Kakahead

No, the title of this week’s Happy Friday!!! is not a string of obscure Scandinavian curse words.  They are staples of Norwegian yuletide celebrations.  At least, they have been as long as this Norwegian can remember.  My memory was jostled by my brother who just called from Wisconsin.  He started talking about all these delicacies and I must admit my mouth began to water.  Nøkkelost is a most wonderful cheese.  Fiskeboller, literally translated, means “fish balls.”  However, please do NOT envision fish genitalia when discussing fiskeboller.  Not at all the same thing.  Kromkake and julekake are yummy dessert items.  Kromkake literally translated means “bent cake” although it’s more like a waffle cone than cake.  Julekake simply means “Yule cake.”  I’ll let youse kids look them up in Google or something for more info. 

Technically, my siblings and I are only ½ Norwegian.  Our paternal grandparents were straight from the old country.   Mom’s heritage was a bit more mixed:  our maternal grandfather was Irish, and our maternal grandmother (Nana) was of Austro-Hungarian descent.  Ireland of course still exists but Austro-Hungary was carved up into other nations many years ago after World War I.

Anyway, our family’s Christmases usually leaned toward Dad’s side of the family tree.  While we normally didn’t have all four of the above yummies at the same time, it was not unusual for us to have the sweets around this time of year.  Kromkake was a staple, along with rice pudding, marzipan, and occasionally some julekake.  I still make kromkake the old fashioned way, with an iron over a gas stove.  Because we don’t have a gas stove in the house anymore, I have to drag out the propane-fired camp stove each year.  This is probably a good thing.  As you can see in the picture below making kromkake can be rather messy.  Click on the picture for a better view.

Making Krumkake

I’ve learned that this is the old fashioned way by a nice lady at Nordic Delicacies in Brooklyn, NY.  She reaffirmed my self-appointed status as a prehistoric hippie guy when I asked her where I could by a Jotul kromkake iron.  “Oh my, those are antiques now.  Everybody uses the electric ones these days.”

Well OK, not everyone.   I’ve seen some new kromkake irons for sale at various places.  Even ordered one once, but it was a piece of junk I’m sorry to say.  I finally managed to find some after several internet searches.  As I recall, my search hit pay dirt when I typed in “vintage Jotul kromkake iron” or something like that. 

For those of you who haven’t tried kromkake, well I’m truly sorry to hear it.  It’s a delicious dessert or just fun for face-stuffing any old time of day really.  Our Dad’s preferred method of serving them was to fill them with a mixture of freshly made whipped cream with lingonberry preserves whipped in at the last stage.  Absolutely zero calories.  I can prove it!  Here’s the recipe I use, which our most wonderful Cousin John (God rest his soul) bestowed upon me several years ago:

Kromkake

4 eggs

1 cup butter(1/2 lb)

1 cup sugar

2 cups flour

6 cardamon seeds ground (1 1/2 tsp)

Cream the butter, sugar, and cardamon.  – I melt the butter, then add the sugar and cardamom.  Then I use a mixer to “cream” the butter, sugar and cardamon.  In other words, mix them together thoroughly.  If the butter separates or rises above the sugar, mix some more until they are all blended together.

Beat eggs, then fold eggs into butter and sugar slowly, while stirring – Do not use a mixer on this step!!  It makes air bubbles in the mixture which sabotages the batter. 

Mix in flour. (use the mixer for this)

Bake.

Now, that final stage, “Bake,” takes a bit of practice.  First of all, get the iron nice and hot on both sides.  Then touch it with a dab of butter on each face to keep the krumkake from sticking.  Get a spoonful of batter and plop it on one side of the open iron.  Heat for a bit, then turn the iron over and heat the other side.  The first one may be a bit less than wonderful, but practice makes better.  Open the iron to inspect until you get the timing right.  Once the krumkake has turned a nice tan color (often one side is darker than the other), I use a butter knife to lift the finished product off the iron.  Here’s where the finger ouch part arrives:  as soon as it’s removed from the iron, roll the finished krumkake on a cone shaped piece of wood; then roll it so it stays on the cone.  Let it cool for a few seconds and remove the cone to be ready for the next one.  I always roll the cone so the darker side is on the outside of the krumkaker.  Also, while I have one cooling on the cone shaped wood thing I’m starting another dollop of batter on the iron.  The batter makes about 30 krumkake. 

