Dining as Routine

I'm at home for the summer, spending my days with my daughter. Our day is divided into chunks of time where we focus on household chores, academic pursuits, and general fun. Two weeks ago we each began the day by making a list of five goals we would like to achieve in June. Writing two blog posts a week is one of my goals. I want to gain some momentum with this blogging business.

Today I thought I'd share an excerpt from John Feinstein's book A Season on the Brink, which gives readers an insider's look at legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight. The idea for this post percolated in March as I listened to Coach Knight provide color commentary for the Big 12 Men's Basketball tournament, and I kept thinking about the following passage in the book:

At home, the team eats in the student union, in an elegant third-floor meeting room. Everyone, players and coaches, wears a coat and a tie - everyone except Knight, who usually arrives in slacks and a sweater. The players sit at a long table and eat spaghetti, hamburgers without rolls, scrambled eggs, pancakes, and ice cream. They drink orange juice or iced tea. The meal is always the same, home or away. Everyone gets vanilla ice cream - except Knight, who gets butter pecan.

Initially I thought the pregame meal was ridiculous. The meal makes no sense. It's something a father from the 1950's throws together for the kids when mom is out of town. Where are the vegetables? Then I started to reflect on the meal and the purpose it served, and then I began to reflect on my own dining eccentricities. Specifically, I thought about my lunch ritual at school. For the past two years, 98 percent of the time I ate the following for lunch.

 

Yogurt and Uncle Sam cereal. Uncle Sam cereal won't have prominent placement in most cereal aisles. It will be tucked away from the sugar-infused throng of traditional breakfast cereals. It's a stodgy cereal consisting only of wheat flakes and flax seeds, healthy goodness to fuel the body. Some of my colleagues probably think I'm crazy. Some probably marvel at my monastic allegiance to this meal. You would think that a food blogger would mix up his lunch routine. Today I'll close my post by listing three reasons this lunch routine.

1. At school I get only 15-20 minutes to eat lunch, and since I hate to rush a meal, I choose something that can be casually enjoyed in the allotted time. Time (specifically, lack of time) stresses me out. I don't wear a watch because he ticking of a clock and the realization that my days are numbered evokes stress and neurosis in my bones.

2. This lunch routine provides me with self-discipline. I love to eat, and who knows what I would look like if I ate whatever the hell I wanted to eat for lunch. I'm already a little heavier than I'd like to be, so I tether my health to this anchor.

3. I think, the stress of being an introvert in front of a classroom of teenagers dulls my appetite. I don't require a big meal, and I prefer to be light and nimble in the classroom.

I just wanted to get the blogging ball rolling with this post.

take care,

muddy waters

 

Holding It Together with Gardening

I come from a long line of gardeners, so my summer childhood scrapbook is filled thick with the following snapshots:

• sitting underneath my grandparents' car port snapping green beans.


• digging potatoes


• My Uncle Raymond dropping by our house sharing the bounty from his garden


• zucchini, zucchini, zucchini, zucchini, and zucchini


• rhubarb


• snakes in the strawberry patches


• eating a jalapeno in my Uncle Don's garden and sprinting toward the water spigot to attempt to cool the burn


• standing in the garden with a salt shaker and eating tomatoes off the vine


• riding in the back of a pickup as a it crosses the creek (pronounced "crick") on my way to my grandparents' garden (Once upon a time people rode in the beds of pickups)

With the exception of a few herbs I grow to use in my cooking, I don't keep a garden. I think a lot about what is lost because I don't garden, and it makes me sad. Lately my daughter has asked if we can plant a small garden. It makes me happy to think that this urge to garden might be in her DNA. Maybe she and I need to break ground on this project as a way to reconnect with those relatives from my past.

With these thoughts and memories pinballing in my head, I reflected on the following passage from Ted Kooser's wonderful book Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps:

According to the TV weathermen-all smiles at six this morning- today is to be one of the "top ten days of the year!" He was exclaiming his own prediction of good weather, of course, but most of us among his early morning viewers are hoping that this will be top ten day of the year in ways other than that. I for one am hoping that it will be among the top ten days for making a few pints of applesauce from our bruised and wormy windfalls and also among the top ten days for gluing together my late mother's cutting board, which during the past week split in half and by so doing opened a crack in my heart, into which a good deal of syrupy sentiment trickled.

Mother would never have paid "good money", as she would have said, for a gourmet cutting board, heavy and thick as a layer cake and cleverly fitted together from finely planed strips of chocolate-dark and sugar-light hardwoods. No, her cutting board was three short pieces of one-by-four pine, glued together into a surface about the size of a piece of typewriter paper. She probably bought it at a yard sale. On this crude table, which over the years turned roast beef brown from the oil of store brand cheese and the juice from whatever fruit was on sale, was inscribed her kitchen's history, scored into the surface by a dull paring knife with the rivets gone from one side of the handle. There are chapters on flaky pie dough, thick egg noodles, and round steak hammered to a pulp.

When she died by sister and I were dividing her few belongings, I kept mother's cutting board. At the time I didn't have a sentimental attachment to it, but I thought my wife and I might be able to make some use of it. I hold on to nearly everything that comes my way.

And we have used it, nearly every day. It is my generation's time to slice store brand cheddar on it and dice the sale carrots and core whatever poor apples might fall from our trees. And I am going to make applesauce today not so much because I like applesauce but because it would please Mother- and, for that matter, her mother and her mother's mother- to know I don't intend to let those miserable little windfalls go to waste.

