Heritage...A to Z through our kitchen

Courtesy mmagallan at sxc.hu

In most everyone's kitchen, there are certain intangible objects that influence the way we cook. In our kitchen, heritage plays as much a part of our meal planning as a love of great food or a desire to experiment.

Harry's family is a blend of Danish and hills of eastern Kentucky. On my side of the fence, I have the roots of eastern Tennessee and the Canadian Maritimes. During our childhood years, we've found a constant. We both come from homes where both parents worked. For the most part, weeknight dinner was usually a meat, potatoes and some sort of vegetable. When Harry and I are short on time for cooking, we usually fall back to those heritage meals.

In my house, corned beef wasn't just for St. Patrick's Day. Mom loved a New England boiled dinner and we probably had it a few times a year. The smell of the slow cooking of the corned beef brisket would fill the house. Then, the aroma got turned up a few notches as Mom added cabbage and rutabaga along with carrots and potatoes. In all these years, 2012 will go down as the year that I finally believe I got my boiled dinner to turn out just like Mom's.

There weren't a lot of dinners Harry would like to repeat from his mother. He told me if he judged pizza by the first one she ever made - which was the first time he ever ate pizza - he never would have eaten it again! But, Harry loved his mother's meatloaf. Through most of my years, while I loved Mom's meatloaf, I was just never able to replicate it on my own. I'm sure the reason is that she has a recipe card somewhere that she still follows to the letter today.

Mom blended her fishing-village family's food heritage with that of Dad's family. Slow-fried southern style chicken with milk gravy. In the summer, I always looked forward to fried green tomatoes (just flour, salt & pepper - none of that batter crap!) and fried okra (these were fried in corn meal, salt and pepper - again no batter!). In the summer, we put up food for winter - strawberry freezer jam, green beans, tomato juice, freezer corn, Lady Ashburn pickle relish.

Through our years, our tastes have changed. Our travels have led us to enjoy foods from around the country and around the world. But, our family heritage still finds its way into our kitchen.

Grill...A to Z through our kitchen

Harry's rolling his pennies for a grill like this! Thanks to Jack880 over at Wikimedia Commons

As a noun, it is a device. As a verb, it is what you are doing.

Grills come in just about every size and shape you can think of. There was a competition where we live, “Monster Barbecue Build Off”. Build or modify an existing grill and then have a cook-off. Voting for the best grill and judging for the best ribs. You can not imagine some of the grills that were built. 

With the arrival of warmer weather our cooking moves outside for at least three or four times a week. A grill is not just for meat, we use it for vegetables and fruit as well. Squash, tomatoes, peaches or apples done on the grill lend a unique and delicious taste as a side dish or incorporated in the main dish. You don’t have to buy your fire roasted tomatoes from your local grocer. And a combination of meat and veggies on a stick, (Kabobs) makes a delicious light meal. 

But I digress; I often do that where food is involved. The GRILL! Stay within your budget but do not go cheap. This is one where you really do get what you pay for. The most important part of the grill is the burner controls and burners. Or if you are a charcoal purist, the gridiron for the charcoal is very important. We have both; we use the charcoal smoker to slow roast and the gas grill for general cooking. We also have a portable grill for our camping trips, one that folds down. 

Pick the right grill for the type of grilling you will be doing. Decide on how many burners you need, do you need a side burner for pots, a rotisserie attachment? (A whole pork loin basted often and turning slowly over low heat…now I am hungry). Infrared warmers, warming racks, the list of features you can have on a grill is extensive and expensive. In one of the stores we shop there was a ready made outdoor kitchen for only twenty seven hundred dollars. Ahh, no. 

It is as simple as this, the grill can be used for weekend gatherings of family and friends and/or used for daily cooking, providing and unique and tasty flavor for whatever dish you are preparing. 

It is time to break out the grill, buy the charcoal or gas, fire that puppy up and let the neighbors know that summer is here. Good grillin. 

And as always, batteries not included.