And of course the filling:

1 pint of heavy whipping cream ( I get mine from Meijer… it’s the only brand I can find that doesn’t have any thing other than “heavy cream” in it)

1 14 oz. jar of lingonberry preserves (a can of whole berry cranberry sauce makes an acceptable substitute)

Now to make: 

Chill a 2 quart glass bowl in the freezer for at least an hour.  Pour the heavy whipping cream in the bowl and use an electric mixer on the highest speed.  Move the mixer back and forth through the cream while whipping for faster results.   Whip until the beaters will pretty much stand in the whipped cream when removed from the mixer.  Add the lingonberries and mix again but only long enough to evenly mix the berries into the whipped cream.  Hand the beaters to your favorite loved ones (or whoever calls it first) so they can lick them clean.

Now, the best part, to serve:

Hold the kromkake as if it were an ice cream cone.  Put a spoonful of the whipped cream mixture in the cone and shake it to the bottom.  Repeat until the cone is full, and hand it to your salivating guest.  Continue until everyone gets one, then make one for yourself.

So as you can see, there are absolutely no calories.  Ya right, in your dreams…

I love the farmers’ market.  The whole experience is truly spiritual, in my professional opinion.  All the growers bring their goodies, in all kinds of weather, so we can come and get the best fresh produce money can buy.  You know how people sometimes get cranky at the grocery store?  Whether they’re giving the cashier a hard time about a price they don’t like, or yelling at their kids, there can be discord at the store at various times.

 Never, never have I seen anything like that at the market.

 Last Saturday, I was in charge of our grandson Ollie, after Nini (pronounced “Neenee”) fed him breakfast and ran off to work.  His Dad went on a hunting trip, and his Mom was entertaining a friend who was home from overseas.  So, we had the privilege of watching our wonderful young man over the weekend.  On the agenda:  a trip to the market to buy some fruit.

 We get plenty of veggies in our garden, so no need to buy any of those right now.  But we don’t have any plums, pears, or apples growing around the place, so off to the market I go each weekend.  I sometimes get a bit over zealous with the grabbing of the fruit.  For example, I found it necessary to buy ½ peck of plums.  That’s a lot of plums!!  And of course I had to get almost as many pears.  Both of those are going out of season soon you know.  And last but not least, I had to get some more apples.  One can never have too many apples… right??

 Once we parked the car, we got out and noticed the REALLY BIG BACKHOE moving REALLY BIG THINGS across the road from the farmers’ market.  Seemed like they were doing some kind of storm drain work, and we arrived just in time to see the back hoe moving a gigantic section of concrete drain.  Pretty cool stuff for such a  young man to watch! 

 Then off we went to get the goodies.  When we came upon the booth with the plums, Ollie mentioned that he likes those.  “You want one now?” I asked.  “I do!” he replied without hesitation.  As we continued on, one of the kind ladies at another booth caught up to me with a big hunk of paper towel.  “You’re gonna need this soon!” she said, smiling.  I smiled back and thanked her, then off we went to finish shopping. 

 On our way out, we walked to the edge of the parking lot for another glimpse of the REALLY BIG BACKHOE.   Our dear friend Kathleen caught up to us just as we were getting into the car.

 “Hi Ken!!  What are you doing here??” she asked.  Being the eternal smarty pants, I quipped, “I was trying to go fishing.  I went all up and down those aisles but no fish anywhere.”   Many folks are surprised that although I have a pretty prolific garden I still go to the farmers’ market.  One extra bonus of going to market, though, is I almost always run into someone who’s near and dear to my heart.  Plus, Kathleen had heard me and my beautiful girlfriend brag about Ollie but now she finally got to meet him.