So, on this top ten day, the first thing I am going to do is to carry the halves of my mother's cutting board down to my shop in the barn and glue them together. And then I'm going to clamp them to dry - clamp them with heavy iron pipe clamps, tightly, so tightly my fingers hurt twisting the handles, because there is so much I want to hold together.

I love the last sentence.

plow to the end of the row,

muddywaters

The Dog of the South

I'm currently reading The Dog of the South by Charles Portis. Most of you probably know Mr. Portis as the author of True Grit, but I'm quickly learning that he has other books that are worth reading. The Dog of the South is a story of man who's tracking down his wife who has left him for another man. It's that simple. There are no subplots or literary posing. It's simply a quirky romp that is one part Hunter S. Thompson, one part No Country for Old Men and one part Coen brothers. If you like road books, absurd humor, and the subversive, you'll like this book. If you don't like any of these, I'm OK with that.

Since this is a food blog, I thought I would share a food-related passage. It occurs early in the story when the narrator dines at a Texas restaurant that is run by a couple from North Dakota. He's skeptical of their ability to serve a good chicken-fried steak.

You can usually count on a pretty good chicken-fried steak in Texas, if not a chicken-fried chicken, but I didn't like this setup. All afternoon I had been thinking about one of those steaks, with white gravy and a lot of black pepper, and now I was afraid these people from Fargo would bring me a prefabricated vealette pattie instead of fresh meat. I ordered roast beef and I told the waitress I wanted plenty of gristle and would like for the meat to be gray with an iridescent rainbow sheen. She was not in the mood for teasing being preoccupied with some private distress like the others. She brought me a plate of fish sticks and the smallest portion of coleslaw I've never seen. It was in a paper nut cup. I didn't say anything because they have a rough job. Those waitresses are on their feet all day, and they never get a raise and they never get a vacation until they quit. The menu was complete fiction. She was serving the fish sticks to everybody, and not a uniform count either.

I hate menus that are mere fiction. I hate the prefab, frozen, deep-fat fried CFS. Give me a hand-pounded, hand-breaded, never-frozen,, cook-in-a-skillet, chicken fried steak. The same goes for a pork tenderloin sandwich. Oh, and please hold the canned gravy. It's tough to find a good chicken fried steak in Kansas, but I hear they have a good one at the Leon Cafe in Leon, KS. That's just hearsay though.

This passage made me think of this scene from the movie Five Easy Pieces:



the dude abides,
muddywaters

Love

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If one carries many such memories into life, one is safe to the end of one's days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may be the means of saving us.

***From The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

I recently fell in love with singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell's book Chinaberry Sidewalks. I knew I was under the book's sway when I found myself reading passages aloud, so that could hear the music of his words. I rationed the last 50 pages of the book, so I could milk the affair. Alas it came to an end, but I plan on revisiting it one a regular basis.



The book is a memoir of Mr. Crowell's experiences growing up in Houston. Much of the book explores the turbulent relationship of his parents. At times it's a heartbreaking book, but it's told with love and grace. The following passage is one such example of the beauty that can be found inside this book:

As a boy my favorite place in the world was my grandmother's apron-covered lap. Her favorite place in the world was the tiny bedroom where she kept her Bible, a wicker rocking chair, and an old tube radio tuned to the hundred-thousand-watt radio station KXEG in Del Rio, Texas. Lost in the scent of her leather-covered Bible and the overheated transformers, we went places, met people, and saw things that would shape the remainder of our lives. Rocking on her lap and listening to a live Carter Family performance, I remember knowing for the first time that I was loved. In time I came to understand the nature of her love as being part of an even greater love, one that loved my grandmother for loving me.

One day I asked if she had anything to do with this God I'd been hearing about. Without pause or condescension she answered, "Why, yes, child, I do, but no more than you or your momma or a rank stranger on the street. Some say God's sittin' up in heaven mad as a hornet 'bout how we actin' down here, but I don't think he's mad at all. Ain't nobody mad coulda ever made somebody half as special as you." She was the enlightened enchantress of my childhood. I was, and still am, very much in love with Grandma Katie.

All these years later, the smell of burning leaves often transports me to the tiny front yard on Avenue P, where on an autumn day in 1954 my grandmother buried me up to the neck in freshly fallen post-oak leaves. Like every great adult playmate, she knew the value of repetition and, for my please alone, spent the entire afternoon re-raking leaves in an attempt to create the perfect pile. More than just that, she created the perfect day. Then, when the daylight and my interest in being buried alive began to wane, she raked the pile high one last time. "Why, I do believe a fine young man like you should do the honors," she said, ceremoniously handing me a lit kitchen match.


From the blaze, sparks sprang like newborn shooting stars in reverse, defying gravity and rising far above our heads. A hoot owl on the telephone pole harrumphed his approval. Trees leaned in for a closer look. house kept a respectful distance. But the wind couldn't resist the urge to see what it could do, hence more sparks. The pyromaniac in me today can be traced to the moment Grandma Katie passed me that match.

Before long, our roaring fire gave way to a smoldering glow, and eventually, the pitch-black darkness of another star-studded witching hour. It was, after all, Halloween season, when the blurred edges of blue shadows, the coolness of day's end, and my encroaching bedtime normally put me in mind of ghosts and their attendant hobgoblins. Not on this evening. Backed by my grandmother's fierce innocence, the chains of my four-year-old imagination refused to be rattled. To be well loved is to be free of the evil lurking around the next darkened corner. Every child should know that feeling.

