of wishing I did not have cerebral palsy did nothing to remove it; accepting that I have it has been much more helpful.

What could I find to want in the middle of glorious summer? The farmers markets are overflowing with peaches, corn, tomatoes, ripe strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. My beloved Gravenstein apples will come in in two or three weeks says the apple man. Frog Hollow Farm had a sale on “cosmetically challenged peaches” Saturday, three dollars a pound for organic gold, and I took home a big sack. Fresh green figs came in the Riverdog Farm box, along with tiny green beans, cucumbers, lettuce, the first orange cherry tomatoes, fresh basil. For breakfast this morning I could have peaches, ollalieberries, blueberries or all three.

So what am I complaining about? I’m not complaining, I’m making a point: humans can always find a way to wish something was different, whether it is the weather, the menu, the president. Corporations make it their business to supply us with everything we want, things we don’t want and things we hadn’t even thought of wanting. Do you want tomatoes in December? Someone will ship them across the world for you. They won’t taste good. They will vaguely resemble tomatoes. And then you will think  what you need is fresh basil to go with them. But you don’t. What you need to do is wait for summer to taste the ripe, heirloom tomatoes on Deborah’s platter or pick them with Claire out of her allotment in England. Whenever summer comes where you live there will eventually be tomatoes and that is the time to eat them.

Seasonal eating is a voice speaking against the utterances of wanting mind. Seasonal eating tells you to go out and buy the peaches now because they will never get any better than on this July day in California. You eat them for breakfast with polenta cooked in milk and vanilla extract, sometimes a sprinkle of almonds. Seasonal eating says “Buy all of the ripe fruit you can eat — it’s better for you than other things, anyway.” The key is “ripe fruit,” whatever is coming off the trees and bushes in your neighborhood right now. If you are handy at preserving, you can buy extra and save some to freeze or can to tide you over in the winter months of potatoes, carrots, winter squashes and hardy greens. I always dry tomatoes. I never dry enough to last until the next tomato season, but I keep at it.

Two nights ago I took six bags of citrus peels from the freezer (We did need freezer room) and began the laborious process of scraping pith from them with a steak knife and a teaspoon. My hours of work will be rewarded with long-keeping candied peel from the lemons, oranges, limes and grapefruit we ate in the long winter months: the candied peel will enhance Christmas pfefferneusse, flavor muffins, serve as sweet snacks when this year’s peaches and berries are long-gone. This morning I took the thrice-boiled peels and scraped the white pith from them, watching the thin-bladed knife slide under the loose pith, left hand reaching into the pot for a new peel, right hand wielding the blade. And I realized I was out of time, that the only objects in the world were the citrus peels, the knife, the motion, the smell drifting up from the cutting board, that I no longer knowed or cared what time it was. This is the opposite of wanting mind and the cure: become absorbed in something simple.

The best way to make friends with seasonal eating is to visit farmers’ markets. Go every week for awhile to become familiar with what is in season now. Choose your foods and plan your menus around what is available. Or you can look for a CSA box, a community-supported agriculture program, that serves your area. For a flat fee, you get a box of fresh-picked produce each week, helping you to eat what is at its best now (My CSA also gives us some preserved things, precious bags of dried tomatoes and peaches during the winter or early spring).

Gardeners and farmers know that many things taste their best right out of the ground, warmed by the sun, eaten before the natural sugars can turn to starch. Nutritional studies now tell us that organically grown fresh-picked produce has more vitamins, minerals and micronutrients than produce that has been trucked across continents or oceans in refrigerated containers. Biting into just-picked local produce can even quell the wanting mind for a few minutes, stop it dead as it thinks instead “This is marvelous.” Unfortunately, its next thought will be, “How can I get more?”

Eating seasonally keeps me experiencing the pleasures that can be had on any given day. In the fall I might enjoy mushrooms. Every winter I make butternut squash soup with ginger. In the warm days of midsummer and early autumn I cannot eat enough Greek salads, enjoying the convergence of cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes. The first big treat of spring is strawberry shortcake. And we are all happier when we reach for the pleasures that we can have: when it is too cold to swim, light a fire and curl up with a book, bake some biscuits, make some gumbo, or get out a big pot and those citrus peels And when he is busy doing whatever he is doing it is a good time to pick up the guitar, the pen, the saucepan, the cookbook, the paintbrush — even the vacuum cleaner — and just do the next thing. He’ll call in his own time and the moment is about what to do when you feel that longing tugging at your sleeve.