Crockery, Casseroles and Cookbooks...A to Z through our kitchen

Having a kitchen of my own for nearly 30 years, I've collected an eclectic mix of, well, everything! There's very few items that I could ever need, even for a once-off dish or catering gig, in which I don't have the proper means to cook it or serve it. And many of these items come with so many memories.

In the foreground is a bean crock. I've actually only used it successfully once, for Christmas dinner this past year. The memories belong more to my mother. The bean crock came from Grannie, and Mom can remember beans for supper every Saturday night when she was a kid. Since Mom is, um, 20 years older than me, you can imagine how old this crock is.

With the bean crock are two bowls I received when Gramma passed away. Now, there's a very famous blogger who claims to channel Lucille Ball. Well, I do channel Lucille Wright - except I've never tried to make her banana pudding. While I use the larger bowl in the back for raising bread, I remember Gramma filling either of these bowls with banana pudding with a baked meringue crust. If the dinner was for a big holiday, Gramma used the large bowl. If it was "supper" preceded with a phone call saying "well, I just had a few things that needed to be cooked", she used the small bowl.

Out of all these casserole dishes, only three were purchased during my adult years. The small square in the foreground - great for a chicken pot pie just big enough for Harry and I - belonged to a set of Corelle dishes I needed for my post-divorce kitchen. The top two round casserole dishes on the back/right were purchased in 1983. Everything else came from Gramma's kitchen. They are all so sturdy and lend themselves to baking as well as serving when I feel the need to be proper and serve at the table. Which isn't very often.

I've culled my cookbook collection drastically over the last 18 months. With the dark corners and the strange early morning light, I could not get a proper picture. I have it whittled down to just about 100 cookbooks now. The ones that get the most use, not surprisingly, are some of the old, heritage cookbooks from Gramma's collection.

I have a few "celebrity" cookbooks that I turn to often. Cat Cora, Harry's dream girl, finds her way into our kitchen often with "Cooking from the Hip". I'm particularly fond of Justin Wilson, who was a celebrity cook long before the Food Network made everyone a celebrity. Mark Bittman's "The Minimalist Entertains" taught me that it was possible to serve guests without going overboard.

Of course, with the Lucy mantra of "We got plenty!", I hope I can be forgiven for always going overboard.

Is there an item in your kitchen that was passed from a previous generation? Or, do your children jokingly fight over who will get a certain item when you are no longer in need of it? I'd love to hear about!

Bar Glass...A to Z through our kitchen

It's just after 5:00 a.m. and still dark outside. With less than a cup of coffee in me, I know this photo isn't great but it's the best I could do.

I have a LOT of bar glass. I can host a wine-tasting party for 24 or Irish Car Bombs for 16. OK, I have way more than 16 pint glasses, but only 16 shot glasses. Martinis? Margaritas? Brandy Alexander? Irish Coffee? I have the glassware for all.

Keep in mind that this cabinet doesn't hold all of our coffee cups, the tea cups from 2 sets of china (8 and 24 respectively) or our travel sippy cups. Other than those few random plastic cups I've picked up along the way, a pewter shot cup that was handcrafted for me in Louisiana, Missouri, and my cocktail shaker, this is nothing but bar glass.

I started bartending in 1987 in a little beer and shot bar my then in-laws owned in Mount Vernon. Through the years, I've worked in just about every kind of alcohol venue you can imagine - nightclubs, full-serve restaurants and the Olympics of bartending in Columbus, Ohio: the Lobby Bar at Holiday Inn on Lane during Hiney Gate (RIP) during Ohio State's 2002 championship season.

I don't know if it's the bartender in me that desires all this bar glass. After all, it's not like Harry and I are actually that social. We did host my entire family for Christmas dinner a couple of years ago and that number didn't hit 20. There was also very little alcohol flowing.

It could be something else that makes me want to collect bar glass. I've had my own kitchen since 1983. In all that glass up there, there might be 2 or 3 pieces that I've carried from my children's teenage years. Yes, teens and dishwashing didn't seem to mix in my house. I can't count the number of glasses I bought during their years at home.

