Crushing a Cramp

The other morning my son Russell came hoping out of his room on one foot, grimacing with pain. He had a killer charlie horse and it wouldn’t go away. Bananas I thought. Potassium. Should I be giving him something with electrolytes? My not-quite-awake brain was trying to remember all the kitchen remedies I could come up with while making lunches, letting the dog out, and serving breakfast.

“I think you should massage it.” I yelled as he hopped back to his room. His sister peeked out of her bedroom and snickered. Watching someone who is nearly 6′ 3″ hop along a hallway with one leg curled up underneath them is somewhat comical. But there is absolutely nothing funny about charlie horses.

When your muscles are trapped in the incessant grip of a muscle spasm it is all you can do to breathe, let alone hop. I know when I’ve had a charlie horse the thought of touching my skin while it feels like ten inch chefs knives are being thrust into my muscles is nearly impossible. Sometimes I can breathe through a charlie horse. Other times I just whimper. Russell was rather stoic, but clearly in pain.

I thrust a banana into his hand and did a quick internet search. The New York Times had a great article which I quickly skimmed. Sure enough their remedy suggestions included hydration, potassium, and calcium. If you are exercising when a charlie horse starts you’re supposed to stop, however in Russell’s case he had just been sleeping (which most 15-year-olds seem to do a lot of). Was hopping considered an exercise if he did it on his non-charlie-horse leg? I scrambled to finish the morning routine since there was a bus to catch. After the banana I handed him a glass of calcium enriched orange juice. It was the best I could do and still finish their lunches.

As Shawn drove them to the bus stop I had my light bulb moment – banana fruit smoothies. Years ago I’d written an article about fruit smoothies for a magazine and realized they didn’t need to have ice cream or frozen yogurt to give them that smooth creamy texture. The secret was frozen bananas. Bananas have a fairly neutral taste, replicate ice cream’s texture when blended from frozen chunks, and are something my freezer is full of. I can’t abide a banana with spots. Once it has spots it is only good for baking or making smoothies with. What can I say? My mother’s business partner would only eat the brownest, spottiest bananas she could find. We should have been banana roommates since we were on opposite ends of the banana spectrum. Since we don’t share a kitchen I have a freezer full of frozen bananas.

For the magazine article I came up with “recipes” but really it goes like this: a handful or two of frozen sliced bananas, fruit juice, some berries or soft fruit to jazz it up. That’s it. You can play around with combinations but it is hard to go wrong. No ice. No sorbet. No ice cream or frozen yogurt. As Jamie Oliver says, “Easy Peasy”.

Here is the main trick – peel your bananas before freezing them.

Banana Fruit Smoothies

1/2 – 3/4 frozen banana cut into chunks (more or less)

1-2 cups fruit juice

1/2 – 1 cup other fruit, chopped if large

Place the fruit and juice in a blender set on ice crush. Blend until very smooth and no big chunks are left. Normally I use all frozen fruit. You could use fresh fruit for the “other” fruit if you wanted, but remember the frozen fruit helps take the place of ice cream.

I haven’t given strict amounts since you may want your smoothie very thick, or thinner. Some fruit may require more juice to help liquefy it. The idea is to play around.

Here are a few different combinations we enjoy (though really we work with whatever is in the freezer besides bananas).

• Banana-Pineapple-Orange
• Raspberry-Cranberry-Orange-Banana
• Mango-Banana-Strawberry
• Blueberry-Blackberry-Banana
• Banana-Orange-Peanut Butter
• Peach-Strawberry-Banana

What are some of your favorite smoothie combinations?

 

Remembering with Dumplings

Last September Isabelle and I were driving to her first college interview when we got the news that one of her friends from her old school had killed herself. That morning. It was overwhelming, horrible, sad news. I pulled over to let the college know we weren’t coming to the interview. Then we turned around and headed home, crying most of the way. I wanted to change things, turn back the clock, erase what had happened. But I couldn’t. All I could do was take us back home.