Food Notes: As a bonus for soaking, scraping and boiling all of those peels, I got, besides the candied peel and the moments of peace, a lovely citrus-flavored simple syrup for cake, iced tea, baklava?

Painting Note: This week and last I have been participating in a new do-it-yourself artist residency, the Caerus Artist Residency, started by my friend Suzanne Edminster and her friend Karina Nishi Marcus. For a peek at my current sketchbook (including a slide show), please visit the Caerus blog.

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Categories candied citrus peel, desserts, home cooking, philosophy, Uncategorized

“My Somewhat Famous Tomato Platter,” A Guest Post by Deborah Sandler

July 15, 2012 //
30

Yes, I am still here (I haven’t decamped for France again), but I thought you might enjoy a special tomato season treat, a guest post from my friend Deborah Sandler.

Deborah Sandler has enjoyed California’s bounty of fresh local food since arriving here in 1979, and swears never to live anywhere else because the food is so good.  She loves to cook and to feed people, and often tells her guests, “Nobody goes hungry at my house!” Deborah is a Farmer’s Market freak, often attending at least two a week, year round, rain or shine, on the lookout for whatever is in season and at its best.  Tomatoes are one of her favorite foods, and she shares one of her tomato recipes here.  When she isn’t cooking, she sings, and practices family law (while making sure to bring her office-mates lots of fresh food, because nobody goes hungry in her office either).

Original watercolor painting shows platter of tomatoes, olives, basil, feta cheese.

“My Somewhat Famous Tomato Platter.” (after Deborah Sandler). 8″ x 8″ Acquarelle on Paper. Sharyn Dimmick.

Tomatoes are finally in season!  I yearn for them during the winter, and sometimes am seduced into buying hothouse tomatoes that look lovely but do not have the texture or zing of the real thing.  When you bite into a tomato that has been locally grown, recently picked, and never refrigerated, the flavor is huge and unmistakeable.  When I was growing up on the East Coast, tomatoes came wrapped in plastic, colored a sickly pink, four to a package, all exactly the same size and shape, firm and tasteless.  I lived in the suburbs, and didn’t know anyone who was growing tomatoes, so it was quite rare that I got to taste a real tomato.  That changed once I moved to California.  Many of the restaurants featured amazing tomatoes in their salads, and friends actually grew some in their yards.  I had no idea a tomato could look, smell or taste like this!  In recent years, heirloom tomatoes have appeared all over the place, stunning in their profusion of shapes, colors and flavors.  Their names are poetic and whimsical – here are just a few examples from one web site that sells seeds for them, and from my  local Farmer’s Markets:  Arkansas Traveler, Banana Legs, Bloody Butcher (ew!), Cherokee Purple, Black Russian, Dingwall Scotty, Green Zebra (and yes, these have stripes), Halfmoon China, Hank (hey, that’s my dog’s name!), Jersey Devil, Berkeley Tie-Die, Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Mr. Stripey, Nebraska Wedding, Yellow Pear, and Stump of the World.

I live in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area, about 30-45 minutes inland from the ocean and from San Francisco.  For those not in California, that means that the climate here is far different from that in San Francisco.  Where the City might be 62 degrees and foggy on a summer afternoon, here it may be over 100 degrees and sunny.  We get some of the San Francisco fog, but not much.  The down side is that our winters are colder, foggier, and danker than those in San Francisco.  We are only an hour from the Central Valley, which runs down through the center of the state, and where much of the nation’s produce is grown.  Even closer is Brentwood, a major agricultural area just to the east of us, that features plenty of U-Pick farms and orchards, as well as farm stands.  Because our local weather is so warm, plenty of people around here grow their own produce, and some even sell at the local Farmer’s Markets.  Here is a partial but by no means exhaustive list of Farmer’s Markets within 15-30 minutes of my house:  Martinez Sunday morning (I think this is now year-round), Martinez Thursday mornings, Concord Tuesday afternoons (year round), Concord Thursday evenings, Pleasant Hill, Lafayette, Moraga, Danville, Orinda, Walnut Creek Saturdays at The Shadelands and Sundays on Locust Street (more on these below), Martinez at the Contra Costa County Regional Medical Center, Walnut Creek Kaiser, Concord High School, and the list goes on.

