Blueberry Sunday

Not blueberry sundae but Sunday. This week I made a Blueberry Buckle which brought back many memories of summers in upstate New York.

You have to understand how important "berry picking" as we called it was to families like mine. The actual picking would start out as a family activity, with everyone - the youngest ones included - heading out to the brush with a bucket or an old pot tied to their waist using a belt or a piece of rope. Sometimes we would head out after dinner when it was cooler and there were about two hours of sun left on a late July night.

We often drove down the road to the fields where neighbors knew us and didn't mind us picking berries or land that wasn't posted. The goal was to pick the ripe berries only - no green ones - with a minimal amount of twigs and leaves in the bucket. Mom or one of the older relatives would have to go through and sort out all the detritus that night when we got home, so we were often scolded about "sloppy picking." You were sloppy if you simply grabbed a whole handful of berries - ripe and unripened - and tore them off the bush. "You're no Juan Valdez," someone would shout and we'd all laugh.

More scolding could be heard when one of the younger pickers would eat more than they picked. The best pickers could have two hands rapidly picking berries but not crushing them and carry on a conversation at the same time. The topics back then were the Watergate Hearings, the price of gas (even then), the upcoming phone company strike and more.

As it got dark, with just enough light from the setting ball of fire so that we could make our way back to the car without tripping on a stone, we'd all pile back into the car for the trip home. The deer would be out and Mom would have to drive slowly. I can still hear her saying, "If one deer crosses the road just stop! Because usually there are two or three more in the woods where that came from and they'll cross right in front of you."

If we had behaved, Mom would treat us to frozen custard up in Parksville. If they had blueberry flavor made with fresh local berries, we'd all order it. The City People would never venture to try such a flavor, looking down on it with their usual scorn as a "local thing." But while they safely stuck with their vanillas and chocolates/vanilla swirls, we knew exactly what it took to make that magic blue-purple treat: long summer days, the cool fingers of an approaching dusk, old berry stained buckets and ropes, the laughter of a family kidding each other, the blue-purple faces of kids who grew up way too quickly, the glimpse of a deer seeking relief from the heat, and the most important thing, the berries themselves.

Photo: Blueberry Buckle by Dave Kekish on Flickr.

Good Reads: Being Dead Is No Excuse - The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting the Perfect Funeral

I liketa died laughing when I read this book, Being Dead Is No Excuse - The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting the Perfect Funeral. And after passing it to so many friends, it sits on my kitchen windowsill with the only other cookbooks I own: The Silver Palate Cookbook, The New Basics Cookbook, White Trash Cooking and White Trash Cooking II: Recipes for Gatherin's.

Besides the humor, which causes me to easily waste an hour when I am trying to look up a recipe, the recipes are authentic and as my friend's aunt used to say "propah." If you need to know what a perlow is or want to make something in aspic, this is your book. I can't recommend it enough!

An excerpt from Chapter One: Dying Tastefully in the Mississippi Delta:

After the solemnity of the church service and finality of the grave, the people of the Mississippi Delta are just dying to get to the house of the bereaved for the reception. This is one of the three times a Southerner gets out all the good china and silver: the other two are christenings and weddings. The silver has most likely been specially polished for the occasion. Polishing silver is the Southern lady's version of grief therapy.

Southern ladies have a thing about polishing silver. We'd be hard pressed to tell you how many of our friends and their mothers have greeted the sad news of a death in the family by going straight to the silver chest and starting to polish everything inside. Maybe it has something to do with an atavistic memory of defending our silver from the Yankees, but it does ensure that the silver will be sparkling for the reception, which almost always follows the funeral.

Friends and family begin arriving with covered dishes, finger foods, and sweets as soon as the word is out that somebody has died. We regard it as a civic duty to show up at the house and at the funeral because what we call a "big funeral" is respectful to the dead and flattering to the surviving relatives. After the cemetery, people go back to the house to be received by the family. Sometimes we talk bad about the deceased between the grave and the aspic, but we straighten up and are on best behavior the minute we get to the house.

