Life Goes On

I’m always amazed how long I can live out of the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. It proves that even though I buy only what’s on my grocery list and usually only what is on sale, I still buy more food than I realize. We all probably do.

Can you tell I never made it to the grocery store last week? It was too hot to take a bus, too expensive to take a cab, and I felt too much of an imposition to pester anyone for a ride. We’re running out of cookies (mine and Izzy’s) and I’m low on coffee but we’ve eaten our fill every day and even had dessert once in a while. The surprising thing is that I was able to make two holiday-type meals out of the freezer and pantry and none of them looked like offerings from an episode of “Chopped.”

If I were reading this blog, I’d wonder about Easter. I’m writing this blog and I wondered about Easter too. I did until I figured it out. There were two pork chops in the freezer. They had bones. It was as close to ham as I could get. (Of course, my mother never made Easter ham. She made Easter lamb, the leg of course.) There were a few new potatoes left on the counter. There were hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator. There were peas in the freezer. My Easter eating would consist of what was at hand.

The appetizer round was, naturally, deviled eggs. I don’t remember ever having made deviled eggs before. I sliced the eggs in half lengthwise and emptied the yolks into a small bowl. While crushing the yolks with a fork I contemplated additions to the creamy stuffing. I knew there would be mayonnaise. Did I want to add a drop of sriracha? Not if Izzy was having any. (She likes it with nachos but it’s a little much for Easter.) How about a little pickle relish? Not if it’s going in the egg salad I’ll make Tuesday. No, just mayo in the egg yolks. (I would have added a little mustard but who knew prepared mustard could go bad?) The stuffed egg whites looked good. To make them look even better, I dusted them with a little paprika. Does that sound like deviled eggs to you?

The entree round was planned to take two burners on the stove and the microwave. The potatoes started in a small saucepan of salted water. After a few minutes, I started browning both pork chops in a pan large enough to hold them both without crowding. A little kosher salt and pepper I checked the potatoes - quite ready. My attention turned back to the pork chops. They were ready to play. I added a little Key lime juice to the pan, a tablespoon or two. I almost always use Key lime juice instead of regular lime or lemon juice because there’s always some in the fridge. Then I added about a quarter cup white wine. That was in the fridge too. I let the pork chops and liquids get acquainted then turned the chops and put the cover on the pan, lowering the heat a little. Just before the chops smelled just right, after adding a little more lime juice and wine, I added about two teaspoon of capers. Izzy and I ate like princesses.

A trip to the store is in order today only for dog biscuits and coffee. I’ll be taking the bus and the quarter mile from the corner gets very long with a reusable bag full of heavy food. When I finally make it to the grocery store my list will include fixings for Cinco de Mayo food and Derby Day. Pretty good eatin’ comin’ up!

Another New Start

Spring is time for new starts. Luckily it’s not the only time. Since moving to Florida, new starts have jumped into my life in the winter, not necessarily by choice. Around Chicago, the only starts I expected in winter were from my old Chevy.


Izzy, my canine sister, has been trying to speak to me. She has code motions and sounds that may not be words but convey her meanings nonetheless. Ask any dog owner. They understand. Wednesday night I started planning dinner out loud. Since Izzy and I were alone she assumed I was talking to her. She told me no when I mentioned cooking the chicken breast with a sauce. We then went on to discuss the entire meal – chicken, baby portabellas, and red potatoes. When a dog suggests everything in the dish be sliced and sautéed, you can forgive her. She eats straight from a dog bowl, not on a plate with a knife and fork.


We’re having leftovers tonight. That doesn’t mean we won’t consider future dinners but right now I’m thinking about lunch. That’s almost hard to do since I want to go work in the yard. We got our first zucchini blossom today and the new squash I planted have sprung out of the ground. Went out this morning to water the little plots of plants and noticed the amazing growth since the morning before. Tried to work on readying the pepper patch but the bugs were vicious. I tried a little later before it got too hot out. Impossible plan. It got too hot in about five minutes and the bugs never gave me a break.


I must make a short shopping list for tomorrow since I need coffee and Izzy needs cookies. I’ll be hoofing it almost a quarter of the trip. A bus will take care of the long and boring trek. It will also save me from the verge of heat exhaustion that necessitated a cab ride last week. This week I’ll wear a hat. Hopefully, next week I can bum a ride from a kind neighbor who drives a hybrid. If I’m lucky, at least one of the busses I ride will be a hybrid. (They have ramps instead of steps. Double plus.) I miss having a car - even with the gas prices going sky high. I miss having a job. I miss having Ernie around. There’s time to get everything back if I’m lucky, everything except Ernie.


