New on my Blogroll: Wasted Food

New to my Blogroll is Jonathan Bloom's Wasted Food. Now I try not to waste food, but sometimes I don't try as hard as I should, except when it involves making sure those pralines don't go to waste! But Bloom has made me more aware of the problem, and I'm trying to do better. How can you prevent waste within your own household?

First of all, eat the food you buy or prepare. Our downfalls seem to be yogurt and fresh produce. Even if the Ladybirds will eat the out-of-date yogurt and the mushy produce goes into the compost pile, that's not the best use for those foods. Eat what you grow; eat what you buy.

If you can't eat it fresh, freeze it. We have finished maybe a half-dozen entire fresh heads of celery in twenty-five years. But you know what? Celery freezes great. Wash it, throw the leaves and big white ends into your stock vegetables bag in the freezer, and chop the nice green parts and freeze them for red beans and rice or dressing or whatever. Your recipe calls for half an onion -- you know that other half of the onion is going to dry out in your frig. So chop it and freeze it. It's a yellow onion? Be sure to save the skins in your stock vegetables bag. You bought five pounds of hamburger because it was cheaper per pound than one pound? Freeze it THE DAY YOU BUY IT! You made that gumbo three days ago and there's still some left? Freeze it.

Keep your freezer and panty organized so that food doesn't get overlooked. Sort through it periodically to make sure you are using the older stuff.

Are you throwing away free stuff? Do you save your ham bones for bean soup? Your turkey carcass for stock? Your rotissere chicken carcasses for stock? Ham drippings for soups and gravies? Maraschino cherry juice for making pink lemonade? Egg whites for frosting? Egg yolks for dumplings? Broken candy canes for crushing to sprinkle on hot cocoa?

Will your chickens eat it? Bread, rice, popcorn, carrots, apples, tomatoes, noodles, grits, oatmeal, eggshells (toasted so the Ladies don't get any ideas about eating their own). No onions, potatoes, or peppers, please.

Can you compost it? Vegetable and fuit peels (unless they'll do for stock or the chickens), coffee grounds, tea bags, spoiled fruits or vegetables that are too far gone for the chickens, shrimp peels.

And don't overeat. Food that is transformed into heart disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure is a waste of resources, too.

What is it okay to throw alway without feeling guilty? Maybe the bones after you've boiled them for stock. The fat you trimmed off your ribeye, although your chickens would probably actually like that, too.

Seasoning Granny's Chicken Fryer

I fried bacon in Granny's chicken fryer today and then sauted onions, bell pepper, and garlic for our evening meal of Hoppin' John. What's that -- you thought Hoppin' John was just for New Year's? We eat it year-round at The Realm. I've even learned to pressure-cook my black-eyed peas so that I can whip it out fairly quickly.

But today I was making it slowly -- my usual Sunday afternoon cooking session, where I listen to NPR, cook, clean out the refrigerator, freeze leftovers, and deal with meat or produce that needs to be processed for freezing. I fried and sauted in the cast iron chicken fryer to continue the seasoning process.

Over a year ago, I asked my mother if she had something that belonged to her mother that she could pass along to me. While I use many items every day that belonged to Love's paternal grandmother and a couple of items that belonged to his maternal grandmother, I had nothing of either of my grandmother's. Daddy's mother died when he was nine, and my Granny's house burned when I was twelve years old, destroying most of her belongings. I do have a chair that belonged to her and my Grandaddy, one that my mother rescued out of her parents' smokehouse in the 1960s, where it had hung, seatless, for many years. She had her uncle put a seat in it -- a deerskin seat. I brought it back to Arkansas with me several years ago when Mother was in one of her "if you want it, you'd better take it now" moods. (Being burglarized will do that to you. She lost most of her crystal and a great many older dishes to a burgler while she was out of state about ten years ago. This episode is one of the few events in my life that makes me wish I could cast curses!) But I'm rambling....