During the reception, we gossip, tell stories about the deceased, and maybe indulge in a toddy or two. (Our county used to be "dry," but all that means is that we drink like fish, though we do make a special, if not always successful, effort to behave well at funerals-see "I Was So Embarrassed I Liketa Died," page 99.) You can't bury a self-respecting Deltan without certain foods. Chief among these is tomato aspic with homemade mayonnaise-without which you practically can't get a death certificate-closely followed by Aunt Hebe's Coconut Cake, and Virginia's Butterbeans. "You get the best food at funerals," we always say, and it's true. Funeral procedure is something that we all just know. A legion of friends working behind the scenes, coordinating the food, makes sure that the essential Delta death foods are represented in sufficient quantities. The best friend of the lady of the house, along with members of the appropriate church committee, swing into action without prompting. Almost everybody who attends the burial automatically stops by the house afterward, and it's a social occasion. One friend, on being thanked for attending a funeral, blurted out, "No, thank you! I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

The burial, which is solemn though rarely entirely devoid of humor, most likely takes place at the old cemetery on South Main Street. The old cemetery is one of the best addresses in Greenville, Mississippi. Being buried anywhere else is a fate worse than death in Greenville. The FFGs-that's First Families of Greenville-would simply refuse to die if they weren't assured of a spot. Not that the old cemetery is strictly FFG. Not by a long shot. Lola Belle Crittenden, bless her heart, had to plant a huge hedge around her ancestral plot. Why? The neighbors. "They're so tacky," Lola Belle huffed.

Although we always plan to have a good time at the reception, we revere the dead. Ancestor worship is as valid a form of religion as the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal denominations in the Mississippi Delta. The cemetery is so sacred to the memory of our dead relatives that the whole town was up in arms when the local newspaper desecrated it. They did this by posing a high-school beauty queen in front of one of our most important graveyard monuments for a picture. Nothing has upset us quite so much before or since. For days on end nobody could talk about anything else, and the paper's Letters to the Editor page was filled with aggrieved missives. Old ladies shuddered at the thought that similar sacrileges might one day be committed on their graves. The paper had to grovel for forgiveness in print or face a serious drop in circulation. The newspaper was owned by Yankees, and, being outsiders, they just didn't know any better.

We're people with a strong sense of community, and being dead is no impediment to belonging to it. We won't forget you just because you've up and died. We may even like you better and visit you more often. As the former Presbyterian minister used to say in his justly celebrated funeral oration (I'd like to have a dime for every time I've heard it), dying just means you've "graduated."

We're good about remembering the dead with flowers on just about every holiday from Christmas Day to Groundhog Day. There's one family that was so intent on remembering Mama that they insisted on having her photographed in her coffin. The photographer balked but was finally persuaded. Afterward, the family flatly refused to pay. The eldest son explained why: "Mama looked so sad."

The old cemetery sees quite a bit of traffic, from the living and the dead. "This is a hard place to get out of," we invariably chortle when navigating our way through the gates and back onto Main Street. Some people, no doubt attracted by the prestige and the quiet, bucolic setting, have added to overcrowding problems by moving to the old cemetery years after they actually died. When Adelle Atkins, a widow, married James Gilliam, a Greenville widower, she insisted on bringing her late husband, Harry along. She asked whether she could re-bury him on the Gilliam family plot.

Adelle's new in-laws-alas, already beginning to be packed into their plot like sardines in a can-were appalled. They were obsessed with who would go where when the day came. And, besides, they hated the notion of new dead people coming in and just taking over. But Addle is a determined woman, and she would not back down. Luckily for her, the Miss Finlays, two maiden lady schoolteachers, lived-or rather their dead relatives were buried-right next door to the Gilliams. Being old maids, they did not face the problem of potential overcrowding and were glad to have some extra cash. Adelle purchased half their plot and-voila!-Harry moved to Greenville.

