lesson #439 for the life-long learner

So I've lived in Maryland for three years now, and have eaten my share of Maryland crab cakes in that time.  Not as many as Ben, of course, but more than a few.  Until yesterday, however, I had never attempted to make them myself.  And I probably won't have even then without the prompting of the fish guy at my local grocery store. 

There are two different fish guys, actually, and they are both extremely knowledgeable and friendly.  In fact, one of them is too friendly and too loud and a bit alarming.  I tend to shy away from the fish counter when he is working, frankly.  But he wasn't working yesterday, and his slightly quieter co-worker was.  "What's good today?" I asked him.  "Lump crab meat, $7.99 a pound" was his reply.  When I asked him if that was a good price, he was incredulous.  "$7.99?!  A pound?!  Yeah, that's good!   I bought two pounds myself."  When I asked him what he would make with his two pounds, he launched into an explanation of how to prepare salmon stuffed with crab meat.  "Or you could make crab cakes, of course" he said in an offhand way. 

He made the sale, and we came home with a pound of fresh lump crab meat.  Then Ben and I started searching on line for crab cake recipes.  I mean, who uses cookbooks anymore?  We knew we wanted to bake or broil the crab cakes, not pan fry them, so that ruled out quite a few recipes.  We found a likely candidate (one that I had all the ingredients for) and I got to work.  The only glitch was that the cooking time was off, and I flipped them too early.  You can only flip those once, believe me.  But I cooked them longer on the second side, and that seemed to work out okay.  I include the recipe here:

Maryland Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes

• Time 7 minutes
• Serves 6

Ingredients

---

• 1 large egg
• 2 heaping tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce, or to taste
• Few drops of lemon juice (no more than about 1/4 teaspoon)
• 2 teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup crushed Ritz Crackers
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1 pound fresh jumbo lump crabmeat -- drained of all excess liquid
• Non-stick cooking spray

How to make it

---

• In a medium bowl, combine the egg, mayonnaise, mustard, Worcestershire, Tabasco, lemon juice, Old Bay, salt and pepper. Mix so that all the ingredients are well-incorporated.
• Add the cracker crumbs and parsley and mix well.
• Gently fold in crabmeat until just combined (try not to break up lumps of crabmeat).
• Using wet hands, shape mixture into 6 patties---8 patties if you like them smaller (do not pack too firmly; cakes should be as loose as possible and still hold their shape).
• Put the crab cakes on a large platter or cookie sheet as they're shaped. Cover with foil and refrigerate at least 1 hour before cooking.
• Set oven on Broil ( around 450 ) and place crab cakes a non stick sprayed cookie sheet. Put crab cakes in oven on medium height rack.
• After 3 minutes of initial cooking time open oven to turn crab cakes over
• using a spatula and your hands. Cook an additional 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.
• Drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon and tartar sauce.

I did use Colman's dry mustard instead of Dijon to keep the crab cakes as dry as possible, and I would recommend letting them cook for 4 minutes before trying to flip them and 4 mintues after.  But, keep an eye on them.  I made six of them, not eight, and they weren't very big, so I wouldn't try eight from this much crab meat.  Oh, also, I put them on a plate to refrigerate instead of on the cookie sheet.  It seemed to me like it would take them even longer to heat up if they were on a cold sheet. 

Anyway, our family crab cake expert (that would be Ben) declared them as good as any he has had out here.  I'm going to count that as a huge success, and if you can get your hands on fresh lump crab meat, I heartily recommend this recipe.   Bon Appétit!

orzo, hot or cold

I have been on an orzo kick lately.  We had orzo with our homemade marinara sauce, and it was surprisingly good.  I made up a couple of recipes featuring orzo, as well, and, I have to admit, they turned out pretty well.  The first one is a variation on the meal that Julie likes to make that consists of vegetables, pasta, and protein of some kind - kielbasa or pork or chicken, usually.  The second is a variation of the Thai peanut chicken recipe that I make to use up leftover pasta.  Julie asked me for both recipes - which is very flattering - but, of course, I don't have recipes, per se.  I will create some.