Neither of us felt like eating. I asked Isabelle if she would like to make some of the foods she and her friend had made at our house awhile back when they had a cooking extravaganza. Pork Dumplings and Fruit Smoothies. She told me she wasn’t hungry and I understood. I wasn’t really hungry either. Then when I drove past the exit for the supermarket she turned to me and wanted to know why I wasn’t getting off to go to the store.  I got off at the next exit and headed back to the supermarket. We bought the ingredients for pork dumplings, and went home.

I am not saying that cooking was able to assuage our feelings about this girl’s death. Nothing could do that. It was a way for us to remember her. Remember her smiling and laughing self. Remember how silly she and Isabelle had been when they whizzed together fruit smoothies and steamed up heaps of dumplings. Remember her when she was in Isabelle’s life. We cooked dumplings because we missed her and were mourning her not being there.

This recipe is from Susanna Foo’s book Chinese Cuisine. There are many recipes in this book which I love, and these dumplings are a family favorite. We make a meal of them, which would probably have Ms. Foo raising her eyebrows, but they are so delicious we eat them until we have to roll away from the table.

Part of my family doesn’t eat pork so I always make a double batch of dumplings – one pork and one tofu. Also in my grocery stores Nappa cabbages are usually the size of  footballs so by making a double batch I can use up most of the cabbage in one massive dumpling marathon. If you do make both remember you’ll need to double all the other ingredients (tamari, toasted sesame oil, ginger, cabbage & carrots). I find one package of wrappers is not enough for a single batch of dumpling filling, but two is too many. If you are doubling the batch go with 2 or 3. You can buy the extra package of wrappers and use the leftovers for something else. Or the lesser amount of wrappers and when you run out use the remaining dumpling filling for a quick stir fry. In all the years I have been making these only once have I had the perfect ratio of filling to wrappers. Don’t sweat it if things don’t come out evenly.

Pork or Tofu Dumplings

1  1/4 pounds ground pork or 1 pound firm tofu

1 cup minced scallions including greens

3 Tablespoons low sodium tamari or soy sauce

1  1/2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil

1 generous Tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1/2 pound Napa cabbage, sliced into very fine slivers

2 carrots, peeled and finely grated (optional)

2 packages dumpling wrappers (gyoza or wonton)

dipping sauce – recipe below

In a large bowl combine the pork or drained and crumbled tofu with the scallions, tamari, sesame oil, and ginger. Mix well and let sit for a few minutes so the flavors of the different ingredients to absorb and blend with one another. Then mix in the cabbage and carrots if you are using them. Nappa cabbage is sometimes also labeled as Chinese cabbage. If you can’t find it you can use savoy cabbage but add 1-2 tablespoons of water since savoy is a bit drier than Nappa.

Set up your steamer, I use one I bought from an international market years ago. It just fits into one of my large frying pans. I line the baskets of the steamer with pieces of parchment paper or the whole outer leaves of the Nappa cabbage to prevent the dumplings from sticking to the bamboo.

In the original recipe Susanna Foo called for round dumpling wrappers. I cannot find them at my local store so I make my dumplings with the square wrappers. To form the dumplings have on hand a small dish of water. Scoop a tablespoon of filling into the center of the dumpling wrapper and then moisten the edges by dipping your finger in water and running it along the edges.  Then fold the wrapper so two sides match up. You can try to pleat the edges together, though lately I have been lazy and just sealed them shut flat, with no fancy pleats. I make the tofu dumplings into triangles and the pork dumplings into square, four-seamed packages so everyone knows which is which when they come out of the steamer. Steam for 11-13 minutes over gently boiling water. Serve while hot with dipping sauce. Don’t forget to occasionally add more water to the pan, as the water boils dry when making lots of dumplings. You can also freeze formed but uncooked dumplings. They will simply take longer to cook from their frozen state.

Dumpling Dipping Sauce

Tamari

Toasted sesame oil

Rice wine vinegar

pinch sugar  or drizzle of honey (optional)

water

I have little dipping bowls I just line up and add the ingredients to, tasting as I go. My mix is roughly 1 Tablespoon tamari to 1/2-1 teaspoon sesame oil, a small splash of rice wine vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and a splash of water. See what works for you.