Two zucchini blossoms have dropped so far. I’ve read that’s no cause for alarm. Male flowers do that since they have no future. They live to pollinate and then die. Sounds like a guy thing to me. Suffering through blossom drop with my pepper plants two years ago toughened me to blossom drop of all kinds. Nothing has toughened me to ready this year’s pepper patch in the heat and swarms of biting insects. Think I’ll start working on next year’s garden this winter. Only the sun will stunt my yard work then. Sure, the days will be shorter but they’ll be cooler too.


I’m rambling. I noticed that and am sure you did too. Time to make dinner. This time it will be a surprise to Izzy. She’s just a dog and planning recipes shouldn’t be part of her job description. Sometimes I appreciate her input, though.

I Might Be Back

Inactivity is one of the greatest sins of blogdom and I have committed it big time. I’m guilty of ignoring this part of my writing life and therefore my internet friends.

I could offer you excuses. They probably wouldn’t hold up. I could offer promises. Would you believe me? Truth be told, my interest in the blog waned when comments ended. It isn’t fun talking to yourself, at least not for me. I spend most of the day talking to Izzy. She’s trying to talk back to me but she’s a dog and not really built for verbal communication.

I played with blogspot to see if I could fix the problem for months. Time to give it a try again. Trying to talk to Google about the problem has been as successful as trying to learn now to fly. I haven’t been alone. There are plenty of blogs with the same comments problem. Several bloggers have posted solutions. I’ll try fixes until I find one that works. I’ll need your help to see if the comments start working since the owner of the blog can always post a comment.

Meanwhile, the actual manuscript of A Table For One or Two is slowly taking shape. There are times I wish diced tomatoes came in 8-ounce cans. (The way food packaging is shrinking, that would be a 7-ounce can soon.) I wish vegetables planted from seed grew faster almost every day now. I will be staggering plantings to have a fresh, new crop until winter arrives. Gardening is taking more of my time than cooking or writing lately. That’s no way to write cookbooks but it’s a great way to get fresh, organic produce.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to return to my blog and continue writing it with love. The answer appeared as if by magic. My grandson has a link to my blog on his website. Actually, my daughter put it there. Garrison is only 6. (Sorry, G-man, six and a half.)

Writing on the blog will now be communicating with my family. As long as you’re reading it, you can be family too. Since we’re all family, I might ask you to chop onions or help with the dishes but you’re all invited for dinner or lunch or maybe even just dessert.

It’s time for me to do some cooking and thinking about the next post. I’d like to plan at least one new post every week. We’ll see how that goes. In a perfect world, we will be able to talk with each other. If that doesn’t work, I’ll continue the monologues.

December In Florida

A week or so before Thanksgiving I started tasting the leftovers. As it was, there were none. With three invitations for dinner, I didn’t get a bird. There was a can of cranberry sauce in the refrigerator that had to be eaten. It’s finally gone though it took me four days to eat it.

Now I’m tasting Christmas cookies. There is no fear that elves are going to hide all my sheet pans for the next three weeks then return them in time for Christmas heavy with six or seven kinds of cookies, some wrapped as gifts and some left for me to munch on. Holiday baking will be, as always, my very own labor of love. Six-hour cookie-baking marathons are in my future. I know it. And I love it.

Local gift cookies will probably be baked in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning during the week before Christmas. Cookies to be mailed will start earlier. I know my daughter and her family will probably eat them as they sort out the other presents. I sure hope the trip to Long Island doesn’t reduce them to crumbs. Perhaps a short list of uses for cookie crumbs may be in order.

My kitchen won’t spawn only cookies this year. I had planned on making bread for the neighbors. (That might be intimidating since one of my neighbors had a small bread delivery business.) French bread from an authentic French recipe was first on the list. Talk about a labor of love - it takes almost two days to make! When it comes out right, it even tastes like love.

I love to make pumpernickel. It’s one of those recipes that scare first-time cooks. How can all that stuff come out tasting good? Trust me. It does.

Then there’s one of my favorite breads to eat, Swedish Limpa. It’s another recipe that might frighten one who has never tasted it. If you’re ever had it, though, you might be like me and wait in line at 5:30 in the morning at the bakery that (used to) make it only on Thursdays. (It’s a staple now that I’m 1500 miles away. No waiting for the bakery to open on Thursday morning.) Haven’t decided who gets Limpa. I might just eat it all.

After nearly twenty years I discovered there are pink peppercorns growing in my yard. Well, technically, pink peppercorns are from the Peruvian peppertree and mine are from Brazil. I think it’s the difference between $24 per pound and $36. This year it will be an experimental gift is to my daughter. (It’s no gift to people who watch the county try to eradicate the “weed.”) The entire family, including my six-year-old grandson, cooks. When I started cleaning the seeds, there grew a kinship to the girls and women picking stamens from a crocus to harvest saffron. I, of course, will try it before I mail it. As a gift, it should come with a small peppermill. In my kitchen, it will be ground in a mortar and pestle. I hope it tastes good.