 Fast forward several days… the pears are almost all eaten.  Some went home with our son the other day so that helped.  My lovely girlfriend put out a fruit bowl with assorted market goodies for her women’s meeting, so that got rid of some of the plums.  However, some of the plums were becoming compost, and some of the pears and apples were fast on the way to not-so-yummy land.   Every time I opened the fruit drawer to get something for work, all kinds of thoughts raced through my noggin.  Most of these were predicated with the question, “WHAT THE HECK ARE WE GONNA DO WITH ALL THIS FRUIT???”

 Then came Wednesday.  My lovely bride was exhausted from a long work day and some physical therapy to help her heel problems.  I was in charge of dinner.  I found a nice salmon filet on sale at Meijer.  Cooked that up with some beets and beet greens, nuked a couple potatoes, and voila!!  Dinner is served.  OK… how about some dessert??  What to make… that is the question.  Then it came to me in a flash, and I jumped up on top of the kitchen counter, clanged some Revere Ware together, and shouted “EUREKA!!” at the top of my lungs. 

 Or not.

 But I did have a flash of inspiration for something I thought might be yummy:  fruit sauce.  You know, like apple sauce, but with more than just apples.  I hunted down all the not so wonderful fruit:  apples, plums, and pears.  Then I chopped them up whole, skins and all (minus cores and pits of course) and threw them in a 2 ½ quart Revere Ware pan.  Next, I poured about a cup or so of apple juice in the pan for a sweet but moist head start for boiling.  Couple dashes of cinnamon and the last of a bag of brown sugar just to sweeten it a bit more.  There was only about one tablespoon of sugar left in the bag, maybe less (probably could have omitted the sugar, but what the heck).  Oh, and for an added nutritional wallop, I tossed about a half handful each of walnut halves and shaved almonds in there.

 I brought all this to a boil, stirred them around a bit with one of  our many wooden spoons.  After the fruit was nice and soft, into the food processor it went.  Now, many of you have heard me rant that I’m old school in many ways.  A dinosaur even.  And I like it already!   Although I bought my lovely girlfriend a nice Kitchenaid food processor a couple Santa times ago, I still turn to my favorite food processor every time.   It’s the one my father-in-law gave us for a wedding present 38 years ago.  Made in the USA, sold by Montgomery Ward where he worked at the time.  Here it is next to my finished product, which turned out nice and smooth but was more like fruit soup than fruit sauce.    Click on the picture for a larger view.

HI-Tech Food Processor from 1973

 That blender has helped me make many a pumpkin puree for pies over the years.  Works great for iced coffee smoothies in the summer too.  The crazy thing works and even (almost) looks like brand new.  And of course, every time I use it, I have fond memories of Grampa Hilliard who’s probably reading this down in Jasper, Florida. 

 So the fruit became soup instead of compost.  Well, more like pudding than soup I guess.  Pretty darn tasty though… and while it was still warm I plopped some in a couple bowls and accidentally dropped some Breyer’s Fat Free Vanilla Ice Cream on top of it.  Oh my goodness it was cosmic!! 

 With winter on the way, I’ll be staying home tomorrow instead of the usual trek to the market.  Gotta get the swiss chard and some other veggies out before the snow moves in!!  I’d like to be at least a little prepared and stock our pantry (or, more accurately, the freezer) before the snows come. 

 Well, I tried to find a suitable video for this Happy Friday and found this gem featuring my favorite chefs.  Please forgive the fact that it’s broken into two parts… but quite often that’s the “price” of free stuff these days. 
 
Part 1 -

 
Part 2 -

In our woods of the neck, school will soon kick into high gear.  In fact, the local high school marching band is already practicing.  I could actually hear the drum line while I was working in the garden this evening!!  Brings back fond memories of marching band season, when both Mom and I were busier than cats covering up kaka on a tile floor.  This, of course, meant that time was precious and money was tight, so we didn’t always have the luxury of eating out or buying ready made meals.  If you have no kids, you have no clue about all this. Don’t worry about that though, because God loves you anyway!! If you do have kids however, my sympathies are with you and your pocketbook. Thirty-nine cents an hour just doesn’t go as far as it used to!!