I have had very little experience with suicide, however there are a few people from our church St. John’s who are wise and wonderful and who sadly have had their own personal devastating contact with suicide. They supported our family by listening and offering to share some of their own observations in the days and weeks and months after this young woman’s death because it was not easy. I don’t think it ever gets “easy”. They were also ready with an endless supply of hugs and kleenex and checked in often to see how we were doing. The teachers and headmaster at Isabelle’s school were likewise incredibly caring and willing to reach out to us however and whenever we needed.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given regarding teen suicide survivors was to let them make decisions about their own life, especially in the time immediately following the event. Whether to go or not to go to the funeral. Whether or not to take the SATs. Whether to get out of bed and go to school some days. There is no right or wrong way to deal with this, but it does help to affirm their choices. Also remember to let those who are in your son’s or daughter’s life (teachers, friend’s parents, coaches, therapist) know what has happened. They may not have heard, especially if the suicide victim went to a different school.

The number for the National Teen Suicide Prevention hotline is 800-273-8255.

Isabelle’s friend really loved art. If you would like to make a donation in her memory you can send it to the Frontier Regional High School Art Department, North Main St., South Deerfield, MA, 01373 c/o Jack Purcell who was one of her art teachers.

Breaking the Rules

I once pitched this recipe idea to an editor where I occasionally freelance and was told, “We don’t run those types of recipes. We only want recipes where everything is made from scratch.”

I knew that. I was just suggesting she make an exception.

I’ve come up with dozens of recipes for this  magazine over the years, all of which were from scratch. Heck, that’s pretty much my motto in the kitchen. From scratch. This recipe is so gloriously chocolatey  and fudgey that it makes me think it’s ok to break the rules once in a while. Full disclosure I have made these chocolate chip gooey bars both ways and I would swear on a stack of Julia Child’s cookbooks that the ones made from store-bought dough are better. Honest.

This recipe is from Sally Sampson’s The BakeSale Cookbook. Sampson recommends you make the cookie dough from scratch, but you don’t have to. The simplicity of making them with bought dough is curiously freeing. Melt, squish, layer, bake. Perfect for pot lucks or bake sales, known to cure PMS when eaten in their molten just-out-of-the-oven state, these bars can also be used for some serious bribing with teenagers or grown ups.

Rule Breaking Chocolate Chip Gooey Bars

2 packages of chocolate chip cookie dough (around 2 pounds)

1 – 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 – 12 ounce bag chocolate chips

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Dump the sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips into a small saucepan and over a low flame gently heat until the chips are melted. Stir in the vanilla extract and let cool a few minutes. This will be your “fudge” layer.

Flip a 9″ x 13″ pan over (if you have one that is slightly smaller all the better) and press some aluminum foil over the outside. Then gently lift the foil off and it should be in your pan’s shape. You can then press it into the inside of the pan. Be careful not to tear the foil. My pan is slightly smaller than 9″ x 13″ which is the perfect size for these bars, but slightly too small for lasagna.

Next it’s time to layer up. Take the dough and squish it into super flat tiles which you will place on the bottom of the pan. I use the flat brick of dough which is prescored into squares. I break off chunks and smoosh them flat. You may need to use one or two squares from the second package of dough to completely cover the bottom. Or you can  press the dough just a little bit thinner. Spread all of the fudge over the first dough layer and top with more pieces of flattened dough. Bake for 45 minutes or until the dough is nicely browned on top. Cool a bit and cut into squares. I tend to make these small because they are rich.

Maybe someday when I’m feeling crazy I’ll get a tattoo on my stirring arm that says from scratch. It will remind me if something is chocolatey and gooey enough it’s ok to break the rules.

Sometimes Skinny is Better

It’s true, sometimes skinny is better. One of my favorite spatulas is a flexible metal spatula. Does it lift the heaviest slice of pie? Nope. Can it lift a whole cake? That would be a bad idea. Should I use it in my non-stick pans? Probably not. However if you get past what it cannot do you can then focus on what it can do, which is a lot. Its many uses are why I find myself reaching for this spatula more often than any other spatula in my kitchen tool jar.