There's something else in that collection of bar glass: memories. There's the hand-painted wine glasses that we actually use for margaritas. I haggled for those in the straw market on our trip to Nogales, Mexico. There are hurricane glasses from Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans. There's the pair of pint glasses from Three Little Pigs, somewhere in Virginia while Trey and I were on a business trip. There are several pairs of wine glasses indicating that Harry and I completed the Indiana Wine Trail.

While most everything in our kitchen is actually used on a regular basis, I know that my collection of bar glass is just that - a collection. I dream of a glass cabinet someday to display it properly. Do you collect anything in your kitchen? Trivets? Salt shakers? Potholders? Le Creuset? Tell me about your kitchen collection in the comments!

Appliances...A to Z through our kitchen

From left to right - ish: Dazey Fondue Pot, KitchenAid Food Processor, Cuisinart Hand Mixer, Breville Immersion Blender, ChefChoice Knife Sharpener, Crock Pot Slow Cooker, TWO Taylor Digital Scales and a Waring Blender

 A few months ago, Harry and I decided to add a section called "What's in our kitchen?". Our thought was sharing some of the things that make our lives simpler and lead to us spending so much time cooking - other than a love of food. So, when I was trying to think of a theme for the A to Z April Blogging Challenge, "What's in Our Kitchen" was an easy one.

When most people think of appliances, their minds go to refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers - you know, the big stuff. While we have most of the usual characters (my heavy-duty dishwasher is Harry), it's the small appliances that make our kitchen lives so much simpler and have expanded our kitchen chops. Not to be confused with gadgets, these workhorses are tools, just as a carpenter couldn't get by without a power saw.

If you've been here before, you'll notice that our KitchenAid 600 professional stand mixer is conspicuously absent from the top photo. Please pause for a moment of silence...

Tragically, the KitchenAid 600 died a painful death in the midst of a major baking frenzy on Sunday, March 25, 2012. Four and a half years, thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of rolls and pounds upon pounds of ground meat and pasta. She served us well. And we will welcome a new 600 into our home within the next couple of weeks.

The food processor handles almost every chopping, grinding and shredding duty in our kitchen. But, when it comes to grinding horseradish, Harry prefers to use our ancient blender. A lot of people like to make their smoothies in a blender, but I prefer to make mine with my immersion blender in a cocktail shaker. The immersion blender (or boat-motor) is also handy for pureeing soups right in the pot - and with a quick rinse, it's ready to use again.

Not so conspicuously absent is our POS Mr. Coffee Coffeemaker. We still hate the damn thing, but are saving up for a good coffee/espresso combo machine.

While I've never made true fondue, our fondue pot is the BEST thing I've ever found for melting chocolate for Buckeyes at the holidays. I can melt the chocolate without fear of water possibly dripping in from the double-boiler method. And I don't own a double-boiler.

Harry used to make fun of me when we first started cooking together because my knives were so dull. He patiently sharpened each one by hand. That got old, so in addition to his stones we now have an electric sharpener in our kitchen. He keeps the knives tuned up between full sharpenings with a ceramic rod.

I can't forget our digital scales - they aren't just for diet-related portion control. We weigh our meat as we package it (with our vacuum sealer) and also weigh dough portions. We've learned that when our loaves of bread weigh the same, they tend to bake at the same rate.

While I'm not addicted to my slow cooker, I can't imagine not having it around. There are days when it just makes sense to throw something in it in the morning, and then dinner is ready with no rushing around. I also have a mini-slow cooker for dips and such. In the basement, we have two electric roasters that I love to use to make jam and fruit butter.

While I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, the only other thing I can think of right now is the ancient microwave that's on its final stretch. Honestly, I only use it to occasionally warm up my first cup of coffee and some leftovers for lunch. But, we use it enough that we'll probably replace this old one later this year.

What small appliances make your kitchen life easier? Leave a comment or a link to a blog post extolling the virtue of the small kitchen appliance!

