Monthly Archives: November 2008

Home Sweet Chicken

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While it was indeed a lovely drive up the Clearwater river yesterday on the way home from Seattle, it made for a very long day in the car — I didn’t get back until nearly ten and I was all road buzzy when I got here. But today was lovely — walked the dog, did some grocery shopping, and then tried to decide what to do with the requisite homecoming chicken.

I seem to be compelled to cook a chicken after returning from a trip. I’ve written any number of times about my mystical belief in the power of a well-cooked chicken to make everything right in the world, but I have to admit, I went back and forth on whether or not to do a chicken. I have so much food in my freezers already — half a pig, for instance, and there’s a substantial amount of lamb left, and even some cut-up chicken. But no, nothing else would really do so Raymond-the-dog and I walked to the grocery store and bought a chicken. It doesn’t feel like home until I’ve cooked a chicken.

Tonight is Poulet Bonne Femme or white coq au vin — a whole chicken, browned all over, then cooked with onions, carrots, parsnips (they were in the sale bin at the grocery this am), garlic, spices and a little white wine and spices. The whole house is beginning to smell like wine and chicken, the dogs are sleeping in their respective spots, and I’m reading Home: A Novel Home Sweet Chicken by Marilynne Robinson. All is indeed well with the world.

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Eating from the Pantry

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So, these past few weeks have been killer at work — we’re moving to some new tools, which is exciting and frustrating and involves a lot of training, and of course, everyone is a little nervous in the current economic climate — so it’s been long days at the computer after which I reel out of my home office slightly stunned that I can be as blinky and fried as I am considering that I haven’t even left the house. The weirdness of telecommuting — your job comes to you.

However, the silver lining has been that I was slightly crazed this summer and put up a lot of food. Which means that at the end of the day, dinner is actually kind of working out — polenta has been a staple lately — I’ve discovered that the rice cooker set on slow cook is the bomb for polenta. I have all that sauce I put up, and a freezer full of cooked greens, and I did a (small) pork shoulder in red chile last week, which as we all know you can reheat ad infinitum. So polenta with greens, or polenta with sauce, or polenta with pulled pork. Or pasta with any of the above. I also made an oddball dish the other day that turned out well — I took half a ham slab, and put it in a dish on top of a small savoy cabbage from the garden chopped up with a few garden carrots and potatoes and some of the little onions I grew. A few garlic slices, some salt and pepper, a good slug of white wine and a sprinkling of Herbes de la Garrigue from World Spice, then in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. I did it in one of my pyrex dishes from eBay that had a lid, so I cooked it covered for about 30 minutes, then took the lid off so the spuds and the ham got nice and crispy. It was way too much food, which means that it’s more than one dinner, which is good when I’m blinky after a long day at the computer.

The other thing I’ve been trying to do is to up the ratio of veggies to whatever meat is on the plate — so a little ham and a lot of veggies, a nice pile of polenta with a little sauce, or greens, or an egg. Basic cucina povera, which is, as we’re all discovering, actually a healthier way to live. Which isn’t to say that last night, after another long long day, I wasn’t tempted to call out for something — a pizza or Chinese food — but takeout in our little town takes forever, and it didn’t seem worth it when I have a fridge and pantry full of food. So I reheated some pork, and some rice, and chopped up a bunch of cilantro and scallions, and in 15 minutes I had a nice hot bowl of food (and I hadn’t dropped fifteen dollars in the middle of the week).

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Blogging Post-Election

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I’ve been in something of a blogging slump. I mean, it seems weird to be blogging about say, my newfound love of salted butter, in a world in which the financial markets are all collapsing and we have a president-elect who astonishes one every day with his deliberation and well, leadership. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this way. As though I have a government I could actually trust to do the right thing — that is, even if they’re not doing every little thing I’d like, that I trust is actually working for the good of the nation (and the good of the global community). I’m finding it a little unsettling — unsettling in a good way, but unsettling nonetheless.

I’m also a little unmoored by the sudden manner in which the nation has been plunged into living small — and the screeching from the media that by doing so, we’re destroying the American economy. Something seems off to me. If our economy is so delicate that by simply not buying a new car every year we can destroy it, then perhaps we need to rethink our relationship to “growth” — as even Obama has said, every crisis bears an opportunity, and perhaps this is one. Can we, as a nation, rethink our relationship to stuff? Do we really need to consume at the rate we have been? Can we dial it back without causing a total collapse? Where is the balance?

I’m a little disoriented. It might take a while to figure out what it means to live in a world where you don’t actually feel like you’re shouting in the wilderness.

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Winter Salad

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Winter SaladI have a confession to make. I don’t really like salads much, particularly not in winter. Salad just seems so cold somehow. However, I am a big fan of what I like to call “winter salad” — a sort of cole slaw. Cabbage, red onion, carrot all shredded up and dressed with lime juice, salt, olive oil and some New Mexico chile. It’s crunchy and tart and goes with just about any sandwich or lunchtime quesadlila.

I made this one last week from one of my four savoy cabbages I grew this summer, and the onions and carrots also came from the garden. Raw cabbage is supposed to be really good for you, but mostly I just like this because it’s green and crunchy and goes with everything.

I also started a batch of sauerkraut last night. I used a clean, scrubbed kitchen pail since I don’t have a crock. I bought a monster cabbage grown locally by the Hutterites — it was a six pound cabbage. The recipe I went with is from Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante. I love this book — it’s full of all sorts of very old world preservation techniques. I sliced up the cabbage and layered it with a couple of sliced onions, some bay leaves, cumin and coriander seeds. I sprinkled a big soup spoon of pickling salt over every layer. I then tamped it all down with a potato masher until it was wet, then covered the whole thing with a ginormous ziploc bag filled with enough water to form a seal. Then I set it in the pantry and we’ll see what transpires.

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“Family” Dinner

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A few weeks ago my girlfriend Deb called me on a Sunday evening. Sunday evenings can be bleak when you’re single and don’t have kids — it’s the time of the week when one can feel most adrift. And winter is upon us — it’s dark by five these days and we’re all living with a tiny bit of dread knowing that the wind will start up again. “Why don’t we do dinner a couple of times a month?” Debbie suggested. “We could get single people together, and rotate it to different houses.”

So last night, we did. There were six of us — two people who have just moved to town and four of us who’ve been here for a while. I had a lovely piece of lamb shoulder from the half a lamb I bought last spring so I did Mario Batali’s recipe (it’s for shanks, but same difference) — braised lamb with orange and rosemary and green olives. Debbie made polenta, Robert brought a salad, and Margie did bright green brussels sprouts with bacon. We set the table, and toasted the new president and ate a lovely dinner together. There was lively conversation, nice wine (it helps that Debbie runs the wine store) and Mark, who has just moved to town and who had to duck out to do a radio interview with a station back in Michigan read us a couple of poems out of the book for which he was being interviewed.

It was so much fun. Next month is of course, kind of busy with holiday parties but we’re going to try to sneak in another Sunday night. Everyone agreed it was lovely to be together and somehow, the Sunday night vibe, as well as the general admission from all of us at that table that Sunday nights can get lonely when you’re single, well, it felt like something a little more than just a dinner party. We all agreed to get one another through the winter. We’re going to share food, and wine, and our art on Sunday nights and maybe this way the winter won’t seem so long.

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