We worry a lot about what will happen when the old cemetery fills up. Whenever Alice Hunt, who lives in New York, comes to Greenville, she goes straight to the cemetery and stretches out on her spot to reassure herself that nobody has encroached. She plans to wait for the final trumpet next to her Mama. Her big fear is ending up in the new part of the cemetery where, she says, she doesn't know a soul. There are a few fortunate families who don't have to worry about their future resting places because they still have private family cemeteries on plantations. This carries even more status than the old Greenville cemetery, but it's a lot of trouble. Jane Jeffreys Claiborne has spent her entire adult life fretting about the state of the old Claiborne cemetery on Woodville Plantation. Every time old Mrs. Claiborne got the sniffles, Jane Jeffreys lovingly put a gardener to work. She wanted the best for her mother-in-law, a funeral worthy of a Claiborne. Old Mrs. Claiborne would take one look, note the work going on in her honor, and immediately perk up. It worked better than penicillin. One day, of course, Mrs. Claiborne did die, and the cemetery looked so beautiful it made the rest of us envious. We were all thinking the same thing: I wish my family still had a private cemetery. Note the still. There are few things considered nicer than having your own cemetery.

Cremation is a possible solution to the overcrowding problem. But it's still a new and dicey proposition in the Delta. The last time somebody was cremated, his ashes were sprinkled from a crop duster. We all ran for cover. We liked him fine, but we didn't want him all over our good clothes. But you've got to say this: the folks who owned the property where the ashes were scattered had a darned good cotton crop the next year.

Maribell Wilson, whose father died in a hospital in Texas, had a different kind of problem. Maribell lived according to the cardinal rule of Southern ladyhood: Never learn to do anything you don't have to do. Maribell always needed somebody to drive her places. She finally relented and got a license and eventually became one of the worst drivers in the Delta, which is saying a lot. She was alone with her daddy when he died in Texas. Maribell had him cremated, as he had wished, and set out for home in a rental car with Daddy in a little box. Unfortunately, not being overly familiar with highway signs and such, Maribell got lost again and again and ended up on every back road between San Antonio and the Greenville city limits. It was hot as Hades, and Maribell kept the windows down. (She could have turned on the air conditioner, but nobody had ever showed her how.) When Maribell pulled into the driveway and opened the box, she was surprised to discover that Daddy had blown away on the ride home.

Then there was the man who took his Daddy to Memphis to scatter him in the big city where Daddy had grown up. He had to meet some friends for lunch and unwisely left Daddy in the office of a coworker, who carelessly put Daddy in her out-box. Unfortunately, somebody accidentally removed poor Daddy while she wasn't paying attention. Even though they searched high and low, Daddy was never found. Clearly, the cremation angle needs a little work to be viable in the Mississippi Delta.

Southern women always want to look their best-even if they happen to be dead. Our local undertaker, Bubba Boone, understands this. We brag that Bubba can make you look better than a plastic surgeon can, though, unfortunately, you do have to be dead to avail yourself of his ministrations. He did an outstanding job on Sue Dell Potter, a retired waitress. Sue Dell expressed a strange desire to go into the ground looking exactly as she had in her long-past waitress days. We went to call on Sue Dell at the funeral home and-lo and behold-she sported a big, teased bouffant and, unless you'd known her back when she was waiting tables and flirting up a storm at Jim's Cafe on Washington Avenue, you'd never have believed it was Sue Dell. But we feel certain Sue Dell was smiling down from heaven (with her now fire-engine-red lips) and thanking Bubba for his excellent work.

We'd better warn you not to put too much credence in the dates carved on the headstones. We Southern women tend to lie about our age-even when we're dead. Allison Parker, who always had a thing for younger men, made a complete fool of herself by knocking off five years. We died laughing when we saw the stone, because, if anybody looked her age, it was Allison Parker.

In the South, the casket is sometimes left open for visitation at the funeral home or when the body is brought home. There's nothing like a receiving line with somebody laid out a few feet away. Roberta Shaw used to be so afraid of dead bodies that she wouldn't allow even her own poor mother, Mrs. Robert Shaw, to fulfill her lifelong dream of lying in state on the dining room table in the big formal dining room at Runymeade Plantation. She has since overcome this fear, and she wants to atone for what she believes must have been a huge disappointment for Mrs. Shaw. Now, whenever a friend or relative dies, Roberta crouches by the coffin and whispers to them. "Well, you'll never guess who just walked in," she whispered to Augusta Jones. Augusta, being dead, had absolutely no idea.