Orzo with Summer Vegetables and Italian Sausage

olive oil 
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage
assorted fresh peppers - I used 3 or 4 jalapenos, 1 bell pepper, and 5 or 6 banana peppers
3 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
1 small zucchini
1 small yellow squash
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 tsp. Splenda sugar substitute
¼ to ⅓ cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup uncooked orzo

Heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in large frying pan. Cut the sausage into about 3-inch long pieces (or whatever size you like) and brown on all sides in hot oil.  When sausage is browned, turn burner down, add about ¼ cup water, put lid on pan, and simmer until sausage is cooked through.  At the same time, cook orzo in large pot of salted, boiling water; drain and rinse.

While sausage is cooking, clean and chop vegetables.  I left my peppers about an inch and half square; I slivered the garlic and onions; and after chopping the tops and bottoms off the squash, I sliced them in ¼-inch thick disks.  I cut the disks in half if they got too big.  When the sausage is cooked, remove to a plate so vegetables can cook.  Add another tablespoon of olive oil and the vegetables to the pan.  Make sure the veggies are not wet or you could get burned.  Sauté vegetables, adding salt and pepper, sugar and vinegar.  It is important to taste the vegetables as they cook, and adjust seasonings as needed.  Cook vegetables until they are almost as done as you like them; then add sausage and orzo, and heat through.  Serve with fresh summer fruit.

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This is a seasonal meal, meant to take advantage of fresh summer vegetables. As regular readers know, I am  fussy about my cooked vegetables, and find that I can stand all of these.   If there are other veggies that you like or have on hand, by all means, use them.  This recipe makes a lot, and could easily be halved.

My second recipe was supposed to be a simple, cold pasta salad with shrimp, but I found that I didn't have a lot of the ingredients that I thought I had to make it.  I did, however, have these ingredients, and so that is what I used.


Thai Shrimp and Orzo Salad

1 cup uncooked orzo
1 lb. medium-sized shrimp, cooked, cleaned, and chilled
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large celery stalks, chopped
½ green pepper, chopped
⅓ cup roasted peanuts, chopped
10 - 12 basil leaves, chopped (cilantro would be good here, but I used it all in the salsa)
1 tsp.salt
½ tsp. pepper
1 tsp. curry powder
½ cup good mayonnaise
1 tbsp. lime juice
Thai peanut sauce
canned coconut milk

Cook orzo in large pot of salted, boiling water; drain and rinse.  Combine shrimp, vegetables, peanuts, and basil in a large bowl.  Add orzo.  Add salt, pepper, and curry powder; stir well.  In a smaller bowl, add lime juice, peanut sauce, and coconut milk to mayonnaise and whisk until smooth.  This is where you will have to taste frequently and use your own judgement as to how much of each of these to use.  This "dressing" that you are making should be soupy - the orzo will absorb a lot of it.  When the taste is to your liking, pour dressing over salad and mix well.  Spoon into a lovely bowl and refrigerate until well-chilled.

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I am very pleased with how both of my new recipes turned out, but shall I tell you how I like the orzo best of all?  Piping hot with butter and salt on it.  It reminds me of the spaghetti I ate when I was a child.  I wouldn't eat tomato sauce, so my spaghetti always had butter and salt instead.  It tasted great.

pesto, pesto, pesto!

I have a startling confession to make.  Before I made it myself last summer, I had never eaten pesto.  Oh, sure I had heard of it, with all its basil-y, garlicky, oily goodness, but then it got so trendy and self-important that I just didn't even want to try it.  Years went by, and I didn't miss it.  Then, last summer, we finally had a wondrous crop of basil, so I thought to make some pesto with it. 

I got on line and read a few recipes, then felt that I was ready to try it for myself.  I will tell you what I did, although I hesitate to call it a recipe, really, as the amounts are sketchy, at best.  I went out and snipped off about one-third of the leaves from my basil plants. There were a lot of them - more than I expected.   I washed the leaves, still on their stems, thoroughly.  I picked the leaves from the stems, and rinsed them again.  I dried the basil leaves very thoroughly on old kitchen towels.
 