Speaking of school, I’m going to grammar jail for that last sentence. That’s because “to” is a preposition, and a preposition is a word one should never end a sentence WITH.

Ha ha, I did it again!

So. Now we come to the inevitable truth… we must not only clothe these young monsters, we are actually expected to FEED THEM as well! What a lousy rip, huh?? But that’s ok.  They are tomorrow’s workforce, and I wanted to make darn sure they got really good nutrition so they can support me when I’m old and moldy. Therefore, this installment of Happy Friday is dedicated to a meal that is not only wholesome, but cheap and easy to prepare. Those of you who don’t have kids, please don’t despair. You may feel free to use this recipe for yourself, kids or no. Before I continue, let me say this: this is an ACTUAL MEAL I make with MY OWN FINGERS AND KITCHEN COOKING DOOHICKEYS. And if you don’t believe me, just ask me. Some of you may remember reading references to this very dish in previous Happy Fridays. Ok. Here we go. Hold your noses and close your eyes, you’re all in for a big surprise…

* CHICKEN COCKAMAMIE *

1 ½ cups of brown rice

WAIT!! What the HECK is brown rice??? You burn it?? You put dye in it?? Whummana heck? Ok, I’ll tell you: it’s rice that has not been raped. And no, a bad person is not out there forcing rice to have sex, so just get that out of your brain.  But white rice is not only politically incorrect, all the goodies have been stripped off to make it “pretty.” You know, like white bread. Brown rice is usually found in the store with that OTHER (white) rice, but is much more nutritious. I mean, I HATE when this rice raping happens, ya know?? Farmers spend all their waking hours growing perfectly good food, and then “modern science” goes and “refines” the perfectly good food so it looks nice and pretty and has little nutritional value, which FORCES me to write run on sentences and then scoff at those “experts” who wonder why the cancer rates are going up in the sky. Ya know what I mean???

Sorry. I get carried away. Ok, we try again…

* CHICKEN COCKAMAMIE * (pronounced KAH-kuh-MAY-mee)

1 ½ cups of brown rice                  1 cup frozen peas
2 globs of butter                            1/2 green pepper, diced
2 stalks of celery, chopped            1 bowl of cooked meat from a dead chicken
1 large onion, diced                       4 cloves of diced fresh garlic

1 bottle Kikkoman Lite soy sauce (for sprinkling… DON’T USE THE WHOLE BOTTLE FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!)

Ok, now for the cooking…   Get a large saucepan (I use our 4 quart Reverware pot) and heave one of the globs of butter in there.  A glob is about 1 tablespoon. I use butter because I read the ingredients on margarine and cried in the grocery store.  Then I rolled in the aisles, foaming at the mouth, clutching the margarine and mumbling, “oh no, oleo.” Well maybe not.  Butter is natural stuff. No hydrogenated oils to stick to your gall bladder, and if you use it sparingly you won’t get fat. Plus, the flavor is much better for your face and hands. Butter is made by squeezing cows. Next time you see someone squeezing a cow, do not be alarmed, it’s just time to harvest the moo juice to make butter. If someone is squeezing a bull, however, tell them to get marriage counseling. That simply is NOT natural. Unless you’re a cow.

So, you take the butter and melt it in the saucepan.  Take it off the heat and chuck the rice in there. Now cover the rice with about 12 feet of water, or maybe only 3 inches if that is more to your liking. Slam the pot back on the stove and give it the hot stuff. High heat. Make boil.  When boiling is big, reduce heat, cover and simmer until the rice is yummy and you can eat it without breaking your teeth bones. Put some Devo on the CD player and bop around until it gets to this delectable state.