My favorites are the Walnut Creek Saturday morning market at The Shadelands, and the Walnut Creek Sunday morning market on Locust Street.  Both are very large, with over 40 vendors,  and both are year-round.  The Saturday market is only a few years old but already bustling with happy patrons.  The Sunday market has been there over 20 years, and most of that time I’ve been there.  The vendors there have watched my kids grow up, and know me well as one of their regulars.  At The Shadelands, my favorite tomato vendor is Swank Farms, which has several tables strewn with all sorts of heirloom tomatoes every week.  At the Sunday market, I like Roseland Farms, where the seller has numerous flat boxes of heirlooms sorted by color.  He also is one of the very few vendors that sells San Marzano tomatoes, one of the world’s best cooking tomatoes.  These last weeks sitting out on the table, cook into very flavorful sauces and soups, or can be sliced into salads as firm yet flavorful dependable little oblong beauties.  Roseland Farms also has a big pile of cherry tomatoes of all kinds, and you can grab them by the handful or pick them out one by one.  The Shadelands market had a map with push pins, showing the location of each vendor, and how far away their farm is from the market site.  The average distance they come is only 89 miles.  The average distance food travels to our supermarkets is 1,500 miles.  The map had a sign on it reading, “Choose the food less traveled!”

Here is one of my favorite things to do with tomatoes.  This is my somewhat famous tomato platter.  Amounts are approximate.  I made this up, and it doesn’t have official amounts of anything.  Mess around with this as much as you want, and change it to your taste. The secret is the freshness of the ingredients.  And do not ever refrigerate tomatoes – it destroys their flavor!  Slice several heirloom tomatoes (as many colors as possible) onto a large platter in several layers.  You can make patterns of color or just do it randomly.  Chop up a handful or two of feta cheese and sprinkle that over the tomatoes.  Then sprinkle a generous handful or two of olives over that.  Lately I use mixed Greek olives from Whole Foods, and I recommend you not use olives from a jar – get fresh ones from an olive bar if you can.  If you have fresh heirloom cherry tomatoes in several varieties, sprinkle a handful of those over the top. Then chop up a generous handful or two of fresh basil leaves and sprinkle that over the top and around the platter.  The vinaigrette I use is homemade, and is quite tart, so you may want to try it separately before using it here, to adjust for taste if you want. This reverses the usual proportions in a vinaigrette, and has 2 parts vinegar to 1 part oil.  1-1/2 T best quality olive oil, 3 T red or white wine vinegar, 10-15 shakes of salt, 10-15 grinds of fresh ground pepper or 3 or 4 shakes of coarse ground black pepper, 2 or 3 shakes of granulated garlic, 2 or 3 shakes of dried mustard. Mix thoroughly and pour over the tomato platter, serve immediately.

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Categories salads, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized, vegetables

Caesar Salad Or Render Unto Caesar Those Things That Are Caesar’s.

June 6, 2012 //
45

Warning: this post may contain an embedded rant or two.

In the kitchen this morning, I have two large dry crusts of French bread, three eggs and several heads of baby romaine lettuce from the farm box. This late spring day appears to be one of the warm variety. I don’t know if these ingredients suggest anything to you: to me they suggest Caesar Salad.

My mama told me that Caesar Salad contains anchovies in the dressing. Cursory internet research suggests that Cesare Cardini used Worchestershire sauce rather than anchovies. I don’t even like anchovies, but I was taught to chop them finely and put them in the dressing for a Caesar Salad, so I do. I would not eat them on pizza. I would not snack on them out of the tin. I have never dared to make a pasta puttanesca because of the anchovies in it, but I keep anchovies in a jar of olive oil just so that I can make this salad when the mood strikes or when the ingredients are sitting around in the kitchen.

Furthermore, I do not care for any egg preparation that involves soft egg yolks — or hard egg yolks, for that matter. That leaves out poached eggs, fried eggs, eggs sunny side up, deviled eggs, hard-boiled eggs and Easter eggs. But I make an exception for Caesar Salad dressing, which calls for a coddled egg, cooked for one minute before you mix it with the other dressing ingredients.

Painting shows Caesar Salad and ingredients.

Caesar Salad. 8″ x 8″ Gouache and Watercolor Pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

The salad that makes me set aside my food aversions is truly magical. You put in anchovies and barely cooked egg yolk, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, black pepper. You toss the dressing with croutons, Romaine leaves and freshly grated Parmesan cheese and you have a crunchy, green refreshing salad with adequate protein from fish, egg and cheese. There is no need to add shrimp or grilled chicken to this salad as many American restaurants do.