I gathered my other ingredients, which included fresh garlic, walnut halves, extra virgin olive oil, salt, freshly-ground pepper, and grated Parmesan cheese. Most recipes call for pine nuts instead of walnuts, but I almost always have walnuts on hand, and they are cheaper and healthier than pine nuts, so walnuts it is.  I put a big handful of basil leaves on my cutting board, and also eight or ten walnut halves.  To the top of this pile I added one garlic clove.  Then I just started chopping.  All of it.  Together.  It seemed to me like chopping it all together made it easier to do, so that's how I did it.  I chopped everything as finely as I possibly could, then I chopped it some more.  When it was very fine, I dumped the mixture into a waiting mixing bowl and covered it with olive oil. 

I repeated this process until all of my basil was chopped up.  I added too many walnuts, I think, the first time I made pesto, so have used them more sparingly since then.  I added about a half cup of the grated Paremesan, then added salt and pepper.  You don't need as much salt as you might think, as the cheese is very salty.  Glug in some more olive oil.  Seriously.  A lot of olive oil.  I don't think you can use too much.  At least I never have.  And that's it.  The pesto is finished.

That's the way Julie likes to eat it.  Just spoon that over some freshly-cooked pasta and enjoy. I prefer to make a sauce of it, however by adding a small amount of white sauce (one cup of milk's worth) to the pesto.  Do you see what I did there?  Instead of adding my pesto to the white sauce, I add the white sauce to the pesto, thereby controlling how much the pesto is diluted.  Heat through, but do not boil.  Serve over freshly-cooked pasta. 

Did I mention that I had never tasted pesto before I made it that first time?  I loved it!  What's not to love?  The ingredients are fantastic.  You eat it over pasta.  I couldn't get enough.  I don't know how many batches of pesto I made last summer, but it was a sad day when I pulled the last little container of pesto out of the freezer last winter. 

Today is a correspondingly happy day, however, as it is the day I made my first batch of the 2012 pesto season. Boil some water!  Prepare the white sauce!  Let the celebration begin!

the last soup of the season, perhaps

I heated up the leftover butternut squash soup for lunch yesterday, and I think it was even better warmed over. It was so good! It makes me a little sad to think that I have gone all these years without knowing that. I have talked in the past about my extreme aversion to cooked vegetables while I was growing up and for many years thereafter. The only vegetables we ate when I was a kid came in frozen cubes with Birdseye labels on the boxes. (The frozen spinach was the worst, if you want to know.) But I digress.

I asked for an immersion blender for Christmas, mainly so that I could make my own butternut squash soup. I had some this fall at Atwater's, a neat little bakery in downtown Catonsville that serves a lunch every day that consists of homemade soup, freshly baked bread, and dessert. The soup was a revelation to me! Simple and complex at the same time, I knew it was something I could add to my repertoire.

Accordingly, I got online and started looking for recipes. I don't even bother with the cookbooks I have collected anymore. It's all out there, man, on the interwebs. The recipe was as simple as I thought it might be, and after a couple of times making the soup, this is my version.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash, cut in half lengthwise, with seeds removed
1 large onion, peeled and halved
2 apples, peeled, halved, and cored
olive oil
salt
freshly-ground pepper
32 oz. chicken broth (homemade stock would be fantastic, if you have it)
½ cup milk
marsala (optional)
freshly-grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400°. Liberally oil a cookie sheet. (I like to cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil first. It makes for an easier clean-up.) Drizzle olive oil on the cut side of the squash, then salt and pepper it. Place the two halves on the cookie sheet, cut side down. Place the onion and apple halves on the cookie sheet, drizzle oil on them, then salt and pepper. Place in oven, and roast until vegetables have carmelized, about 40 minutes. While vegetables are roasting, heat chicken broth in a six-quart pot.

Give apples and onions a rough chop, and place them in pot with chicken broth. Cut the squash into cubes while it is still in the shell, then use a large spoon to scrape the cubes into the broth. Simmer for about a half hour, or until everything is well-cooked and falling apart. Remove pot from heat, get out your immersion blender, and blend until soup is smooth and free of lumps.