Anyway, Mother gave me Granny's chicken fryer about a year and a half ago, I brought it home, and it sat on the top of the refrigerator for over a year while I researched how to reseason cast iron and then waited until winter rolled back around before starting the process. Mother says she bought the cast iron fryer for Granny during World War II. It had a glass lid -- because of wartime rationing -- which broke several years later while Granny was cooking turnips. Somebody rescued it out of the ashes of Granny's house, and it sat in my aunt's barn for ten years. Mother claimed it from there, and cleaned it up as well as she could. I worked on it with steel wool, and Love took his sandblaster to it, and then I put it through an initial re-seasoning. But I'm taking every opportunity to use it in ways that will improve the seasoning. It still has a long way to go before it's up to par with Mamaw's skillets and those I've cooked with for 25 years, but I have plenty of time. Cast iron lasts forever.

Granny was a great cook in her day. She had a stroke at age 40 which paralyzed her left side. She never used her left hand again, but she walked, contrary to what her doctors predicted. She always dragged her left foot, and she didn't move fast, but she got around. Mother says the only thing that Granny never learned to do one-handed was tie her apron -- Grandaddy always did that for her. I've often tried to picture 6'4" Grandaddy tying his tiny wife's apron each morning as they started their day. My sister learned to cut up a chicken from Granny, who could do it one-handed. So now begins the ritual of using Granny's fryer and remembering her when I do.

I have friends who say that they don't want anything of their parents or grandparents, that material items don't mean anything to them. I can remember Granny and Mamaw (Love's grandmother) without those items, but every time I use Mamaw's ice tongs, I remember how she never touched the ice when she fixed us iced tea, I remember how she welcomed me into the family when she was an old lady who had every right to think I wasn't good enough for her favorite grandson, and I remember how I loved her. When Skye cooks with me, she hears the stories of how I grew up eating off the china that Granny gave me to keep for her a few years ago, how this toothpick holder belonged to Love's maternal grandmother who I remember just as a frail woman in a nursing home but who had worked to support her family when most women didn't, how Mamaw taught me to make cornbread in this very skillet. And Skye will remember, too.

Resolutions....

New Year's Day was Thursday, but here at The Realm, the "real" New Year begins tomorrow. Skye will be back at school -- she's ready -- and I will be back at work -- surprisingly, I am, too! Love started a new job last Monday, so he will be heading off the place tomorrow, too. Each day we will all make our ways in the world, and return home in the evening to our haven, the place where we trust everybody and know that everybody loves us. The animals will welcome us home: the dog will dance and the cats will raise their heads and glance our way (maybe).

I have menus planned through March 14 -- Spring Break. Yes, it's obsessive. No, I won't follow it every day. But the hardest part of cooking for me is to decide what to prepare with enough lead time to be able to get it ready. If I don't plan meals ahead of time, I'm planning them in the parking lot as I leave work. When I was a classroom teacher, I avoided parking-lot planning. Why should I inflict it on those I love most?

Skye reminded me that my New Year's Resolution last year was to feed my family better, and that it was really nice for a couple of months because we came home from school to supper in the crockpot lots of days, and I made salads and bread on the weekend to enjoy during the week. I really think that's a resolution worth repeating, but I'm tweaking it for this year. Here goes:

I resolve to feed my family better in 2009 by
1. Planning meals in advance and do some food prep on the weekends
2. Growing more of our own fruits & vegetables
3. Getting chickens so we can have fresh eggs (& because I promised Skye 2 years ago!)
4. Serving good meals so Love & I snack less (I'll bet you can guess why that's important!)

So resolved!

Tarts for the Sweet

Skye found this recipe in one of my collection of canning books, Sunset Home Canning. (Hey, it's an addiction -- I simply cannot pass one up!) Aren't they pretty? She made them all by herself. Actually, I picked up store-bought pie crust for her to use. We were getting ready for her Suzuki Book II party, making two dishes for a potluck picnic, and cooking for a friend with sick family, and I just didn't have time to teach her to make pie crust. She was fearlessly ready to make it from her Granny's recipe, but I suggested she take a short cut this one time and promised to teach her how to make pie crust soon. She used two favors of jam from our pantry: blueberry and raspberry. Have I mentioned that I have discovered the joys of homemade raspberry jam? I'm currently hoarding a second round of raspberries in the freezer for another batch of jam.