Later on, after I'd played in the bathtub until my fingers and toes were nearly purple as prunes, she read my favorite Unclue Remus story - the one where Br'er Rabbit gets in a jam with the Tar Baby. I was fast asleep before B'rer Fox could outline, for the hapless Br'er Bear, his plan to snare Br'er Rabbbit. My life since has been ongoing search for the stillness that marked the end of that one perfect day.

This passage reaffirms my belief that love never dies. Even after a loved one passes, the love they created lives in memories and stories. Their love lives in us, and we have an obligation to perpetuate that love by passing our stories on.

dreaming under moonbeams,
muddywaters

Gleaning

There's always something left to learn. I love this aspect of life. While I love seeking out knowledge, I probably savor the little bits of wisdom and knowledge that land in my lap when I need them most.

Thursday I stumbled upon the concept of gleaning while listening to a podcast of The Splendid Table. According to Wikipedia:

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.

According to the Holiness Code and the Deuteronomic Code of the Torah, farmers should leave the corners of their fields unharvested, and they should not attempt to harvest any left-overs that had been forgotten when they had harvested the majority of a field[1][2][3]. On one of the two occasions that this is mentioned by the Holiness Code, it adds that, in vineyards, some grapes should be left ungathered[4], an argument made also by the Deuteronomic Code[5]; the Deuteronomic Code additionally argues that olive trees should not be beaten on multiple occasions, and whatever remains from the first set of beatings should be left[6]. According to the Holiness Code, these things should be left for the poor and for strangers[4][2], while
the Deuteronomic Code argues instead that it should be left for widows, strangers, and for paternal orphans[3][6][5].

I like this notion of sharing the harvest. It's something I need to do more.

take care,
muddy

Feelin' Cheesy

We have a dictionary in almost every room in our house because I never know when the need or urge to look up a definition will strike. You would think that having dictionaries this accessible would make me more articulate or at least a great Scrabble player, but unfortunately is does nothing but feed my curiosity and make me a bit odd.

I'm especially intrigued by the birth and evolution of words. When I read about a word evolving and taking on a new meaning, my ears perk up. This was the case this weekend as I read Eric LeMay's book Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese. In that book, Mr. LeMay ponders the following question:

Why has cheese come to signify all that's sappy, campy, tacky, corny, kitschy, vulgar, lame, stupid, fake, overdone, cliche ridden, and sentimental in American culture? What's wrong with "corny" or "soupy"? Why did cheese have to be sacrificed on the food-as-adjective altar? It's not fair.

Mr. LeMay spends an entire chapter exploring these questions, and I was riveted. Mr. LeMay cited that the first printed occurrence of "cheese" used in the above connotation occurred in a screenplay for a 1943 comedy titled Hail the Conquering Hero in the following line: "Of all the cheezy songs I ever heard that one certainly takes the crackers." Mr. LeMay then shares some historical background:

The answer might lie not in what cheese is, but in what cheese was. In 1943, the year Americans started saying "cheesy," World War II was on. Food was rationed, and the cheese that people were eating wasn't artisanal and organic. I t was industry. It was Kraft. In 1943, you could trade one rationing coupon for two boxes of Kraft macaroni and Cheese Diner, and Americans at home at about 80 million boxes that included orangey powder labeled "cheese.

American soldiers had it worse. The K-ration that they ate for lunch contained biscuits, sugar, salt tablets, cigarettes, gun, and a "cheese product" that could patch holes in airplanes.

Mr. LeMay goes on to share an account of a crew who patched bullet holes in their B-29 during a WWII bombing raid, and then he gives readers his explanation of how "cheesy" possibly evolved to mean something trite and schmaltzy:

Cheese wasn't cheese as we now know it when Americans started saying "cheesy." It was a fake, a substitute, not only for meat but for metal. Is it any wonder that it became slang for other fakes, other substitutes? You might call cheesiness an "emotion product." The label on it says "happiness" or "love," but when you experience it, it feels powdery, rubbery, not quite real.

I don't know if he's right, but I find all of this intriguing. And it makes me crave a grilled cheese sandwich.

oddly yours,

muddy

Twain's Feast

I'm currently reading Twain's Feast: Searching for American's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens by Andrew Beahrs. I'm enjoying this book, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in American food, traveling, Mr. Twain, history, cooking, and the ecology our food. The focal point of the book is Twain's love of food, specifically the foods he longed for on the tail end of a European trip. These cravings compelled him to compose the following list of American foods of he wanted to eat when he returned home:

• Radishes
• Baked apples with cream
• Fried oysters
• Frogs
• American coffee, with real cream
• American butter
• Fried Chicken, Southern style
• Porter-house steak
• Saratoga potatoes
• Broiled chicken, American style
• Hot biscuits, southern style
• Hot wheat-bread, Southern style
• Hot buckwheat cakes
• American toast
• Clear maple syrup
• Virginia bacon, broiled
• Blue points, on the half shell
• Cherry-stone clams
• San Francisco mussels, steamed
• Oyster soup
• Clam soup
• Philadelphia Terrapin soup
• Bacon and greens, Southern style
• Hominy
• Boiled onions
• Turnips
• Pumpkin
• Squash
• Asparagus
• Butter beans
• Sweet potatoes
• Lettuce
• Succotash
• String beans
• Mashed potatoes
• Catsup
• Boiled potatoes, in their skins
• New potatoes, minus the skins
• early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot
• Slice tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar
• Stewed tomatoes
• Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper
• Oysters roasted in shell - Northern style
• Soft-shell crabs
• Connecticut shad
• Baltimore perch
• Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas
• Lake trout, from Tahoe
• Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans
• Black bass from the Mississippi
• American roast beef
• Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style
• Cranberry sauce
• Celery
• Roast wild turkey
• Woodcock
• Canvas-back-duck from Baltimore
• Prairie-hens from Illinois
• Missouri partridges, broiled
• 'Possum
• Coon
• Boston bacon and beans
• Green corn, on the ear
• Hot corn-pone, with chitlins, Southern style
• Hot hoe-cake, Southern style
• Hot egg-bread, Southern style
• Hot light -bread, Southern style
• Buttermilk
• Iced sweet milk
• Apple dumplings, with real cream
• Apple pie
• Apple fritters
• Apple puffs, Southern style
• Peach cobbler, Southern style
• Peach pie
• American mince pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Squash pie
• All sorts of American pastry
  

I photocopied the list, and now I'm carrying it around as a compass for my belly. I'm still digesting the list, but I'm interested in hearing what you think.

What are your favorite things on this list? What would you add to Mr. Twain's list?

keep your skillet good and greasy,

muddy

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Sometimes I like it when the weather dictates my schedule. This was the case at Man Camp when the rain forced me inside my cramped tent on a Saturday morning.

At first I wasn't happy with this arrangement. I wanted the rain to stop, and the first hour in tent was torturous. Every 3 minutes my daughter interrupted my reading and asked, "Dad, when is it going to stop raining?"

Eventually, we embraced the rain and cramped became cozy. I used that time to read Mr. Ron Rash's book of short stories titled Burning Bright and the Oxford American's food issue. My daughter doodled and read from one of her favorite books.

In this calm I read a paragraph that struck a chord with me. It's from an article in the Oxford American titled "The Southern Strawberry: Liquid Rubies" by Marianne Gingher:

In lieu of odes, our foodie ancestors created the jar-size museum and invented preserves so that lovers of short-season perishables could enjoy the palate'sequivalent of instant replay. To Make preserves heirloom quality, you need to work as deliberately at the task as divining water. My own patient grandmother concocted a strawberry condiment so like a jar of jewels that we children called it liquid rubies." She discovered that making small batches and not stirring the berries while they simmer produced a lucid, red-gold syrup that fattened and embalmed the fruit. This was my grandmother who had no talent for scramble. She could lean on a windowsill for hours, watching an inchworm's progress; the dreamy to and fro of darning a sock pleased her. Although her languid habits infuriated my grandfather, they made her an excellent cook. Watching sugar and strawberries percolate, feeling the rope syrup gather weight on her spoon, my grandmother tilted her face into the lush, promissory steam unraveling from her jam pot like genies rubbed from lamps.

This reminded me of one of the reasons I cook. Cooking provides me with a model of how to live. Slowly. Deliberately. Doing small things well.

take care,

muddy

Rebelling Against Reality

Tonight I'm attending a poetry reading by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, so I thought I'd tie an excerpt from his book Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps. Then I'll try to tie everything back to food and cooking.

I like to get outside and paint pictures in the early spring. I suppose it's my way of trying to be a tulip, pushing my way out of the tight white bulb of winter and opening a little color against the darkness.

I've converted my '92 Mercury Topaz into a rolling art studio so I can paint wherever I can park, and in all weathers. I built a small plywood table over the passenger's seat for my palette, paints, and brushes, and a Masonite easel that fastens over the steering wheel. For a week I've been out making watercolor sketches and was blessed to observe the first greens coming on in the roadside ditches. On the first day everything was the dusty deer-hide brown of late winter. On the second day I would begin to see traces of green in the sunnier spots. And by the third, there was green everywhere. Though I'm an amateur painter and my poor mixing isn't good enough to perfectly capture this transition, my first day's sketch, of a field of corn stubble, looks like late winter and the third day's, of a couple of big bales in the shelter of some trees, looks like early spring. That's accomplishment enough for a Sunday painter in his sixties.

While I was parked by the road, a farmer pulled out of the lane to a farmhouse about a quarter of a mile away and drove slowly toward me in his pickup. When he got up beside me, he stopped, rolled down his window, leaned out, and asked if I needed any help. He looked to be about my age. "No," I said, "I'm just painting a picture." I could tell by the look on his face that he'd never run into anything quite like that before, but he just said "Oh," as if it happened every day, and rolled up his window, tight enough to seal tin his sense of the way things ought to be. then he drove to the next corner, turned around, came past me again, and turned back into his lane.

I like the notion of a car being converted into an art studio. In fact. I love seeing something being used for a purpose different than intended. The missile silo that becomes a home. The propane tank that's becomes bbq smoker. The sinner that becomes a saint.

I guess, this is one of the reasons I decided to use my car to cook earlier this year. My potatoes turned out well, but later I tried baking a flatbread. It didn't go so well. It didn't help that I tried this during a snow storm, which extended my drive to work by 20 minutes and cooled my ambition to stop, get out of the car, and flip the foil-wrapped bread on the manifold.