Return to burner and simmer soup until it is hot. Taste soup and add salt and pepper as necessary. This is also the time to add milk. I like the creaminess the milk adds, but be careful not to add so much that the soup becomes too thin. This should be a thick, creamy soup. Add marsala to taste. Be sure to simmer until all alcohol is evaporated. Ladle soup into big bowls, grate nutmeg on top of each serving. Easy does it! This soup has a delicate flavor, and too much nutmeg can overpower it. Bon appétit! Hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

it's gazpacho time!

Thirty-one years ago when I was pregnant with Tom, I found a recipe in a brochure in my doctor's office. The recipe was for gazpacho that one could carry to work, refrigerate, and eat. So I did. And thus began my absolute love affair with this cold, fresh, vegetable soup. There are as many ways to make gazpacho as there are people who make it. Ben and I had dinner at a friend's house where the cook was a former priest. He served gazpacho which he said he had learned to make in Spain, and that it was the only "proper" way to prepare it. He had thrown everything (even the bread) into a blender, and the result was flavorful, but thick and textureless. I prefer my own recipe.

This year I am trying to chop the vegetables a bit smaller at Ben's request. And, you know, I like it that way. The perfect spoonful of gazpacho has a bit of each vegetable on it, along with a crouton. That is more difficult to do when the green pepper chunks are 1-inch squares, as the recipe suggests. Need I say that the best gazpacho is made with the freshest vegetables? To that end, I waited this year until I had enough fresh tomatoes hanging on the vines to make up a batch. It is exquisite. I would like to just eat a big bowl of it for dinner. And lunch. Seriously.

The croutons are more important to the recipe than you might think as they provide a much-needed crunchiness. Imagine my dismay yesterday when I made up a batch of gazpacho, then realized we didn't have any croutons. I decided to make my own. I put a few slices of sourdough bread out to firm up, then cut them into cubes. I knew I could toss them in olive oil and herbs and toast them in the oven, but I pretty much don't turn my oven on from June to August, so that was out. Instead I put them in a skillet with the olive oil, a little butter, Parmesan cheese and parsley from my garden. I browned them until they became golden, crunchy little cubes. Perfection. Fresh croutons for my fresh gazpacho.

Ben and I had some gazpacho with our dinner last night, and I just checked the rest this morning to see if it needed more V-8 added to it. Of course it did. I like lots of broth so I added a couple of big glugs from the bottle, then more olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. A quick taste - oh man, I was doing the happy dance just like that wild-haired chick on the Food Network. I hope you will try my recipe and do a little happy dancing, yourself. Be sure and adjust the ingredients until it tastes just the way you want it to. That's what I do.

Gazpacho

1 clove garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, cut into chunks and seeded
1 cucumber, pared and coarsely chopped
1 medium green pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cups tomato juice (I use V-8)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 to 3 drops hot pepper sauce (try Sriracha, if you have it)
dash of pepper
cheese and garlic croutons

Combine vegetables in a large bowl. Stir in tomato juice, oil vinegar, salt, pepper sauce and pepper. Cover; chill. To carry, spoon into a wide-mouthed vacuum bottle. When ready to eat, garnish with croutons.

how summer tastes

I don't know yet what we will have for dinner tonight, but I do know that I will probably be serving fresh corn and tomatoes with our meal - just as I have done for the past two days. High summer has come to Northeast Ohio, and that means farmer's markets and farm stands piled high with freshly-picked local produce. Even Ben - a notorious meat-eater - says that he could be a vegetarian this time of year.

I love corn on the cob - who doesn't? - but it's the fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes that I crave all the rest of the year. I like them best at room temperature, just sliced and salted, but we also love cherry tomatoes in a salad with blanched green beans and Vidalia onions. I love coarsely-ground pepper over tomato wedges and cottage cheese, but I have to say, no one else in the family shares my passion for that dish. We all love gazpacho, however, and when Julie comes home this weekend, it will be time for a big batch of that.

We have never had much luck growing our own tomatoes at this house, possibly because we are surrounded by so many big, old oak trees. We keep trying however, and this year we have three different varieties in various stages of ripening. Ben and I poke at the fruit almost every day, and I have to admit, I have been known to pick a ripe cherry tomato, wipe it clean on my shirt, and pop it in my mouth. That's what summer tastes like!