Spice mixtures are always in the mix as gifts. They are very personal. Are you a grill master? You need a spice rub. There are Asian spice mixes, Mediteranean, Mexican. As I said, it’s personal. Don’t think I’ll give spice mixes as gifts unless I know they are going to people who really want to try them. Why go to all the trouble of grinding and mixing – and sometimes growing – the ingredients only to see them thrown into the garbage? No landfill in the nation has ever appreciated Herb de Provence.

Everyone loves cookies!

Celebration Potatoes

The world watched this week as thirty-three brave men ascended into what must have felt like heaven. A collapse in the mine where they worked trapped them underground for over two months. Watching each miner emerge, one by one, was a wonder. Their emotions seemed contagious. Fresh air and freedom are things my friends and I take for granted. Those miners will never take anything for granted again.

Being a foodie, I immediately thought of a celebration dish for the men in Chile. The food they rationed before supplies could be sent down was canned tuna and peaches. I had plenty of canned tuna and some canned pears in my hurricane kit. Emergency supplies, in my mind, should be saved for emergencies. There would be no tuna or peaches used in celebration. I started looking for authentic Chilean recipes. I had a chicken breast, an onion, and some potatoes. All of the chicken recipes necessitated a trip to the grocery store, a trip I didn’t want to make. Root vegetables, grown deep in the earth seemed incredibly fitting.

The search for a potato dish unearthed Picante de Papas.

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 serrano or jalapeno chiles, seeded & minced
1 cup half & half
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
5 medium potatoes, cooked, pared & sliced
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
4 tomatoes, peeled and sliced
¼ cup grated Gouda cheese
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 F. Oil a medium glass or earthenware casserole with 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil.

Sauté onion in small saucepan in remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, stirring occasionally, until just softened. Add garlic and cook about a minute.

Scatter half the onion and garlic on the bottom of the dish. Cover with half the potatoes then half the tomatoes. Salt lightly. Sprinkle with half the chiles and half the cheese. Repeat the layers, ending with cheeses. Pour the half and half gently over the dish. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until half and half is absorbed and cheese is browned. Serve immediately.

While searching I found another recipe – similar but different, if you know what I mean. It called for green pepper, not chiles, changed the cheese, and included sour cream.

I had three purple potatoes, one sweet potato, and one small white potato. My refrigerator guarded about one cup of half and half and about three tablespoons of sour cream. I had plenty of grated Parmesan. The only other cheese I had was a four-cheese Mexican blend. My Vidalia onions were about to head south but there were three of them. The life expectancy of my four small tomatoes was debatable. Since I had no peppers of any kind, I decided to make a root-vegetable strata. That seemed a fitting tribute for the miners trapped underground for over two months.

I didn’t peel any of the potatoes before I cooked them and only the sweet potato afterward. What can I say? I like potato peels and the purple ones have skin so thin you could read through them if you stripped them off a cooked tuber. I didn’t cook the sweet potato as much as the others fearing they’d turn to mush and be impossible to cut. That was a good call.

The onions went into the bottom the casserole after a good sweat in a small frying pan. Didn’t have any fresh garlic left and was afraid I’d have to settle for garlic powder when I spied a tiny bit of granulated garlic in the cabinet. It was more than enough to sprinkle on the onions. Then I sliced the purple potatoes as the first potato layer. A sprinkling of cheeses and about a tablespoon of sour cream went on top of the purple layer. Next came the sweet potato. It was cooked enough to peel the skin off easily but not enough to mash with the knife when cutting. More cheese and sour cream and then the white potato. Finally, the end of the cheeses. I poured the half and half slowly and carefully over the whole thing and sprinkled on a few pats of butter and another sprinkle of Parmesan.

I wanted to eat half an hour after the casserole went into the oven but I could still see some half and half. Maybe I saw it or maybe I felt a need to follow directions. I waited the longest five minutes of my life. I take exception to “Serve immediately.” Hot potato isn’t an idle description. They are hot and stay hot. Cheese, as any pizza lover knows, is a very good insulator. Aware of this, I served some on a plate and watched the steam rise before I tasted.

It was worth the wait. (And I didn’t burn my mouth.)

Purple Potatoes

I met a new friend last Tuesday. Actually, it’s a new store. It’s been around for almost a year but it’s new to me. Why would I need a new store when I’m running out of savings and the prospect of a job is infinitesimal? Because it’s a produce store!

An old friend told me about Top Crop Produce in Venice, Florida. He mentioned they have purple potatoes. I had to go there! I made plans last Tuesday to go to “unemployment” which is about two blocks from the store. Top Crop was the most helpful part of the trip.

I went for purple potatoes and bought purple potatoes. The plantains looked perfect. All the lettuces looked perfect and very crisp. Everything in the store looked perfect. Nothing else could make me insist on taking it home. Such a narrow vision isn’t like me. I usually end up with one impulse purchase but not last Tuesday.