One of the rules in the South is that the newly dead are never left alone-somebody always sits with the coffin, day or night. Don't ask me why, but it wouldn't be right to leave a relative unattended. It used to be that most people took the body home before the burial and received guests with Mama right there. This custom, regrettably, isn't followed as often as it once was, though some families still uphold the tradition. The last time somebody did, it turned out sort of awkward. The body, which belonged to a local matriarch, stayed in the living room for an entire week. Somebody joked that the family was waiting for the out-of-town relatives to get the lowest airline fares possible. If you didn't make a sharp left turn into the dining room, you ended up face to face with the late wife of the town's leading lawyer.

We are sad at funerals, but there's no such thing as a funeral without a humorous moment. Once a visiting Episcopal minister took a step backward and fell smack into the grave. It certainly livened up the service. Since he went on to advocate advanced ideas, some of us wish we'd hit him on the head with a shovel. Not many have forgotten the time one of our more intellectual citizens died, and the Presbyterian minister, who'd known her forever, was out of town. The family rustled up a supply minister who'd never laid eyes on her. The night before the funeral, the family gathered to tell him all about the deceased, her fortitude in the face of a long sickness, her appreciation of art and literature. The sisters, knowing their big sister would want it, requested the minister to read some poetry, meaning maybe a bit of Shakespeare or Keats. But the visiting divine chose "Keep a-Goin'." ("'Taint no use to sit and whine 'cause the fish ain't on your line; Bait your hook an' keep on tryin', keep a-goin'.") The bereaved sisters were doubled over with laughter. If you can't find something to laugh about, you will end up crying.

Here are some recipes that will come in handy if you want to die as tastefully as we do in the Mississippi Delta.

Bourbon Boiled Custard

While this boiled custard is delicious on its own, it also can be used to dress up a humdrum pound cake somebody has brought. We offer this recipe in memory of Josie Pattison Winn, of Greenville and New Orleans, who was known as the boiled-custard queen of the Mississippi Delta. Josie was famous for knocking on the front door with this luscious concoction practically before the body was cold. It was, well, to die for. Here's an easy version of our most comforting custard. The little touch of bourbon will help even the most distraught.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar 4 eggs, beaten 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour pinch salt 3 cups scalded milk 1 cup heavy (whipping) cream 2 teaspoons vanilla 1/4 cup bourbon

In the top of a double boiler, combine the sugar, beaten eggs, flour, and salt. Then place the mixture over boiling water and slowly add the milk and cream. Stir constantly until the mixture coats the spoon. Immediately remove the mixture from the heat and add the vanilla and bourbon. Refrigerate. After this is well chilled, it will thicken. Enjoy this as is or serve it in a pitcher to put on a slice of cake or bowl of fruit. Multipurpose and prep time is not long.

Makes about six servings.

Excerpted from Being Dead Is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe Charlotte Hays Copyright © 2005 by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays.

Good Reads: Kitchen History

With all the food posts as of late (Lori at Smoky Mountain History has a great one on cornbread, and who can forget Terry's Fruitcake Revisited post at Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi?), I wanted to point out a new book that will interest family historians.

The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home by Steven Gdula looks like a great read and it is on my order list right now at Amazon. This book focuses purely on the 20th century and includes segments on faddish appliances (from fondue pots, to slow cookers, to microwaves) as well as sections that document the rise of Julia Child, television cooking shows and more.

If you've seen my History of Food posts, I've tried to work backwards by decade on how my family has related to food. After reading this, I'll probably pick up that posting series again.

Now, in our post-holiday postings, how are we still stuck on food? I though we got this out of our system? How will Terry and the rest of us be able to stay on our diets?