First, make garlic-infused olive oil. Heat some garlic cloves in olive oil and allow the garlic and oil to sit while you do other things. While you are at it, halve a raw clove of garlic and rub it onto your wooden salad bowl. If you like raw garlic, set aside a couple of cloves to squeeze into the salad, or pound them in a mortar or mince them with a knife. I actually like minced or pressed raw garlic better than the more subtle garlic oil.

Then make croutons. Chop your leftover French bread into cubes. We like to use stale sourdough. You can saute them in a little of your garlic oil, or you can toss them with some of it and bake them in your oven for a few minutes at 300 degrees. I usually bake my croutons. Sometimes I just bake sourdough bread without any oil: the croutons will absorb dressing from the salad anyway.

Then wash your romaine lettuce and dry it thoroughly in a dish towel or a salad spinner.Tear into bite-sized pieces unless you particularly enjoy the exercise of cutting lettuce with your fork. Place lettuce in your garlic-rubbed salad bowl.

Take two or three anchovies from a tin and mince them finely — no one wants a big bite of anchovy in this salad — we just want the flavor. Set them aside for now.

Grate some Parmesan cheese. 1/4 cup will do in a pinch, but you might want to use more to get the snow drift effect.

Halve one lemon and get ready to squeeze it.

Dress your lettuce with a small amount of garlic olive oil. Add minced garlic if using.

Now coddle an egg: boil it for one minute only. Remove it from the pot. Crack it right into your salad bowl and toss with the lettuce.

Add the minced anchovies and toss again.

Squeeze lemon directly onto the salad. Toss again.

Add croutons and grated Parmesan. Toss again.

Grind some fresh black pepper over the salad. Toss again.

Taste and adjust seasonings.

Food notes: If you can’t stand handling anchovies, you could try using anchovy paste in a tube. I have never used it. Please do coddle the egg and use it in the dressing: the slightly-cooked egg, anchovies and lemon are what creates the distinctive Caesar dressing. You cannot get the proper effect without the egg. You cannot get the proper effect without some form of anchovies — if you are afraid of them, try using a little less — start with one anchovy if you are squeamish and work your way up. You cannot skip the cheese either, or the croutons — if you do, you have not made a Caesar salad, but some other kind of romaine salad. You cannot make a vegan Caesar — don’t even try. If you are a vegan, find some other way to eat your romaine. You cannot make a kale Caesar either: by definition, Caesar salad is made of romaine lettuce. Got it? You have latitude with the garlic, the oil, and the croutons and the amount of anchovy you use. For the Parmesan, you need to get the good stuff and grate it yourself: this is not the time to use stale, pre-grated cheese or the stuff in the green can: when you are only using a few ingredients, they need to be the freshest and finest you can get. That chicken and shrimp? Save them for another entree or cook and serve them on the side, please. Once you try the real Caesar salad, you will love it or hate it, but at least you will know what it is, that you have tried Caesar salad and not one of the many abominations that blacken and borrow its name.

If you’ve made it through the rant, you may notice that I put no salt in the dressing: both anchovies and cheese pack a lot of salt and I don’t miss it. But I did say you could adjust seasonings: that is code for add lemon, salt, pepper, garlic or cheese to taste. Enjoy. And if you experience any revelations after making proper Caesar salad, please come back to testify in the Comments section.

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Categories home cooking, salads, seasonal recipes

Kuya Minogue on The Winter Garden — a guest post from British Columbia

May 13, 2012 //
30

photo depicts fresh lettuce in colander with Buddha looking on.

From the Winter Garden. Photo by Kuya Minogue.

Today The Kale Chronicles features a guest post from Kuya Minogue of Creston, British Columbia, who shares what she has learned about winter gardening in her locale. Kuya and I met at a Natalie Goldberg writing retreat in New Mexico. When I saw a Facebook post of hers on harvesting greens from her winter garden I asked her to share her garden story with you. Although it is May and not winter in the northern hemisphere now, perhaps it will allow some of you cold-climate gardeners to plan next year’s winter garden. You can find more of Kuya at zenwords here.