Here is the basic recipe for the green bean salad I make. I adapted it from a salad we were served somewhere else, so feel free to do the same.

fresh green beans
fresh cherry tomatoes
1/4 Vidalia onion, coarsely chopped
fresh basil leaves
extra virgin olive oil
apple cider vinegar
salt
freshly ground pepper

Snap both ends off the green beans, then snap them in half. Cook beans until they are just tender, then plunge them into cold water to cool. While beans are cooking, cut tomatoes in half, coarsely chop onion, and chiffonade the basil leaves. Prepare a simple salad dressing of the oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper to taste. Drain beans. Combine all ingredients, chill well. This salad tastes best if eaten the day it is prepared.

making lemonade, metaphorically speaking

May has let me down this year. Perennially my favorite month, May usually abounds with bright, sunny days when the temperature hovers around 70 to 75° , which even my outdoor thermometer recognizes as "ideal". Not so this year. Cold, rainy day is followed by cold, windy, rainy day, and it's a good thing I kicked the sunbathing habit or I would be really pissed.

As we know, however, this blog features things that are nice, not naughty, so in that spirit, I offer a soup recipe for a rainy day. This is not just any soup recipe. It is for the best damn potato soup I have ever tasted, and I think you might agree with me if you try it. It all started a couple of months ago after one of my blog posts mentioned how I longed for a good potato soup recipe. Bryan (who turns 30 today - happy birthday, Bryan!) sent me his mom's recipe, which I promptly tried. And, I tell you, it was darn good. But I knew I could make it better - if less healthy - and this is the recipe I came up with.

8 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
medium onion, diced
2-3 celery stalks, diced
3-4 cups cabbage, coarsely chopped (Ben thought 4 cups of cabbage was too much, but that begs the question, can there be too much cabbage?)
2-lb. bag Ore-Ida frozen cubed hash browns
6 cups homemade chicken stock
2 Tbsps butter or margarine
2 Tbsps Wondra flour
2 cups milk
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese (Whatever you like, really. I use a 4-cheese, reduced fat, Mexican blend.)

Fry the bacon until done in a large frying pan. Remove bacon pieces and drain. Sauté onions, celery and cabbage in bacon grease until cabbage is well-cooked.

In a large saucepan, cook potato cubes in chicken stock until potatoes are tender. Add about a teaspoon of salt. You may want to mash some of the potatoes at this point for a thicker soup.

Melt the butter or margarine in with the sautéed vegetables, whisk in flour to make roux. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup of the milk. Return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.

Slowly stir the vegetable and white sauce mixture into the potatoes. Add the second cup of milk. Let soup simmer, stirring frequently until thickened. When ready to serve, add bacon pieces and shredded cheese. Heat through until cheese melts. Season with freshly-ground pepper, and check to see if soup needs more salt. Serve in big bowls, because it's really good.

Bon appetit!

how a memory tastes

Julie and I made thumbprints today. They are her favorite Christmas cookies, although that is not the only reason we made them. This year, we will have three different kinds of Christmas cookies: thumbprints, nutballs, and sugar cookies. We really only bake cookies at Christmas time in our house, so needless to say, they are very special and very much anticipated.

We made the thumbprints pretty much the way my mother and I did when I was a girl. I have never really liked to bake, but sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with my daughter as we rolled the dough into little balls and dipped them in egg whites, then ground nuts, didn't seem like such a bad way to spend a winter afternoon.

After we baked the cookies, I stacked them in a square plastic container with wax paper between each layer. I remembered how we used to stack the different boxes of cookies on the bench in the office of our house on Denison Avenue. Because they were right by his food dish, Bobo thought the cookies were his, and would guard them fiercely from Tom and Julie, growling and even nipping if they got too close. Just because he couldn't get at them didn't mean that anyone else could.