It’s thin blade can slide under anything – from a turkey burger which has caramelized onto the sauté pan to some rosemary oven roasted potatoes which have crisped themselves to a lovely golden brown. The spatula’s edge is so sharp it can slice through things like a piece of cheese or an apple so you can use it as a knife in a pinch, which also means you can cut yourself with the edge so be careful! It is as bendy and flexible as if it has been doing kitchen yoga all it’s life. The flexibility makes it the perfect spatula for sliding under even the most delicate cookies and transferring them to a cooling rack (yes I know these oatmeal-cherry-dark chocolate-apricot-almond-raisin cookies are not delicate but you get the idea).

A while ago one of the rivets attaching the blade to the handle popped out. Shawn came to the rescue and re-riveted it for me. Now I’m good to go for many more hours (dare I hope years?) in the kitchen. Oxo and Ateco both make flexible metal spatulas and you should be able to find one for less than $10. So do yourself a favor and make sure you have one of these great spatulas in your kitchen tool jar!

Antidote to Stress – Creamed Food

I thought we were over the major college hurdle when I wrote my last post. After all our daughter had chosen to attend UNH this fall. We could relax – right? Wrong – so wrong! It turns out getting into college is just step one, choosing which college to go to is step two. The first deposit check is the beginning of steps three through infinity.

I know there are kids out there who are super smart with extreme financial need who may get a full ride to college. There are some families for whom tuition payments are no problem. I of course don’t personally know any of families like that, but I image they exist in the stratosphere of the 1%. Then there is the rest of us. Our kids may qualify for some financial aid and scholarships from their chosen school, some of them may get merit based grants and aid, but it is rarely enough to cover the entire cost of college. So once the choosing and being chosen part of the college process is over it’s time to figure out where the money will come from.

We can help a bit, but we won’t be able to fund everything so my focus for the last several weeks has been to look for scholarships and grants which Isabelle won’t have to pay back*. This has meant filling out endless forms, all of which had to be in the correct order. We started with the forms which told colleges how much our family could afford. In between filling out those forms we scurried to our accountant to try and get our taxes done in January. She of course laughed at the thought of being able to file in the first month of the year (when you’re self-employed like we are). Many of the forms needed for our various tax schedules don’t get released until late February or March. It doesn’t matter that a different part of the government (the one who would decided how much we could afford) expected us to file our taxes by the third week of January. She took pity on us she came up with a draft of our taxes so we could (sort of) move on.

Turns out there were some scholarships we’d already missed the deadlines for. I guess instead of taking Isabelle to visit colleges last fall I should have put her on a bus while I spent my time searching out potential scholarships. Amazingly, even with our late start of January there were many different scholarships out there. You just have to fit their criteria.

In some cases it is about your GPA and SAT scores. For other scholarships it helps if your parents didn’t go to college. I found a bunch of grants for kids who grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, but since we’re from Whately Isabelle couldn’t apply to those. Certain scholarships correlate with intended majors or specific colleges. Others are awarded to left-handed people whose parents immigrated from the Land of Oz. (Ok, I’m kidding about that last one)  It’s mind-boggling what is out there.

Of course just because you find a scholarship which matches your kid it doesn’t mean the scholarship committee will choose your offspring. There are still essays to write, recommendations to get, plus you’ll have to make copies of everything from your family’s federal returns (with all social security numbers blacked out), to your kid’s official high school transcript, along with your dog’s vaccination records, and a pint of blood. Ok, I’m kidding again, but I bet we could find a scholarship where they wanted those last two things. One of the more challenging parts is adhering to the various directions. They make the directions tricky because it is an easy way to eliminate certain applicants. Put your SAT scores before your extra-curricular activities? Bing we won’t consider you. Did you remember to staple everything together? No? Bing another application in the trash. Remove all staples , mail in a 10″ x 13″ envelope, scan to a pdf, with a photo, without a photo; hand written essay, typed essay, or in some cases both handwritten and typed essay. The variations are endless.