When it’s twenty below Centigrade outside and the garden is buried under four feet of snow, it’s hard to imagine that under the plastic cloches and row covers in the greenhouse beds, the spinach, lettuce, chard and cilantro that I seeded in late August are lying dormant, waiting for a warm day to awaken them from their winter hibernation. But it only takes a few warm days in mid-winter to bring them out of sleep and into a delicious and completely alive salad.

photo of spinach growing in Creston, B.C.

Spinach in January. Photo by Kuya Minogue.

Last year, we had a week of above zero sunshine in Creston, BC where my winter garden lives, and by the end of that week, when I removed the cloche from the spinach bed, I found salad ready greens. The leaves were thick and juicy. There’s nothing better than a garden fresh salad in January, and the amazing thing is that all it took was one plastic snow-covered cloche to keep the plants alive and a few warm days to make a salad. When the weather turned cold again, I recovered the spinach and it lived through another two months of frost.

In that January warm spell, when I looked at the lettuce under the row cover inside the greenhouse, the leaves were so withered that I thought that winter had taken them. But by the first week of March, the lettuce had revived, and by the second week of April, we were eating fresh spinach and lettuce salads straight out of the garden. I was afraid the lettuce would be bitter, but only the outside leaves had the taint of winter. The butterball at the centre of the plant was crisp and fresh, and tasted like summer.

I don’t like to mix my first collection of winter salad greens with store bought tomatoes, cucumbers or avocado. I prefer to sprinkle winter garden green onions and a handful of garden-fresh cilantro over the greens, and to make a lemon and olive oil dressing that has a squirt of liquid honey and tamari sauce, and a sprinkling of minced garlic from last year’s garden. From first bite to the last, I’m transported to the warm days of summer.

Hardy greens survive the winter too: chard, kale and a chinese vegetable whose name I don’t know are ready to eat by mid March. By mid April, they are so prolific that I invite anyone who comes to the Zen Centre to meditate or do some yoga to take a mixture of these greens and some winter garden onions home with them so they can clean them, cut them into bite size pieces and then stir fry them in sesame seed oil, lemon juice and tamari.  The cooking greens are also delicious if I simply steam them and eat them with a little butter.

painting of picked mixed greens in colander, Buddha image.

Buddha with Greens from the Winter Garden. 8″ x 8″ Gouache and Watercolor Pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

I learned about winter gardening when one of my Zen students, a horticulturalist, offered to give a Winter Gardening Class at the zendo. Having lived through many years of Canadian winters, I was skeptical when we seeded the beds in late August and then put them under cover in mid-October. It just seemed impossible that anything as delicate as spinach or lettuce could survive the winter. But I was wrong. Even in Canada, we can grow greens in the winter and eat garden-fresh salad in the spring. If we can do it here, you can do it anywhere.

 

 

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Categories salads, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized, vegetables

Vanishing Pear Tart Tatin

March 25, 2012 //
37

Painting shows pear tart tatin and ingredients.

Pear Tart Tatin. 12″ x 12″ gouache. Sharyn Dimmick.

I had a music potluck to go to yesterday. I started thinking Friday night about what I would make: it came down to orange pound cake made with orange juice and zest, a repeat of the St. Patrick’s Day knishes sans Canadian bacon in deference to vegetarian singers, or a pear tart tatin. Those of you who read about our grocery finds a few posts ago will recall that I bought three pounds of Bosc pears. I have roasted pears to eat as dessert and I have included roasted pears in a few winter soups, but I had never before made a tart tatin. I was somewhat swayed by the thought that I had one pie crust waiting in the fridge. I was also swayed by the fact that I greatly prefer pie to cake and I love fruit desserts.

As it turned out, the pie crust in the fridge was a little too crumbly and a little too small and I ended up making a whole new batch: now we have old leftover crust and new leftover crust. Oh well: making and eating things with pie crust does not trouble us in this household.

While I used my Mom’s never-fail pie crust recipe for the tart tatin, I used the method and ingredients for the most part described in Chez Panisse Desserts, with one change, two additions and one error, which may have proved beneficial.

Alice Waters and Lindsey Sher give the ingredients as one 10-inch circle of pie dough or puff pastry, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, about 5 medium Bosc or Winter Neli pears and an optional tablespoon of rum, Cognac, brandy or Armagnac. I used salted butter, eight small Bosc pears, and rum. I added 1/2 Tbsp of vanilla extract and a sprinkling of ginger. Waters and Sher say to bake the tart at 400 degrees, which I would have done, except, despite reading the recipe, I had set my oven at 350.