Julie wanted to try a slight recipe variation this year, and I was game. For half of the ground walnuts, we substituted ground flaxseed. We only tasted one cookie each, but the result seemed to be a much lighter and more delicate cookie. Just when we thought they couldn't get any better. I include my recipe here, although I'm sure any good cookie cookbook would have a similar one.

Thumbprints

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 tsp. good vanilla extract
2 cups sifted flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1&1/2 cups ground nuts (or 3/4 cup ground nuts & 3/4 cup ground flaxseed)
1/2 cup sugar
raspberry preserve (with seeds)

In a large mixing bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, egg yolks, vanilla, flour and salt until well mixed. Your hands will work best for this, so just dig in. Form dough into a large ball. If dough is very soft, you may want to chill it before rolling it into small balls. (We did not and it was fine.) Take a pinch of the dough and roll it into a ball, then place the ball on a sheet of wax paper. We like these cookies to be bite-sized, and so made ours pretty small. Our yield was 80 cookies. You can make them bigger if you want larger cookies, but remember to increase baking time. Continue until all the dough has been rolled into balls.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl combine ground nuts/flaxseed and sugar. Place the egg whites in a small bowl. Dip each ball into the egg whites, then drop it into the nut and sugar mixture. Roll it around until well coated, then place it on a cookie sheet, 20 cookies to a sheet if they are small. I used parchment paper this year, and highly recommend it. To make the "thumbprint" in the cookie, use the round bottom end of a wooden spoon to press a hole into the center of each cookie. Do not break through the dough at the bottom of the cookie. The cookie should look like a miniature birds' nest.

Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes, depending on size of cookies. (12 minutes was plenty of time for the petite cookies we baked.) To check for doneness, turn a cookie over and see if the bottom has turned a golden brown. If so, they are done. Remove cookies to cool on paper towels. When they have cooled, store in an airtight container, with wax paper between the layers of cookies.

To serve cookies, put a very small dollop of raspberry preserve in the center of each cookie, right before you are ready to serve them. Do not fill ahead of time and store. Thumbprints are wonderfully attractive on a plate with other holiday cookies, and are best served with Constant Comment tea.

good for you and tasty, both - who knew?

I found this recipe in the Plain Dealer recently and thought I would try it. It is really so good. Some of you - who may or may not be my children - might think you won't like it because of the eggplant, but, really, give it a try. We found it to be especially good as a vegetarian dinner on a rainy November evening. It was not as good when I re-heated it for a side dish, but I think it might have been because the vegetables lost their freshly-roasted flavor and texture.

Rotini with Smoky Eggplant and Red Pepper Sauce
makes 4 servings

1 large eggplant, cut in half
3 red bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into quarters
8 oz. rotini
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 Tbps. lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat broiler. Place eggplant halves, cut side down, in the center of the broiler pan. With a small sharp knife, prick through the skin of each half in several places. Arrange the peppers, cut side down, around the eggplant. Broil the vegetables until the pepper skins have blackened, about 20 minutes. Transfer the peppers to a plate and cover with plastic wrap. Set aside for 10 minutes to loosen the skins. Return the eggplant to the broiler and cook until the skin has blackened and the flesh is completely softened, about another 10 minutes.

While the vegetables broil, cook the rotini in lightly salted water, according to package directions. In a large, bowl, combine the olive oil, parsley, lemon juice and garlic. When the eggplant is done, let it cool slightly, then use a large spoon to scrape the flesh from the skin onto a cutting board. Don't worry if the eggplant is "seedy". Chop the flesh to a chunky consistency and tranfer to the bowl with the olive oil mixture. Stir well.

Peel and discard the blackened skin from the cooled red peppers. Coarsely chop the peppers and add them to the eggplant mixture. Drain the pasta, add it to the sauce and toss thoroughly to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Enjoy!

the mix

I first tasted the mix years ago when one of my co-workers at the library brought it in. "Try this," she told me. "It tastes just like a Payday, but doesn't stick to your teeth." Sure enough, the mixture of candy corn and peanuts did taste just like one of my favorite candy bars, and it didn't stick to my teeth. It was great. Everyone on the library staff loved it. I knew my family would love it, as well, but it just seemed so unhealthy. Then I had a brilliant idea. I will add some raisins to the mix, I thought. Then it will be healthy. My own personalized version of the mix was born.