Kitchens - Focus of Food, Conversation, and Family Life

Lately I've been thinking about all the kitchens that I remember from my past and from stories that my mother or great-grandmother would tell me. This morning I posted an article entitled My Kitchens over on my cooking and recipe blog And I Helped! There are some great photos of the kitchen I grew up in and my current kitchen here in Chicago.

I remember my great grandmother's kitchen in the old farmhouse in Grahamsville, New York. The stove was from the 1950s and electric as was the refrigerator. The cabinets were very simple pine with a light stain and heavy shellac. The floor was linoleum. It was plain, it was simple and functional. And Grandma was able to churn out large meals when all 12 grandchildren visited.

What I don't remember, because I was too young, was the kitchen when my great-grandparents first bought the house in the mid-1940s. From what I have gathered, there was a wood stove for cooking, an icebox which would hold a block of ice to keep items cold, and a water pump since there was no plumbing. I could not imagine cooking like this for very long, especially if, like Grandma, I had a relatively modern kitchen back in my apartment in New York City. But once electricity arrived on Low Road, the kitchen was refinished with what were then all modern appliances and plumbing.

I also remember stories of the kitchen garden and how each summer a myriad of vegetables and fruits were canned and put up for the winter. With 12 grandchildren spending the summer there, I guess you could go broke feeding them all if you didn't have a garden! Grandma would can all types of beans (green, yellow, and wax), carrots, tomatoes - almost anything she could grow and that could withstand the canning process. If you've ever canned vegetables you know what a hardship it is to work with all those pots of boiling water to sterilize jars and lids and to seal the assembled jars and their contents. And this was in the middle of hot, humid summers with no air conditioning.

I wonder if anyone cans anymore? I've done some research and there are plenty of websites offering the Mason jars, lids, the huge pots for boiling, and ideas for how and what to can. Maybe because we live in a time when we can get fresh vegetables even out of season, that is why no one cans anymore.

To be honest, I rarely buy fresh fruits and vegetables out of season. Tomatoes and basil are late summer. Strawberries and asparagus are late spring. Apples and squashes are fall. Seasons were made for a purpose - to show us the cycles in our lives and our surroundings. When I am eating fresh vegetables in season, I can cherish what I've missed all winter or all summer. A fried green tomato in January just doesn't do it for me - it doesn't make me teary eyed or transport me back to a certain memory the same way making it in July does.

But homemade canned fruits and vegetables were different. These were gifts, works of art, crafted by thrifty, sensible women in my family like my great-grandmother. Jars of memories, containers of love.

Photo: my kitchen in Andersonville, Chicago, IL in 2006

A History of Food: The 1990s

I spent the entire decade of the 1990s living in San Francisco where I had landed as a 23 year old in 1986. I was also in a relationship of almost 9 years with Whatshhisname that ended in 1999. It is what I would call a "starter marriage."

For the most part I lived out near Ocean Beach and the Cliff House in the far Western part of the city. It was quiet, very foggy and cold in the summer, and in a way an entirely different city from the rest of San Francisco. Some friends considered it so far West that I told them to just set their watch back a half hour when they arrived.

San Francisco was and still is considered one of the "foodie" capitals of the world. From Jeremiah Towers' Stars, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, Mark Minna's Aqua to Bradley Ogden's One Market there were many new and innovative restaurants. Visiting these places also helped shape my culinary tastes. It gave me the courage to experiment with new techniques and new ingredients.

And I can't forget the various farmers' markets - I usually frequented the rudimentary one down by the Ferry Building held where the old Embarcadero Freeway was before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It has now been transformed into a large market inside the Ferry Building itself.

The best market was in Marin County, on the grounds of the Marin Civic Center built by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was one of Wright's last commissions and is a stunning piece of architecture.
Whatshisname and I would drive over early on a Sunday morning and walk through this market which took up at least 2 acres of space. There were items that now in 2007 we take for granted but were new and interesting in the mid-1990s: organic produce, pomegranate juice, fresh dates (still on the branch), brussel sprouts on the stalk, etc. There was the man who roasted all types of chili peppers in a large metal masket over a gas flame. The lettuce lady - she had a large kiddie pool filled with unusual types of greens - all organic. You would take a plastic bag, put it around your hand, and grab what you wanted and place it in another bag. And samples and samples of stuff from every vendor. The strawberries from Watsonville, the peaches and nectarines from the San Fernando Valley - all fresh and inviting.