If you don’t have pie crust on hand, you’ll have to make that first. You will find my Mom’s recipe here. If you make it, you will have three more crusts, or at least two and a half because Mom’s recipe makes four crusts (It is hard to make less with her recipe because it calls for a whole egg).

Once you have gotten your pie crust made, set it to chill in the refrigerator while you prepare the other ingredients. It’s up to you whether you want to peel and core pears first or make caramel first. At any rate, you will be peeling and coring pears. You can use halves or quarters in the tart. I used halves, which looked quite nice. I put the tablespoon of rum and the half-tablespoon of vanilla in the bowl with the peeled, halved pears.

I then got out a cast iron skillet and set it on medium heat. I added the butter and sugar to the skillet and stirred with a wooden spoon until the caramel turned light brown, at which time I removed the pan from the heat and continued to stir. The caramel continues to darken: you keep stirring it so that it turns evenly instead of darkening in any hot spots. Mine came out a lovely, reddish brown.

Place the pears in the caramel in a circle with the narrow ends pointing to the center. I had a small, pear-less circle in the center, which I filled by cutting the last pear into smaller pieces. I put my pears cut-side down, although Alice and Lindsey say to put the rounded side down. You are going to flip this dessert over after it is baked, so, whichever way you do it, it is going to come out the opposite. My brain does not like to think in reversals (it gets confused). Do what you like. When you have got your pears looking all pretty and symmetrical, you are going to put the pastry over the top. Before I did this, I poured the leftover vanilla-rum mixture over the pears and sprinkled them with perhaps 1 tsp powdered ginger. I folded the crust in quarters, then unfolded it over the fruit, tucking the edges down into the sides of the pan since this crust will end up being the tart base. I also, as instructed, pushed the dough gently into the pears — it forms a slight wave pattern, molding around the curves of the pears. Cut a few slits in the crust and transfer the tart to your hot (or not so hot) oven.

I checked my tart after 30 minutes — that’s when I discovered my temperature error: plenty of browned juices bubbled up, but the crust was not brown. I cranked the oven up to 400 and let the tart bake for another 20 minutes until the crust was properly browned. My error with the oven temperature may have caused deeper caramelization of the fruit, which I happen to like, and had no ill effects on the caramel or the crust, save needing extra time for browning.

When the crust has browned to your satisfaction, remove the tart from the oven and let it sit for a few minutes — the pan will be really hot. When you are ready for the next step, take a plate larger than your skillet, place the plate on top of the pan and carefully invert the skillet onto the plate. With any luck, your tart will come out whole. If a pear or two get left behind, just use a spoon to transfer them back to their place on the tart. If you have lost a bit of crust, you will have the pleasure of sampling the caramel-infused crust: the caramel layer transforms basic pie crust into a new delight.

Mom dug out the top of a popsicle mold, which we plopped in the center of the tart to hold the wrappings away from the fruit. I wrapped the tart in two layers of aluminum foil and carted it off on the bus in the rain to my friend Elaine’s house. The singers consumed every scrap of the tart. Toni had three pieces. Elaine, who does not like Bosc pears, had two. Elaine said she would like the tart made with stone fruit. I said I thought it might be delicious with fresh figs. We have to wait for those fruits, but some pears are in season now. I was pleased with how easy it was to make a dessert that had intimidated me (the caramel, the flipping, the careful arrangement of the fruit, would the crust withstand the weight of the tart and all of that caramel? Would it leak?). Trust me, friends — if I can do it, you can do it.

Food Notes: If you are afraid of pie crust, you can also make this with frozen puff pastry. I recommend, however, that you visit your nearest crust expert to overcome this fear. Most pie bakers would be glad to help you learn to make pie crust.

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Categories desserts, fruit, pie, seasonal recipes

The Limited Palette, Chicory Leaves and $91.01 Worth of Groceries

March 14, 2012 //
29

Painting depicts food items procured in weekly grocery shopping

The Groceries. 12″ x 12″ gouache. Sharyn Dimmick.

Last week I checked Riverdog Farm’s weekly online newsletter to see what vegetables we were going to get: tangerines, navel oranges, spring onions, cauliflower, carrots, dandelions. Dandelions! Oh, they didn’t! I read on to see that what they were really giving us was young leaves of chicory. The only thing I know about chicory is that you can make coffee substitute from it or add it to coffee for that New Orleans flavor. I Googled it. The coffee substitute is made from chicory roots. Shucks.