Cookin' with Bro

Most Americans don't consider Labor Day a major holiday, but here at The Realm, we do. My brother and sister-in-law make the trek from the Fort Worth (TX) area each Labor Day weekend for the shared birthday celebration of my sister-in-law and my daughter. We enjoy each other's company, sometimes watch a little college football, and always eat really good. My brother offered to make gumbo again this year, but I suggested that he teach me a new dish. What can I say? He is such a better cook than I am.

Tonight's menu consisted of Crawfish Bisque and Shrimp Etouffee (and it only took 5 college-educated adults to figure out how to spell etouffee). The etouffee was good, but the bisque was sublime!!!

Tomorrow, they will head back to Texas (along with their 2 grandkids who came along). We will miss them. We enjoyed the food, the trip to War Eagle Mill, and tracking the Razorback game and the LSU game on the Internet. We did not enjoy worrying over Gustav, and we all hope our home state of Louisiana gets off easier this time than 3 years ago.

The good news is that Bro is taking jalapenos home with him! We plan to strip the 4 bushes tomorrow -- except for the smallest peppers -- and pack those back to Texas to share with my nephew (who contributed the crawfish bisque recipe). Here's one recipe they plan to use them for. It's a good one -- we made it a couple of years ago on one of Bro's visits.

DEEP FRIED JALAPENOS
12 fresh jalapeno peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
12 slices bacon, cut in half (cheap stuff -- not too thick)

Stuff each jalapeno half with cream cheese. Completely wrap each stuffed jalapeno half with bacon. Pin in place with a toothpick. Deep fry until bacon is cooked.

Indulge responsibly!

UPDATE: I managed to place almost 2 gallons of jalapenos with Bro! The small peppers left on the bushes will take me through first frost quite nicely.

Pesto Project

I'm never happier than when I have a new project. That is not necessarily a good thing, as it often leads to entirely too many projects to juggle. But still, I love a new project.

And this one just fell in my lap. When I was watering a couple of days ago, I looked at the basil and wondered what to do with it. (You may remember that my basil was a freebie this year.) Then, as I was eating lunch today, I opened Margaret's newest post over at A Way to Garden and learned all about Pesto Fest. Tonight I'll be harvesting pesto, and tomorrow I'll be making my first pesto. Yes, really, my first pesto.

When Life Gives You Green Tomatoes, Fry 'em!

While weeding the vegetable garden yesterday, I knocked off a nice-sized green tomato. Love asked if it would ripen off the bush, but I didn't think so, since it had no pink on it. So, what else was there to do but fry it?

Now, I've lived in the South my entire life, but I've never eaten fried green tomatoes. My mother never cooked them when I was a kid, and I've always loved ripe tomatoes much too much to bother with green ones. But, what's a girl to do?

So, I pulled out my trusted Southern cookbook, Thirty Years at the Mansion by Liza Ashley. But Liza let me down. So I resorted to Mother's old copy of Looking at Cooking by Mildred Swift. Fried Green Tomatoes is the last vegetable recipe listed. Mildred says:

Remove the hard stem end from the tomato. Cut into slices about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roll each slice in corn meal, and fry in hot fat until brown. NOTE: Bacon drippings are good for frying tomatoes.

Can you tell that Mildred wrote the cookbook before cholesterol was in our national vocabulary?

I fried the tomato as directed, although I used canola oil. Not only could I just not get past the idea that frying anything in bacon grease would take years off my life, neither could I spare any off my precious stash of bacon grease. Because, yes, I do use bacon grease in my kitchen, but I use it sparingly for flavoring, not as a frying medium.

The tomatoes fried up nicely, and the entire family tried them, a first for all of us. We thought they were OK, but fried green tomatoes won't become a summer staple at our house anytime soon. Now, if I could just find some okra, we'd be in business....