Pink Slime...my thoughts

This is one of Harry's pink-slime-free surprise burgers. For this session of burgers last summer, we used ground chuck from Lanning's in Mount Vernon. Locally owned, they source most of their meat from Ohio. Until I can afford my own grass-fed freezer beef, this is as close as it's going to get unless we grind our own (which we do on occasion).

I wrote a fact box for Yahoo! News this morning about the latest development in the pink slime saga and I'll link it here if they decide to publish it. Without too many details, I awoke this morning to see the news that Beef Products, Inc. had suspended operations in 3 of their 4 plants. The makers of the ammonia-treated lean beef trimmings used in filler in 70 percent of the ground beef in our country, after being badgered in the media, specifically by ABC News, and social media (I can't count the number of #pinkslime related things I've seen in the last few weeks) is, in a word, screwed.

I felt a bit of concern for the people who will lose their jobs if the suspensions become permanent closures. I don't like mass job losses of any sort - our economy is still struggling. But, one thing that has run through my mind several times over the last few weeks is "why now?" Why did it finally explode in the media and cause the purveyors of this crap to stop (or plan to stop) using it to cut costs?

It's not like pink slime is new. It's been around since about 2001 and approved for use as up to 15 percent filler in ground beef without benefit of disclosure. I learned about in April of 2011 during the season premier of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution". Jamie's demonstration is overly-dramatic, but it sent me searching. Yes, it's pretty gross to watch.



So, I did some digging. I put together a Q & A for Yahoo! News and while most of the comments from last year have been removed, it gained a lot of traffic. One of the most frequent comments, after "gross", was that people were unhappy to learn that their ground beef had this filler.


But, the status quo continued until late January. That's when McDonald's announced they would no longer use the filler in their hamburgers. In fact, they stopped using it last August. Other fast food chains stepped up to the plate and announced their own plans to discontinue the use of pink slime. But, that's not what brought down BPI.

I couldn't figure out why ABC was suddenly so relentless in its reporting of the issue over the last few weeks. After all, the New York Times had investigated the process and the company in 2009 and the "stunning" information revealed in the ABC and other media reports wasn't anything new. Why now?

Meet Bettina at The Lunch Tray. Food blogger, activist and creator of an online petition to remove pink slime from school lunches. When she launched the petition on March 6, Bettina hoped to convince the USDA to reconsider their decision to buy 7 million pounds of the filler to add to the school lunch program. She had over 100,000 signatures in four days. And, when something goes viral in social media, the mainstream media has no choice but to cover it. The petition worked in a way. The USDA will give school districts the choice to opt-out of the pink slime-filled beef. And, nearly every grocery chain in the country will discontinue selling pink slime-filled beef in response to customer concerns.

I picked the picture of Harry's surprise burger for a reason. That's how I felt last spring when I learned the government didn't think we needed to know that our ground beef contained this filler. It's not a matter of wanting the lean beef trimmings banned - I wanted them disclosed.

I learned something else when I stopped buying Kroger ground beef in the rolls and switched to Lanning's. We were in a pinch and had run out of ground beef and Lanning's was closed on Sunday. We decided to go ahead and run to Kroger because, as Harry had said months earlier, "We were already eating it all these years."

Harry makes GREAT burgers! He's a little unconventional, but they are always juicy and he grills them perfectly. These burgers, even though the only variable was the source of the beef, were practically inedible. They shriveled to nothing. The great beef taste we enjoyed from the Lanning's ground beef and our own ground beef was non-existent. Sometimes, you don't know what you're missing.

BPI, I sincerely hope your attempt at re-creating your image saves your company and all those jobs. I think you've got a hard row to hoe. If I can offer one piece of advice, it would be to regret all that lobbying you did 10 years ago to convince the government to not require labeling of your process and filler. Let the consumer be informed and let the consumer decide for themselves. If lean beef trimmings were so healthy and delicious, why would you be ashamed of labeling them?