My mind goes back to salads we ate in Italy where they dug every bitter shoot out of the ground and dressed it in olive oil. But before I start whining in earnest I realize that a limited palette of ingredients is a test of cooking skill and creativity and that with a cabinet full of spices and a refrigerator containing milk, butter and cheeses I have more to work with than many people have had. What needs adjusting beyond the seasonings is my attitude.

This week I sufficiently adjusted my attitude to cook the chicory. I tasted it raw the day I got it: bitter. Before I cooked it I checked to see what will be in Wednesday’s box. The contents are not much different. For twenty dollars a week I am getting three pounds of fruit (oranges and tangerines) and six pounds of vegetables, including leeks, arugula, spinach, cauliflower, carrots and potatoes. That is the basic early spring produce palette here in Northern California.

This morning I went with my mother on her weekly shopping foray. This week we went to Food Maxx for canned cat food for our three cats and coffee beans for Mom. While we were there, we picked up two boxes of rolled oats, a bag of raisin bran, four boxes of whole wheat rotini, a jar of molasses, a box of Mexican chocolate, a small jar of Prego and a number ten can of hominy for posole. The food for humans in that came to $26.28 and we got a dime back for bringing our own canvas bags. Total: $26.18

We went on to Canned Foods Grocery Outlet, variously known to our friends as “Half Foods” and “Groc. Out” (before you turn up your nose, let me remind you that it was there I first found a bottle of Mosaic blood orange olive oil). There we picked up our dairy products for the week: half and half, buttermilk, sour cream and cheeses: jalapeno cheddar, a two-pound block of mozzarella for pizza-making, and a jar of marinated feta. We added in meat protein with a package of turkey sausage and one of Canadian bacon. Mom scored a 2 lb. bag of organic frozen green beans for $3.00 and a big bag of  fresh red potatoes for $2.00. I treated myself to a three-pound bag of Bosc pears from Washington State for $1.50 because the annual citrus glut is getting to me again — I will use the pears in desserts and soups and eat them as snacks. We bought a couple of cans of diced tomatoes for our winter-spring pantry, some flaked coconut and maple syrup for baking, a large package of English muffins and two different brands of commercial ginger snaps. Total for Canned Foods food: 44.83.

Adding up the food we purchased this week from all sources, I get $91.01. We will not shop again until next week and with all of this in the house we may not buy much next week beyond bread, milk and more cat food.

Now, we never start from a house empty of food. We keep a running pantry of baking supplies from butter and eggs to flour and cornmeal. We usually have walnuts and almonds and some dried fruit: right now we have dried peaches and apricots, sour cherries, raisins and home-dried apples and pears. When I get around to it, we will have home-candied citrus peels as well. We also stock rice, both brown and white, polenta and pasta. We make our own chicken stock, which we store in the freezer, and keep condiments such as mustard and red wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. We try to replace all of these items during sales to keep our costs down.

The chicory? I cooked it for dinner, after trimming all of the stems. I pulled out all of the stops. First I boiled it for fifteen minutes. Then I poured off the water, hoping to have leached out some of the bitterness. I tasted it again: still bitter and not quite dull in color. I put in a little more water and cooked it for ten more minutes. Then I pulled out a skillet, heated some olive oil and sliced up half a sausage into half-coins. I browned those while I microwaved about a quarter cup of raisins in some water (This green is seriously bitter and needed the help from the dried grapes). I added the drained chicory and some pressed garlic, then the raisins and soaking water. Even with the raisins, oil, garlic, sausage and blanching the chicory remained bitter — not slightly bitter, but majorly bitter. It is the kind of thing that gives vegetables a bad name. We ate it alongside some bland Kabocha squash gnocchi in (not bland) gorgonzola sauce. My first attempt at winter squash gnocchi lacked lightness as I had to work in extra flour to handle the dough: if I revisit gnocchi more successfully I will post the recipe later. We were grateful to have the Mexican chocolate as an after dinner treat: I prepared that with a square of bittersweet chocolate, an extra tablespoon of cocoa powder and a dash of vanilla extract in each cup, perfect for the rainy March night.

P.S. Mom, trooper that she is, reheated and ate the remaining chicory for breakfast. She said it was better after sitting overnight. I said I would never complain about kale again, knowing we could get chicory instead. We both shuddered.

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Categories grocery shopping, home cooking, philosophy, Uncategorized, vegetables
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