When I arrived at school, I removed the foil pouch from my car's engine. I could smell the pungent char of the burned bread. Even though it was the smell of failure, I was giddy. Giddiness accompanied with failure makes no sense, but I trace my joy to the satisfaction that comes with rebelling against reality, a reality that dictates that I shouldn't bake bread underneath a car hood and a reality that dictates that we shouldn't take time from more pressing matters to paint tulips.




How do you rebel against reality?

march to your own beat,
muddy

Sugar-Tinted Glasses and The Southern Living Kids' Cookbook

For Christmas my daughter received the Southern Living Kids' Cookbook. Last week I gave my daughter some Post-It Notes and had her mark recipes she'd like to try. I did this to foster her love of cooking and to combat her finickiness at the table.

After 30 minutes she had about a dozen recipes marked. They all had one thing in common. Can you guess that one thing from viewing pictures of four of those recipes?

The girl knows what she likes.

Next time I'll make sure she gets a cookbook without any desserts.

keep on the sweet side,

muddy

The Highway's Jammed with Heroes on a Last Chance Power Drive

Here at The Greasy Skillet we love books about as much as we love food. Periodically, I'll share books that I’ve been reading in a feature I call The Greasy Bookshelf (I know it’s not a very original title). I do try to put an original spin on this feature by sharing excerpts that have a connection with food.


I don't like to run. I might run if I'm being chased by someone who wants to kick my ass. I might run if I'm chasing down an ice cream truck. I might run if I'm playing a game that requires running. Otherwise I don't care to run. However, my ever-expanding waistline is demanding me to adopt running as a form of exercise. In the past, I tried to develop a relationship with running in the past, but it quickly withered. You see, when I run there's no "runners' high" and I spend the whole time thinking about how miserable I am. That's no way to spend 30 minutes.

Depsite the fact that I loathe running, I'm reading a book about runners titled Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. In this nonfiction book, the author tells his story of traveling to Mexico, so he can learn about the Turahumara Indians, who are known for their superhuman ability to run long distances without resting. These individual can run for two days without stopping to rest. The book is an incredible look at the culture of the Turahumara, and of course, you can't talk about culture without talking about food and drink. Some of the Turahumara's endurance can be credited to a beverage called iskiate. The following is a description of that drink:

• "It's brewed up by dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and a quirt of lime. In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they're superpacked with omega-32, omegas-6s, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you couldn't do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home. Chia was once so treasured, the Aztecs used to deliver it to their king in homage. Aztec runners used to chomp chia sees as they went into battle, and the Hopis fueled themselves on chia during their epic runs from Arizona to the Pacific Ocean. The Mexican state of Chiapas is actually named after the seed; it used to rank right up there with corn and beans as a cash crop. Despite its lquid-gold status, chia is ridiculously easy to grow; if you own a Chia Pet, in fact, you're only a few steps away from your own batch of devil drink."
  

Interesting stuff. It's just a matter of time until this gets incorporated into one of those newfangled energy drinks. It's probably already out there.

I know there will be more food moments in this book, and I'll share them with you as I continue to read the book. Later I'll get to learn about the corn beer that the Turahumara like to consume with great gusto.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia,

muddy

Soup Du Jour for the Incarcerated

After a three-month hiatus, I've decided to resurrect The Greasy Bookshelf, where I spotlight significant food moments in books I've read.

I bet there´s rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
they´re probably drinkin´ coffee and smoking big cigars.
Well I know I had it coming, I know I can´t be free
but those people keep a movin´
and that´s what tortures me...

Well if they´d free me from this prison,
if that railroad train was mine
I bet I´d moved it all a little further down the line
far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay
and I´d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.....
I bet I´d move just a little further down the line
far from Folsom prison, that's where I want to stay
and I´d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.....

***"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash

I have an acquaintance who works at the state prison in Lansing, so I often ask him about prison food and what's on the cafeteria menu. Two weeks ago when the temperature assaulted us with triple digits, he told me that they served the inmates soup. It should be noted that the inmates don't have air conditioning, and they were served a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup, not a chilled gazpacho. Needless to say the inmates were pissed. I sympathize with them. It does seem a bit cruel and unusual. If I would have been dining in the prison cafeteria that day, I would have jumped up on a table and shouted, "At-tic-ca! At-tic-ca! At-tic-ca!" I'm sure they throw inmates in the hole for such antics, , but at least there I'd have time to allow my soup to cool.


Today I pulled The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley off the Greasy Bookshelf. In addition to having the state prison located in nearby Lansing, Leavenworth is also home to the United States Penitentiary and the United States Disciplinary Barracks located in Ft. Leavenworth, so prisons are a big industry in the area.

Anyway, the book gives a dramatic (maybe overly dramatic) look at life inside the Leavonworth Pen. It's a quick read, and there are a few good "foodie" moments in the book that show us food is more than food. My favorite involves a Sunday evening ritual for inmates who work in the kitchen. During this time they're allowed to cook their own meals. Mr. Earley gives us a glimpse of this unique freedom in the following passage:

Technically, the kitchen was closed. Inmates had to make do on Sunday morning with a brunch of coffee, milk, and pastries, and a dinner of cold cuts and bread. But behind the kitchen's stainless-steel doors, the inmate cooks divided themselves, as always, along ethnic lines and the mammoth kitchen took on the atmosphere of a church bazaar. Black inmates ate fried chicken with thick white gravy in one area; a handful of Chicanos dined on tortillas and refried beans in another. Bucklew and his crew ate spaghetti and pork chops in the officers' cafeteria.