Which may make you understand why I’ve been eating a lot of food these past few weeks which is both comforting and needs no elaborate instructions. Barely a step up from baby food some might say. The original recipe I’ve been rifting off of came from my friend Jessica. She ate a lot of this while going to graduate school on a very tight budget. Since she was living in the middle of Amish Country, there were wonderful markets to go to where she would buy chipped beef. She would make a glorious creamed chipped beef on toast though sometimes she got fancy and served it on a baked potato. Since chipped beef is hard to come by in western Massachusetts I’ve been substituting all things green for the beef, though occasionally I’ll use chopped up ham and peas. I am usually too last-minute to ever think about baking a potato so my creamed whatever is always served over toast. It is comforting, it is cheap, and it is fast. The perfect antidote to all these forms and applications.

Rainbow swiss chard as the “green”

Creamed Greens on Toast

Like I said there really isn’t a specific recipe. You’ll either need to experiment a bit or if you want to you can come over to my house and I’ll whip you up a bowl while you staple (or unstaple) pages together for yet another application.

1 or 2 pieces of bread

1/2 small onion, chopped (optional)

1-3 Tablespoons butter or margarine or olive oil

handful of flour

kale, spinach or swiss chard, stems removed if tough, washed and chopped

spoonful of mustard, grainy or dijon

cow, goat or rice milk

salt and pepper

While your bread is toasting sauté the chopped onions, if you are using them. Once they are translucent or the butter/margarine/oil is heated make the  roux (which is just a fancy name for white sauce) by adding the flour. Stir everything around until the flour is cooked a bit, but not burned.  Add your main green ingredient along with a spoonful of mustard. Then whisk in the cow or goat or rice milk. Start with a little, you can always add more. When the roux is thickened and the greens are cooked taste for seasonings. Pour it all over the toast which you’ve plopped into a bowl and dig in.

Creamed spinach on toast

Of course if you can find chipped beef where you live by all means try it with that.

*I am aware that kids can take out loans for college, but starting off life with huge amounts of debt is its own challenge. We’re trying to make it so there isn’t a mountain of debt, just a small hill.

College Ham

Yesterday our daughter decided where she’s going to college. As you may know applying to college is a lengthy process. It’s complicated by the mountain of decisions you need to make along the way, including but not limited to:

Does this school offer what I want to study?
Can we afford it?
Are my grades and test scores good enough to get me in?
Will I fit in at this school?
What if I don’t get along with my roommate?
Will I starve if insert your school’s name here’s food is horrible?

We were exceedingly lucky since early on our daughter knew what she wanted to study – criminal justice – and was clear she wanted a small college or university since her high school graduating class is only 21 people. Those two choices narrowed the field considerably.

Her third criteria was a bit harder to find. Isabelle wanted to be able to cook her own food because she is a picky eater. Not picky as in she won’t try things. Rather picky because she tries not to eat:

junk food
processed foods
genetically modified foods
meats treated with antibiotics
anything prepared in butter (yup she won’t eat my cookies)
fried foods
cow dairy
processed sugar

It’s a long list. It’s not a particularly food service friendly list either. None of the schools from her potential college list allow freshman to cook for themselves, though most of them accommodate a variety of dietary needs and preferences.

After Bella made the decision to go University of New Haven the first thing I suggested she do at orientation this summer is make friends with the people over at food service. The second thing is to figure out how she can tweak their food system so it works for her, because that’s what she’ll need to do. With an undergraduate population of 4,600 food services has to cook in bulk. Plus most students want to eat the things Isabelle eschews.

As part of the Accepted Student Day program we were served a classic college lunch. Dining services somehow cooked and served food not only to all of the returning UNH students, but also to the 300+ prospective freshman and their parents (we guesstimated there were roughly 800-1000 people) who had shown up to revisit the campus before making their final college decision. Isabelle and Shawn went straight to the salad bar and topped off their salads with a couple of vegan rice and bean cakes. I decided to go for the classic ham dinner which consisted of thick slices of pineapple baked ham with gravy, french cut green beans, and scalloped potatoes straight from some industrial size box. I have a secret fondness for those dehydrated potatoes you add boiling water and a package of powdered cheese mix to. It must come from growing up in the 60s & 70s.