I think I must have taken it in to work the very first October that I worked at the university. I bought a big, old-fasioned glass jar with a screw-on lid, and filled it to the top with the mix. My co-workers loved it. When they weren't munching on handfuls of it, they were talking about it; what peanut to candy corn ratio was the tastiest or how healthy the raisins made it. Frequently, we talked about it and ate it at the same time. I made several batches that year, and in subsequent Octobers, as well. I even bought some inexpensive little black and orange plastic cups so we could take some back to our desks. (How disillusioned I was the year one of the cups was never returned. One of my co-workers had stolen it from me.)

Last year Vince kept asking me, "isn't it about time to bring in the mix?" All I could say to him was, "I'm just not feeling it, Vince." Because I wasn't feeling it. And I never did. Today, however, I bought all the ingredients for the mix and put them together. I will take it in to them one day this next week. I am looking forward to it.

If you want to make the mix yourself, the ratio is totally up to you. This will get you started.

3 or 4 - 11 oz. bags Brach's candy corn (I prefer all candy corn, but if you like those big pumpkins and blobby shapes as well, why, include them.)

1 lb. can cocktail peanuts (not dry-roasted)

2 or 3 cups raisins

Pour everything in a big bowl, get your hands in there and mix it all up, and it's ready to eat. I like it in my clear glass jar, as I think it looks festive and attractive. Enjoy!

spinach... it's not just for Popeye anymore

All right, I know. The rest of the civilized world has been enjoying the taste and health benefits of spinach for some time now, but it's just hard for me to learn to eat cooked vegetables. When I was growing up, all the cooked vegetables that came to our dinner table started out as frozen bricks in the freezer with "Birdseye" on their labels. The spinach (served weekly with a particularly awful homemade macaroni-and-cheese that had nothing to do with creamy) was one of the worst. The texture was incredibly slimy, exactly like the seaweed that wraps around your ankles when you walk in the surf. As I well remember, if you let the spinach get stone-cold sitting on your plate, it doesn't smell as bad, but it does make you gag when you try to eat it. So, cooked spinach has been verboten for me for a long time.

We do occasionally eat spinach in salads, but we find that we cannot finish a whole bag of it before it starts to go bad, unless Julie is home, and then she eats most of it. I have had a lot of success adding spinach to different recipes. We really like it mixed in with couscous, and I have added it to a variety of homemade soups. It is really good in fried rice, as well. The fact of the matter is, it pretty much disappears in these dishes, and that is what makes it palatable to me. I had some cooked spinach at a restaurant last week, however, that was so good that I am on a mission to replicate it at home.

When Ben and I were finally able to go out to dinner to celebrate his birthday (that's a whole other story) we went to Mangiamo in Twin Lakes, where we frequently like to eat on special occasions. Here is the link: http://www.mangiamotwinlakes.com/ (Again, sorry that I don't know how to pretty that up.) Anyway. We have eaten there many times since they opened, but I think I had the best meal ever there last week. In keeping with my healthy eating regimen, I ordered the "Pan-roasted Atlantic Salmon", which you will see if you check the menu. My dinner included lobster-chive risotto and crispy baby spinach with balsamic drizzle.

My meal was delicious. As I said, probably the best I've ever had there. Here's the thing, though: every component was perfect, even the spinach. It was like crisp little pieces of parchment that dissolved on my tongue. The familiar spinach flavor was negligible, and the balsamic drizzle was the perfect accent. I resolved to make spinach just like it at home.

When we went grocery-shopping, the bags of baby spinach were buy-one-get-one-free, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity for experimentation. I checked on line for recipes for "crispy spinach", and I found quite a few, actually. The bad news was that they uniformly called for the spinach to be deep-fried. Now, I have never owned a deep fryer, and have no desire to have one now. Here's where the experimentation comes in.