While it's not exactly as elaborate and adventurous as the mafia dinner-behind-bars ritual described in Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguys (Many of you probably recall this moment as it's depicted in the movie Goodfellas), it still sounds tasty to me.

always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns,
muddy

PS. . . I'm sure taking photographs of prison is prohibited, but I'll go to great lengths to give my readers what they want.

Biscuits

Every two years I reread my favorite book, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. There are hundreds of passages in the book I eagerly anticipate. One moment occurs early in the book when McMurtry describes Augustus McCrae's breakfast routine:

The heart of his breakfast was a plenitude of sourdough biscuits, which he cooked in a Dutch oven out in the backyard. His pot dough had been perking along happily for over ten years, and the first thing he did upon rising was check it out. The rest of the breakfast was secondary, just a matter of whacking off a few slabs of bacon and frying a panful of pullet eggs. Bolivar could generally be trusted to deal with the coffee.

Augustus cooked his biscuits outside for three reasons. One was because the house was sure to heat up well enough anyway during the day, so there was no point in building any more of a fire than was necessary for bacon and eggs. Two was because biscuits cooked in a Dutch over tasted better than stove-cooked biscuits, and three was because he liked to be outside to catch the first light. A man that depended on an indoor cookstove would miss the sunrise, and if he missed sunrise in Lonesome Dove, he would have to wait out a long stretch of heat and dust before he got to see anything so pretty.

I love this passage. I aspire to bake biscuits in a Dutch oven over an open fire, just like Gus, but since I struggle to successfully bake biscuits indoors, I don't see myself baking biscuits as the sun rises over my shoulder any time soon. I tend to overwork the dough or I add too much flour. I've decided that the key to making great biscuits is experience, something I don't have. I need to bake a few hundred batches of biscuit to acquire the intuitive nature to know when all the variables are prime for perfect biscuits.

Recently I made a biscuit topping for a Guinness Beef Pot Pie, and I learned a few keys to making good biscuits:

1. Using a little cake flour with all-purpose flour produces a lighter fluffier biscuit. Cake flour is ground finer and contains less protein, which results in a lighter texture. As you well know, Southerners tend to bake the best biscuits, and part of this is due to the flour they use. Southern flour, like White Lily, is milled from a softer variety of wheat and is similar to cake flour.
2. Using a food processor helped me avoid overworking the dough. I know this is cheating, but I'm OK using this crutch until I gain more confidence.
   
3. Somewhere I read that when cutting biscuits a baker shouldn't twist the cutter. Doing this will affect the rise of the biscuit. It's best to press straight down and stamp them out.

I know there are a lot of biscuit recipes out there, and I plan on trying more recipes until I find the perfect one for me. For now, I'll share the recipe that helped me take that first step to being the next Augustus McCrae of biscuit making:

Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes.
• 3/4 cup cold buttermilk, plus 1 to 2 tablespoons if needed

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
   
2. Pulse all of the dry ingredients in a food processor until well mixed. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. This will take about 10 pulses.
3. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowls and add the buttermilk. Stir with a fork until the dough gathers into moist clumps. If it doesn't clump add a bit of buttermilk, until it comes together.
4. Transfer dough to a floured work surface and form into a rough ball. Using a rolling pin, gently roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter and stamp out 8-12 rounds of dough.
   
5. Place the biscuits on a cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
   

The Greasy Bookshelf: Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

With the temperatures in the teens earlier this week, I felt like a character in a Jack London story. Feeling this way is understandable when I'm outdoors, but I also feel this way indoors, which is pitiful. As I get older, it seems like it becomes more of struggle to maintain my core body temperature. I'm sure I'm imagining this, but it's becoming a problem because I've actually contemplated purchasing one of those Snuggie blankets, a sure sign of madness or that I'm one step away from joining a cult. I've resisted such drastic measures though. Instead I bake, prepare a good soup, or distract myself by curling up with a good book.

I usually don't curl up with a cookbook because they tend to be bulky and cumbersome. Recently though I encountered Laurie Colwin's cookbook/memoir Home Cooking. The book fit snuggly into my hand, and in the opening she writes, "Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home." At that point this this homebody realized he had discovered a kindred spirit and a perfect book to distract me from the cold.

The book's casual delivery put me at ease. Her recipes are more casual suggestions rather than rigid instructions. Throughout the book, she gently nudged me to contemplate the possibilities each recipe might offer. This is an approach I need to adopt, for I too often cook by the book and find myself getting uptight about following a recipe verbatim.

This book also contains a dash of gentle humor, which is nice respite from the in-your-face, cynical humor that is in vogue. Do yourself a favor? Visit a bookstore or library and read pg. 150, where she describes some bad home-cooked meals she's had the misfortune of eating. She doesn't merely lambast these meals; instead, there's a certain reverence for such meals. She writes:

There is something triumphant about a really disgusting meal. It lingers in the memory with a lurid glow, just as something exalted is remembered with a kind of mellow brilliance. I am not think of kitchen disasters - chewy pasta, burnt browneis, curdled sauces: these can happen to anyone. I'm thinking about meals that are positively loathsome from soup to nuts, although one is not usually fortunate enough to get eith soup or nuts.

Bad food abounds in restaurants, but somehow a bad meal in a restaurant and a bad home-cooked meal are not the same: after all, the restaurant did not invite you to dinner.