Chicken and Dumplings from Scratch

When I was a kid, I can remember a couple of my friends' mothers making chicken and dumplings regularly. I still remember Mrs. Altizer whipping together a batch in no time at all one Sunday after church. Mrs. Kerschner made dumplings to serve with mashed potatoes on a week night!

The first time I ever made chicken and dumplings was after I'd been married for about five years. I used a recipe called "Chicken Fricassee and Dumplings" from a Betty Crocker cookbook that was a gift when I first got married in 1983. The ex-husband didn't like them because the chicken was still on the bones. I didn't like them because the dumplings were like biscuits - they weren't like the slippery dumplings I remember from my youth.

For years, the slippery (noodle-like) dumplings eluded me. I would occasionally make the drop dumplings, but I never found a recipe that told me what I was doing wrong. I had to satisfy that slippery-dumpling-craving with occasional visits to Cracker Barrel.

When I saw the picture for this recipe on Pinterest, I knew I had found the dumplings of my memories. The recipe, from the Tasty Kitchen, is easy to follow and a bit different from standard noodles. When I make homemade noodles, the dough is very stiff. I mistakenly used the food processor the first time I made these dumplings but it wasn't necessary. I used the pastry cutter (sorry Alton Brown) to blend the butter into the dry ingredients and it's easy to stir the milk in with a silicon spatula.

The dough will be very soft and you need to use a lot of flour with this recipe to keep it from sticking to the work surface. Someday, when I'm all grown up, I'll remember to buy a pastry mat. Just a few light strokes with the rolling pin and I had a uniform thickness of about 1/8". Uniformity is NOT required when you cut the dumplings with a knife or rolling pizza cutter. Useless trivia: Cracker Barrel uses a special tool to insure uniform dumplings. The prep cook uses a sugar packet to size the cuts.

This day happened to be "Harry's making homemade chicken stock" day. I pulled about four cups from the huge, simmering stock pot and poured it into the smaller pot, added 4 cups of water and about one pound of cooked chicken.

Once the stock and meat was at a strong simmer, I added the dumplings. Go ahead and add the leftover flour from the table - it will help thicken the stock or broth into a nice stew-ish consistency. Simmer for about 20 minutes, taste checking the broth and dumplings.

I forgot and added my black pepper before I took the picture. I love lots of black pepper on anything creamy, so adjust accordingly.

You can use leftover chicken or maybe a deli-rotisserie chicken, along with packaged broth or chicken stock to speed up the process. Because we already had our chicken stock and picked meat, these homemade chicken and dumplings took me about 40 minutes to make.

Chicken and Dumplings from Scratch - serves 6

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons cold butter
1 cup of milk (you might need a little less)
2 quarts chicken broth OR 1 quart of chicken stock and 1 quart of water
1 pound cooked, boneless chicken

While you are mixing the dumplings, bring the broth to a strong simmer over medium heat.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, pair of knives, or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Gently stir in 3/4 cup of milk. The dough should be very soft, like biscuits, so add the remaining milk until you have the proper consistency. It will be sticky!

Spread a generous amount of all-purpose flour on your work surface and dust your rolling pin liberally with flour. Pour/scrape the dumpling dough onto the flour. Use light strokes to roll the dough into a uniform thickness, about 1/8". You might have to dust your rolling pin with flour more than once.

Using a knife or a pizza roller (my choice because it was so fast!), cut the dough into square-ish shapes about 2 inches by 2 inches. Don't worry about perfection - the dumplings will change shape while they are cooking and won't be the same size no matter what you do!

I use a slotted spatula to transfer the dumplings from the table into the simmering broth. You want to add most of the flour you have left-over from the rolling to thicken the broth. Stir the dumplings gently and add the chicken meat.

Continue to simmer the dumplings for about 20 minutes or until cooked through.

Usually, I add a few chopped veggies to our chicken and dumplings. Diced carrots and celery add a great flavor. Simply saute them in a splash of extra virgin olive oil or canola oil in the bottom of the stock pot before you add the broth. I like to saute the carrots and celery just until they start to color to add more flavor to the broth. They will finish cooking as you simmer the dumplings.