Using one of the bags of spinach I spread it out in a thin layer over two cookie sheets. (There was too much spinach for one sheet.) I drizzled enough extra virgin olive oil over the spinach to coat it all, and also to prevent it from sticking to the cookie sheet as it dried out. I tossed the spinach with my hands to make sure it was coated, then sprinkled it with sea salt and freshly-ground pepper. I put it in a pre-heated 400 degree oven, and I watched it carefully. It wilted pretty quickly, but I could see that it still held a lot of water, and I wanted to drive that all out. When I noticed that a couple of spinach leaves had turned brown (as if they had burned) I removed the spinach from the oven. I drizzled the spinach with balsamic vinegar, and Ben and I ate every bit of it - a whole bag of spinach.

I have to say that the "recipe" is not perfected. I think the next time maybe I would keep it in the oven longer at a lower temperature since the object as I see it is to dehydrate the spinach as much as possible. If you have any suggestions, please don't hesitate to send them along.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be eating asparagus next... Na-a-ah!

if it's fall, it must be time for grape pie

We went to the Farmer's Market yesterday morning. I love going to the market this time of year, when I know the produce is genuinely grown by local folks instead of being shipped here from somewhere else. I was mainly looking for tomatoes, which I love more than any other seasonal produce. I wanted big, red tomatoes to slice thick and eat with my dinner, and I also wanted more of the heirloom cherry tomatoes we bought last week. The heirloom tomatoes are mottled purple and green, and very flavorful, with none of the acidic taste so characteristic of most tomatoes. Happily, I found all the tomatoes I wanted.

I noticed a dealer with a peck basket full of Concord grapes. He was selling them for a dollar a pint, but I bought everything he had for eight dollars, at Julie's encouragement. "We don't want to do grapes this weekend, do we?" I asked her. "Yes, we do," was her quick reply. As the dealer was bagging the grapes for me, an older woman with a strong eastern European accent asked me what I planned to make with them all. "I'm going to make grape pie filling," I said. "Have you ever had it?" Most people have never tasted Concord grape pie, but it is an old family favorite at our house. My mother used to make it once in a while, and my understanding is that the recipe was passed down from my dad's Grandma George - Carrie Krear Gould George, whose father was killed in the waning days of the Civil War.

When we lived in our house on Denison, Ben planted grape vines along the chain-link fence at the back of our yard. Before too many years had passed, we were harvesting enough grapes each September to make several pies. Eventually, it was quite a production. Ben and Tom would harvest grapes and put them in five-gallon pails, which they would flood with water to drive off at least some of the assorted critters. Julie and I had our assembly line set up in the kitchen where we would pick the grapes from the stems and wash them, then skin and boil them until the seeds cooked free. Then we would just add sugar and freeze the grapes until I was ready to bake them into a pie. Some years we froze fifteen or twenty bags of grapes. We ate most of the pies ourselves, but they were also in great demand at family gatherings and at our workplaces. As I said, most people had never tasted grape pie before, but became fans once they tried it.

If you want to make a Concord grape pie yourself, I include my recipe. I warn you, although it is not difficult, it is quite labor-intensive. I think if you try it, though, it will become one of your favorites, too.

Concord Grape Pie

4 very full cups Concord grapes, removed from stems, and well-rinsed
1 shallow cup sugar
3 Tbsps. flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. grated lemon peel
2 Tbsps. butter

Begin with a pan and a bowl, set side by side. Each washed grape must be squeezed above the pan, so that the pulp and seeds fall into the pan, then the skins are dropped into the bowl, which is set aside. The pulp and seeds should be boiled on a low flame until the pulp has completely broken down and all the seeds have floated free.

Pour the hot grape pulp into a strainer above the bowl of grape skins. Force the pulp through the strainer, and onto the skins, leaving only the seeds in the strainer - these are then discarded. Dissolve the sugar in the hot grape mixture.* Add the flour, salt, and lemon peel, and mix well. Pour mixture into pastry-lined pie pan. Dot small pieces of butter over pie filling, then cover with second layer of pie crust - I find a lattice is very attractive on this pie. Alternately, a streusel topping works very well on this pie in place of the upper crust.

Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the filling starts to bubble. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. You'll thank me if you do.

*This is the point where I pour the mixture in a bag and put it in the freezer. You can do that, too, if you want to.