Then she goes on to describe some of the worst home-cooked meals she's encountered. The following is a little taste from one of those meals:

At the door, our hostess spoke these dread words: "I'm trying this recipe out on you. I've never made it before. It's a medieval recipe. It looked very interesting."

Somehow I have never felt that "interesting" is an encouraging word when applied to food.
In the kitchen were two enormous and slightly crooked pies.

"They're medieval fish pies," she said.

This book is triumphant indeed and provides the perfect companion for some under-the-cover reading on a cold, winter day.

take care,
muddywaters


PS. . . Checkout the Snuggie blanket parody at YouTube.

The Greasy Five: Children's Books that Play with Food

Here at The Greasy Skillet we love books. At any given moment in our home, I'm only a few steps away from a book. At my bedside is a little basket that my wife and daughter refer to as the rat's nest. It's full of stuff that fuels The Greasy Skillet.

Someday I'll show you its contents.

When I became a parent, someone told me that I would never have time to read. This hasn’t been the case; I read more than ever. Being a parent is time consuming, but I make time to read. If it's a choice between reading or television, I usually gravitate towards ink and paper. Reading is something my daughter and I often do together, and I'm pleased to announce that she is also a book lover. I get the biggest kick watching her enjoy a good book, and I'm grateful our home is a place where books are read, appreciated, and discussed.

In today's installment of The Greasy Five, I thought I'd share my five-favorite children's books for foodies.

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

• It's no surprise that I would include this on this list. Dr. Seuss uses his trademark playful rhymes to serve up the intriguing possibility of green eggs & ham, and more importantly he advocates the value of occasionally trying something new and different. I know many adults who would benefit from this advice.

And I would eat them in a boat
And I would eat them with a goat
And I will eat them in the rain
And in the dark, And on a train
And in a car. And in a tree
They are so good, so good, you see!

Brave Potatoes by Toby Speed and illustrated by Barry Root

• This book might be on the list merely because it has potatoes in the title and it's illustrated by a man whose last name is Root. This makes me chuckle, and I take great delight in small joys such as this. This book tells the story of some prize potatoes from the country fair that are kidnapped by Chef Hackemup who needs them for his soups, stews, and chowders. I'll be honest with you: When I read this book, I sometimes root for the antagonist. I can't help it; I love a good soup.

Way across town at the Chowder Lounge
Hackemup the chef begins attack
with the chopper and the dicer
and the shredder and the grater
and the masher and the mincer
and the So-Long-See-You-Later!

See him chop, chop, chop!
Chili peppers on the top.
Spanish onions do a tango while the radishes unfurl
See the parsnips looking pallid in the Bastaboolabaisse,
while the salad softly sings a veggie-ballad
See the carrots curli-queuing and the garlic parachuting.
With a plop, plop, plop,
in the chowder pot they drop!

The Bake Shop Ghost by Jacqueline K. Ogburn and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman

• Sure the title is a tad plain, but this book is delightful. The book tells the story of Cora Lee Merriweather, a ghost who haunts a bake shop she used to own. When a baker named Annie Washington buys the shop, she decides she's not going to tolerate Cora Lee's antics, so they reach an agreement.

"Enough!" Annie cried. "What do you want? What can I do so you'll let me work in peace?"

Cora Lee stared through the swirling flour, then smiled a title little smile. "Make me a cake," she said. "Make me a cake so rich and so sweet, it will fill me up and bring tears to my eyes. A cake like one I might have baked, but that no one ever made for me."

• What follows is an account of Annie's attempt to bake the perfect cake for Cora Lee. The touching ending always bring tears to my eyes. Yes, you heard correctly. The ending makes me cry. I also cry while watching Little House on the Prairie episodes and Hallmark commercials, so I guess I'm a bit of a softie.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

• When I watch the Harry Potter movies, I'm always enthralled with the scenes that take place in the grand, dining hall. I can't take my gaze off the scrumptious mounds of food that grace the tables. It looks like those kids at Hogwarts eat well. I wish the school cafeteria of my youth would have been as good. My favorite food moment in Harry Potter occurs in the first book when the snack cart passes Harry's train compartment. I can relate. When I travel, I'm afraid I'm going to miss some culinary treat the region has to offer, so I tend to eat more than three meals a day. When I read the following passage, I'm suddenly nine-years-old with a pocket full of change and I'm standing in the candy aisle at Peek's Supersaver in Pomona, KS. Good literature can reclaim youth. It has that kind of power.
  

What she did have were Bertie Bott's Every flavor Beans, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Licorice Wands, and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his life. Not wanting to miss anything, he got some of everything and paid the woman eleven silver Sickles and seven bronze Knuts.

Stone Soup

• I don't own this book, but I fondly remember it from my school days. In the book, some hungry travelers trick everyone in a village into contributing ingredients to make a tasty soup. Of course, I remember it because it was about soup, which might be one of my favorite foods to eat, but I also liked the book because it was about community and sharing. When I started this blog, I wanted to title it Stone Soup, but someone else out there in the blogosphere had already claimed it. The rest is history.

What are your favorite children's books for foodies?

Happy reading,
muddywaters

Hamburger America: A Guide to 100 Great Burger Joints

I love the road. If you read this blog on a regular basis, you already know this. What you see on the road is generally better than anything you'll see on television.

Gravel roads are the best.
The road is full of culinary surprises:


A few years ago I embarked on a quest to visit every county in Kansas. I used an old map and a yellow highlighter to keep track of my progress.