I also went on a trip to Spain in May, 1997 with Whatshisname and his parents. This was an unbelievable time for me and an exposure to authentic Spanish cooking. We visited Barcelona, Zaragosa, Valencia and Madrid. I remember the farmer's markets at all these place. And the ham. If you've been to Spain you know what I mean - there is even a place call the Museum of Ham! Jamon Serrano is a dried, cured ham much like prosciutto but a very different flavor. We had paella and horchata in Valencia. Horchata is a summer drink made from the tiger nut and water - when pureed it turns into a milky soothing drink, much like soy or almond milk. We also had blood sausage and lentils in a small town called Guadalajara - a stew with these sausages made from pig's blood, lentis, onions, tomatoes. Outstanding.

I was very close to Whatshisname's parents who had immigrated from Nicaragua during the civil war of the 1980s. That relationship coupled with my location in a city with a large Hispanic population helped form many of my views towards food.

I cooked lots of arroz con pollo (chicken and rice), paella, empanadas de yucca (savory appetizers made using flour from the yucca root), tostones (plaintain chips), frijoles negros enteros (whole black beans) and used ingredients like crema del vaso (Mexican sour cream), carnitas (fried and roast pork) and queso fresco (a fresh white cheese).

I remember early Sunday mornings at La Palma over near 24th and Alabama. It was a Mexican deli basically where I could buy all these ingredients. The best item: tortillas handmade by the abuelitas (grannies) in the back of the store. They all sat around large griddles heated by a wood or gas fire - these were huge at about 2 to 3 feet across. The women would pick up a handful of tortilla dough made with masa harina (corn meal), quickly and expertly form it into a flat round circle (no tortilla presses here) and throw it on the griddle. Then, with an expert eye and a sense developed from 50 plus years of cooking, they would know exactly when to flip the tortilla.

People would wait in line to buy these tortillas by the dozen. There were bags of premade tortillas - that had been made by these women the day before or earlier in the day but the die-hard afficionados knew that the only good tortilla was one that came right off that grill immediately. I would buy 3 dozen at a time - we used them like bread in my house back then.

And the best part: going out to your car, opening the package and seeing the steam come out, rolling up a tortilla and dipping it in the cream del vaso - all done on the hood of your car. I've seen grown men cry while doing this. All because certain foods, especially the foods of your past, the foods of your people, can transport you back to your roots.

Photo: me in May 1997 at an horchateria in Valencia, Spain.

A History of Food: The Present Time

Since it is November and Thanksgiving is approaching, I thought I'd write about food, my history and my family’s history surrounding food: what we ate, how we ate, etc. I figured I’d work backwards from the present time to about 1920 when my great-grandmother was cooking for her family or perhaps even back to my great-great grandmothers. (I should finish up by November 11 which is Veteran’s Day when I’ll be featuring an article about my first cousin once-removed, Sgt. Kenneth Von Ronn who was killed in Iraq in 2005 at the age of 20.)

I am a self-admittedly good cook and my family and friends would probably say so as well. If it weren’t for my flat feet, I would have pursued a career in the hotel or food service industry since I have a passion for cooking. I cook dinner, usually from scratch roughly 5 to 6 times a week. While working full-time from home does help, it is a matter of necessity: the only thing my partner can make for dinner is reservations, but he is very good at it.

As I reach my mid-40s I am constantly aware of what I should and shouldn’t be eating. For me, it is either Cheerios or oatmeal each morning with low fat milk. Lunch is a sandwich of lean turkey breast with the occasional slice of low fat Swiss cheese snuck in. Lots of water, some diet soda, a glass of wine before dinner each night. Oh yeah, and lots of coffee. I drink a large 20 ounces mug in the morning and the rest of the pot, another 20 ounces is turned into a large ice coffee at 3:00 pm each day. And I like my coffee the way I like my men . . . [insert typical response here]. I usually say either “. . . weak and bitter” or “. . . ground up and in the freezer.” Hah!