One last stop on the way home found some discounted meat. That’s been the bulk of my meat purchases lately. Found a small tray of ground round for less than the price of ground chuck and a large (for me) tray with five little loin end pork chops. I went home with plans for the week. Like most plans, they were flexible. This plan, however, had to include purple potatoes.

Tuesday night, after a lunch of Sunday’s leftover dinner with the addition of some steamed carrots, was a simple plate of boiled purple potatoes cut and covered with whipped butter. They were the best potatoes I’d eaten since I was a kid when my father dug a hole in the garden, filled it with straw, and planted potato eyes. The potatoes grew up clean but we washed them anyway. That garden was how I learned the taste of fresh vegetables and fruit. (Stuffing freshly-caught fish in the freezer to prepare for the ride home from Wisconsin was how I learned the taste of fresh fish. The fish swam in the sink at home before my father cleaned them. I never wanted frozen fish again.)

Top Crop Produce has become my choice as a farmer’s market. It’s open seven days a week. It’s air conditioned. I don’t have to prepare for an hour or more in the sun. (The parking lot is a short trip to the door. I may be sorry for telling others about it because I’ll need a hat and sunscreen for that trip.) And did I say they take requests? If they can get it and it’s local and good, they will. They also sell coffee in packages and by the cup. I hear it’s good. I don’t drink coffee so I don’t know but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

What else did I do with Tuesday’s treasures? Haven’t found a job yet but did have a great dinner. I pan fried three pork chops in a dry non-stick pan with just a bit of salt and pepper. Then I used the same pan to fry some lardons, slices of bacon I happened to have in the freezer cut into about a quarter inch slivers. Leaving the bacon fat in the pan but taking out the lardons to drain on paper towel, I added some butter, about a tablespoon, half a small Vidalia onion cut into thin rings, and four ounces of sliced mushrooms (I used crimini) and cooked them until everything started to soften. Again, I boiled the potatoes while cooking everything else. The plate was simple. Two of the tiniest pork chops, one potato cut into wedges and slathered with more butter, the onion, mushroom, and bacon mix all put on a plate.

Izzy got a little pork chop, a couple of pieces of potato, some of the bacon, and a mushroom or two carefully cleaned of onion. We both gave dinner rave reviews.Wonder what I’ll get next week at my new BFF store. Think I’ll lift the limit a bit and buy more than one thing. That kale sure looked good.

GOURMET REINCARNATED (again)

First came the magazine. Then came the cookbook. The magazine folded. The cookbook may not have been remaindered but it was selling at steep discounts. There was a website that disappeared shortly after the print magazine. Now there’s an app for that!

Conde Nast had the biggest and arguably the best cooking magazine on the planet. They were shuttering a legend. To this day the Gourmet cookbook offers a free subscription to a magazine no longer in print. But the gang at Times Square knows the power of the brand. They gathered some friends, of whom they have many, and planned a limited release series of news-stand-only special editions. The first is “Gourmet Quick Kitchen” and two more, currently unnamed, are planned. If sales blossom, is a semi-annual or quarterly Gourmet big magazine in the future? We’ll have to wait to find out.

“Gourmet Quick Kitchen” was supposed to appear on newsstands Tuesday, September 7, 2010. I found it at the local Walmart on Saturday, September 4. Naturally, I bought a copy. Shopping was over for the day. I had to get home to read my treasure. The only thing I forgot was butter.

Once home, I sat down to read it. It felt good to be greeted by an unadorned gray inside front cover instead of ads. The first, unnumbered, page announces, “Here’s a secret:” and continues with a secret even better than the fact that lemon juice will curdle milk. Before the recipes begin on page 6 with Spicy Pepper and Garlic Shrimp and a handy Kitchen Tip on how to devein shrimp in the corner of the page and by the time we’ve developed a craving for snappy shrimp, we’ve already seen the Roasted Tomato Tart twice and we want to eat that too – now. The distance between pages 6 and 12 couldn’t be longer.

From the photo index on the inside back cover (no ads again!) I counted 81 recipes. All look scrumptious, probably due to the simple albeit sometimes whimsical photography. Total overall Start-To-Finish times range from 10 minutes to 3 hours. Three hours may not seem quick but good food sometimes takes time to put together and there are only a few items taking more than an hour. They look good enough to save for a less hectic day.

At 129 pages, Gourmet Quick Kitchen contains ten “chapters” of recipes, one Kitchen Notebook, one containing menus, and a recipe index. Sold in the magazine section with a cover price of $10.99, I consider it more a soft-cover cookbook than a magazine. One of the 10-minute recipes, Chile Peanuts, was similar to something I thought I invented. In contrast, one of the desserts had me slapping my forehead with the palm of my hand saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Nothing looks impossible for the home cook. Now the decision is what to cook first.