I gradually chipped away at this goal. I was proud of my efforts until I read about a man who had not only visited every county in Kansas, but he also managed to eat a hamburger in each one. My accomplishments paled in comparison, so I became discouraged and abandoned my goal.

I'm thinking about getting back on that horse. After reading Hamburger America by George Motz and viewing the documentary that accompanies the book, I'm ready to hit the road. Motz criss-crosses America searching for the best hamburger.
Now I'm thinking about setting a new goal. Any ideas?

The following is his list of the 100-greatest burgers:

ARKANSAS

• Cotham’s Mercantile - Scott

CALIFORNIA

• The Apple Pan Los Angeles
• Hodad’s - Ocean Beach
• Irv’s Burger - West Hollywood
• Jim-Denny’s - Sacramento
• Joe’s Cable Car Restaurant - San Francisco
• Marty’s - Los Angeles
• Pie’ N Burger - Pasadena
• Taylor’s Automatic Refresher - St. Helena
• Western SteakBurger - San Diego

COLORADO

• Bud’s Bar - Sedalia

Connecticut

• Clamp's Hamburger Stand - New Milford
• Louis' Lunch - New Haven
• Shady Glen - Manchester
• Ted's Restaurant - Meriden
• Yankee Doodle & Sandwich - New Haven
  

DELAWARE

• Charcoal Pit - North Wilmington

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

• Ben’s Chili Bowl
• Tune Inn

FLORIDA

• Le Tub - Hollywood
• 
  

GEORGIA

• Ann’s Snack Bar - Atlanta

IDAHO

• Hudson’s Hamburgers - Coer D’ Alene

ILLINOIS

• Billy Goat Tavern & Grill - Chicago
• Moonshine Store - Moonshine
• Top Notch Beef burger Shop - Chicago

INDIANA

• Heinnies - Elkhart

IOWA

• Hamburg Inn NO.2 - Iowa City
• Taylor’s Maid-Rite - Marshalltown

KANSAS

• Bobo’s Drive In -Topeka
• Cozy Inn Hamburgers -Salina

LOUISIANA

• Bozo’s - Metarine
• Port Of Call - New Orleans

MAINE

• Harmon’s Lunch - Falmouth

MASSACHUSETTS

· Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage Cambridge

· White Hut West Springfield

MICHIGAN

• Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger - Ann Arbor
• Miller’s Bar - Dearborn
• Redmak’s New - Buffalo

MINNESOTA

• THE 5-8 Club - Minneapolis
• Matt’s Bar - Minneapolis

MISSISSIPPI

• Bill’s Hamburgers - Amory
• Phillip’s Grocery - Holly springs

MISSOURI

• Town Topic - Kansas City
• Winstead’s - Kansas City

MONTANA

• Matt’s Place Drive-in - Butte
• Missoula Club - Missoula

NEBRASKA

• Stella’s Hamburgers - Bellevue
• 
  

NEW HAMPSHIRE

• Gilley’s PM Lunch - Portsmouth

NEW JERSEY

• Rossi’s Bar and Gri ll - Trenton
• White Manna Hamburgers - Hackensack

NEW MEXICO

• Bob Cat Bite - Sante Fe
• Owl Bar & Café - San Antonio

NEW YORK

• Corner Bistro - New York
• Donovan’s Pub - Flushing
• Hildebrandt’s - Williston Park
• P.J. Clarke’s - New York

NORTH CAROLINA

• Char-Grill - Raleigh
• Snappy Lunch - Mount Airy
• South 21 - Charlotte

OHIO

• Cabill’s Hamburgers - Urbana
• Gahanna Grill - Cahanna
• Hamburger Wagon - Miamisburg
• Kewpee - Lima
• Thurman Café - Columbus
• Wilson’s Findlay

OKLAHOMA

• Folger’s Drive- Inn - Ada
• Hamburger King - Shawnee
• J&W Grill - Chickasha
• Johnnie’s Grill - El Reno
• The Meers Store & Restaurant - Meers
• Robert’s Grill - El Reno
• Sid’s Diner El Reno

OREGON

• Giant Drive-In Lake - Oswego
• Elvetia Tavern - Hillsboro
• Stanich’s Tavern - Portland

PENNSYLVANIA

• Charlie’s Hamburgers - Folsom
• Tessaro’s - Pittsburgh

SOUTH CAROLINA

• Northgate Soda Shop - Greenville

SOUTH DAKOTA

• Hamburger Inn - Sioux Falls
• Nick’s Hamburger Shop - Brookings

TENNESSEE

• Brown’s Dinner - Nashville
• Dyer’s - Memphis
• Rotier’s Restaurant - Nashville
• Zarzour’s Café - Chattanooga

TEXAS

• Burger House - Dallas
• Casino El Camino - Austin
• Christian’s Tailgate Bar&Grill - Houston
• Dirty Martin’s Place - Austin
• Hut’s Hamburgers - Austin
• Kincaid’s Hamburgers - Fort Worth
• Lankford Grocery - Houston
• Tookie’s - Seabrook

UTAH

• Crown Burgers Salt Lake City

VIRGINIA

• Texas Tavern - Roanoke

WASHINGTON

• EastSide Big Tom - Olympia
• Dick’s Drive-In - Seattle

WISCONSIN

• Dotty Dumplings Dowry - Madison
• The Plaza Tavern - Madison
• Peterson’s Hamburger Stand and Ice Cream Parlor - Jefferson
• Solly’s Grill - Mill