You can also probably tell that I’m on a diet – no sugar in 8 weeks now, low fat, low fun.

Dinner is the big meal and I start cooking at around 5:30 – 6:00 pm and we eat at 6:30 pm. We always eat at the dining room table in the dining room. I was never raised eating in front of the television or in the kitchen or other rooms of the house.

When I say the “present time” in terms of food, I speak of 2000 up to today. I met my partner in 2000 and was able to entice him with my culinary skills. These are some of the basic dishes I make on a rotating basis each week (many of these recipes can be found or will be posted in the future on my cooking blog entitled And I Helped!):

Garlic Soup: in the fall and winter this is a weekly dish and can be made in 30 minutes or less. But you have to like garlic – I mean really like garlic. It is so easy – chop garlic, sauté in good olive oil, add a little paprika, saffron, chopped tomatoes, a large can of chicken broth, bring to a boil and stir in some beaten eggs and viola! Serve in a bowl with a good crusty piece of bread – maybe wine and cheese on the side. Amazing stuff especially when you are suffering a cold.

Bolognese Sauce: a 3 hour plus pasta sauce with ground beef and ground pork. The rule is: no green stuff – no basil, no parsley, no oregano. The people of Bologna don’t use it in their sauce. Usually I’ll throw in a few grilled chicken breasts or Italian sausage or even some braciole (thin pieces of flank steak rolled up with spices and Romano cheese in the middle). This is a weekend only dish, great for casual dinner parties and it freezes very well.

Chicken Stew: I’ve found an easy way to make this and my own homemade chicken stock. I buy the rotisserie chickens at Costco (or other supermarket here in Chicago like Jewel or Dominick’s) instead of raw fryers. With the fryers, you have lots of chicken fat and you have to skim the broth. We have a sandwich with some of the meat, them I break up the entire chicken, get all the stuff out on the bottom of the container, add water and boil for about an hour. For chicken stew, I add fresh or frozen vegetables, some rosemary and roasted garlic paste (see below), a can of low fat evaporated milk (it won’t curdle) and viola! Great with home-made biscuits. Oh how I miss biscuits!

Turkey Burgers: another low fat dish and made with the other man in my house – George Foreman! I love the George Foreman grill – I practically have worn it out in the past five years. I buy the ground turkey at Costco, add Italian breadcrumbs, an egg, chopped onion, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning and a tablespoon of olive oil. Grill 9 minutes and viola! Or is it voila?

Chicken Salad: not the wet, full of mayonnaise type but a big green salad with romaine lettuce or organic greens, tomatoes, Maytag blue cheese, grilled chicken breast and Brianna’s Real French Vinaigrette dressing. This dressing is the most amazing and made with canola oil and all natural ingredients. We devour this salad especially on summer nights.

Roast Vegetables: I make this more during the fall and winter – a big roasting pan filled with butternut squash, peppers, onions, whole mushrooms, garlic cloves, fennel bulbs (yes!) and potatoes. Add some olive oil and rosemary, roast for 45 minutes and viola! Goes great with roast beef.

Roasted Garlic Paste: when I buy the large container of peeled garlic at Costco, about 2 lbs worth, I know I could never finish it without having it spoil (unles there are vampires in the neighborhood that week). So I came up with the idea of roasting most of it in an aluminum foil packet with olive oil, salt and pepper for about 45 minutes at 400 degrees. When cool I place it in the food processor and puree it. Then place about 2 tablespoons on small squares of plastic wrap, twist into a ball and then in the freezer. It keeps for months and gets dropped into soups and stews.

For special occasions – well that will have to be another post soon. Let’s just say it includes Boneless Leg of Lamb on the Grill, Roast Crab Legs with Five Pepper Sauce, Paella, Basque Salad, Bread Pudding, Tiramisu, Figs with Prosciutto and Goat Cheese and Gingerbread Cookies!

Photo: My dining room here at home in Chicago, Illinois.