Much as I enjoyed my trip-down-memory-lane lunch and was impressed with the variety of food choices being served at the UNH cafeteria, I have to say my all-time favorite ham is Monte’s Ham from the Saveur Cooks Authentic American cookbook. The recipe’s premiss is to buy the cheapest bone-in ham you can find* and slather it with a delicious glaze, thus enabling you to feed the masses very inexpensively and deliciously. I’ve can usually find a super cheap ham, but I have to spend as much again on the glaze ingredients which chafes my wallet. Marmalade does not come cheap (unless you make your own or find it on sale) even at a big box store.

I often make this ham during the holidays, since we can count on it for many meals. First it appears in its roasted form, then the next few days sliced cold for sandwiches, chunked for a quiche, and finally when we’re down to the bone it flavors a pot of lentil soup. Even figuring in the cost of a good marmalade it still is an economical dinner with plenty of leftovers. Perhaps I should send this recipe down to the cooks at UNH.

College Ham

1  10-15 pound ham

1 – 1 1/2 cups marmalade

3/4 – 1 cup dijon mustard (grainy or plain)

1 – 1 1/2 cups tightly packed brown sugar

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Remove the little plastic disc which comes stuck into the bone, rinse and pat dry the ham, and remove any hard brown pieces of skin. Place ham in a large roasting pan, which you’ve lined with foil since the glaze bakes on hard. If you don’t mind soaking and scrubbing the pan you can skip that step. Depending on the size of your ham bake 1  1/4 – 2 hours. Near the end of the baking time mix together the glaze ingredients – marmalade, dijon, brown sugar, cloves.

Increase oven temperature to 350ºF, pour half the glaze over ham, brushing it into all the nooks and crannies. Bake another 1  1/2 hours, pouring more glaze over the ham every 20 minutes or so. You can also spoon the glaze which is starting to caramelize on the bottom of the pan over the ham as well.

When ham is cooked place on a platter and let rest for 15-30 minutes, covered loosely with a fresh piece of foil. Slice and serve with or without boxed potatoes au gratin.

No mater how you slice it we are all thrilled Isabelle will be attending the University of New Haven’s John C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science this fall. Go Chargers!!!

Images of University of New Haven and UNH Chargers courtesy of UNH

*Unfortunately a cheap ham means it was not likely to have been raised without antibiotics, but sometimes even at home Isabelle can’t have everything on her food wish list.

**During the financial aid talk Shawn and I almost choked when we heard the price of the freshman meal plan – $5,250/year. Later we realized it wasn’t as bad as we initially thought. Meals work out to about $20.04/day, which is reasonable. Especially when you consider someone else is washing the dishes.

Rubber Bands to the Rescue

I am married to a man who does not know his own strength. He knows he is stronger them most mortals so he makes a concerted effort to be gentle. His handshakes are firm, but not bone crushing. His hugs envelope you rather than squeeze the air out of you. Where he sometimes forgets to be gentle is in the pantry. When it comes time to screw a jar lid back on he makes sure it is completely screwed on. With his bare hands he can screw a lid on as tight as it was when it was first sealed. I can always tell if Shawn was the last one to use the jam or pickles because I cannot get the jar open without help. Often he is around and will sheepishly undo the lid for me. Other times I am on my own.

My Mom is a huge fan of the Gilhoolie Jar Opener. Grammy Caldwell always had one in the enameled top kitchen table, but somehow I never owned that particular jar opening device.  What I have instead in my kitchen drawer is a rubber band ball. Made up of hundreds of rubber bands which previously held together stems of broccoli,  bunches of scallions or heads of napa  cabbage, the ball serves many purposes. I de-stress with it by bouncing it around my kitchen (staying clear of the glassware and the dog). Sometimes my son and I play catch with it. And if Shawn isn’t around to open a too tight jar lid I simply peel off a thick rubber band, slip it around the locked lid, and twist. If a jar is particularly stubborn I’ll give it one good smack on my kitchen counter, which provides that extra bit of incentive to open, but usually the gripping power of the rubber band gives me the twist I need.