Drain the rice, but leave just a little of the liquid in there. The steam will make your eyebrows happy. For why did I urge you to use butter in the pan, you wonder? Well, it prevents rice bricks. My mom made rice (white rice, I’m sad to say) and you always had to have a trowel to get it out of the pan. A dab of butter makes nice flaky rice. A dab of oil works too, but then there’s the flavor thing. Use the butter. Trust me.

Ok. Now the rice is drained and very warm.  Throw the bowlful of cooked dead chicken meat in the rice from a distance of 14 feet (or less if you are hungry and want all the meat in the rice). You may well ask, “how much is in a bowl?” Well hey, it’s YOUR BOWL, you tell me!! Just a cereal bowl full. Use as much as you like. So, throw the meat in the pot. Mix it up.  Add the diced fresh garlic (or sprinkle lots of garlic powder on it), then slosh a few glugs of  soy sauce on there. Mix it up some more. I use Kikkoman soy sauce because I believe it’s the best kind on the grocery shelves.  Only a smattering of preservatives, and the rest is all natural stuff.  I use the Lite kind because I have the high blood pressure and have to watch my sodium intake.  I’d recommend using the Lite anyhow, because nobody needs the 83 pounds of salt in the regular soy sauce.

Now get a big skillet and slam it on a burner. If you’ve had a bad day, slam it several times. NOT REALLY!!!  Melt the other butter glob in the skillet. Swirl it all around the bottom and sides, then throw in the pepper, onion, celery, peas, and miscellaneous veggies. Miscellaneous veggies are just what the name implies, and around this time of year it means whatever is still growing in the garden. Except perhaps gladioluses. I never eat those. Anymore.

Ok. Bring up the heat till you hear those delicious veggies sizzle, and stir fry them for a little while. Please don’t overcook the veggies. If they’re not a bit crisp when done, you’ve killed lots of goodies and the nutritional value of the veggies will be diminished.  Besides, mushy vegetables are kinda like wet popcorn. It just ain’t right. At least, this is my professional opinion.

Finally, dump the veggies in the rice mixture and stir one more time. Season with more soy sauce and garlic if you wish. Maybe some pepper.  There’s only one way to find out what it “needs,” and that’s the age-old custom of snitching.

Well, folks, there you have it:  Chicken Cockamamie.  With this mixture, you should have enough for four with some left over so you can pack a lunch for work. Variations include Beef or Pork Cockamamie, or you could even do Shrimp Cockamamie. And of course you can play with other types of veggies.  You may also want to sprinkle in some herbs like thyme or oregano.  Maybe even some curry!  But keep the garlic in there. As Grandma Loftus used to say, “It’s good for what ails ya. And if nothin’ ails ya, it’s good for that, too!”

Don’t like the sounds of that stuff? Perhaps you might like Chicken A La King instead. Like this kind from 1937 maybe…

So… there I was, 10,000 feet in the air, no plane, no parachute, minding my own business, when a friend at work asked me, “can I get the recipe for your oats thing?  I had it in the message you sent me but I lost it.”  OK maybe I wasn’t up in the air with no plane or parachute… but she really did ask me for the recipe.

Call me silly but when my doctor told me to lower my cholesterol a few years ago, I wanted medication to be the last resort.  I figured that since my lovely girlfriend and I know how to eat a pretty healthy diet, I should be able to put some of that long learned diet knowledge to work.  So I switched my breakfasts at work to healthier fare.  I had only two requirements:  1)  it needed to be something that would be at least cholesterol neutral (not increase it), and J) it simply had to taste good.

I knew that fancy processed breakfast bars were a bit too pricey to eat on a regular basis.  Besides, with all that packaging and weird ingredients they can tout “good health” all they want.  The makers of so-called healthy breakfast bars have only one thing in mind:  getting my money.   We hear that oats reduce cholesterol, but after many years of that sticky glop when I was a kid, I’ve promised myself never to eat cooked oatmeal again.  At least, not as a breakfast cereal.  Oatmeal cookies, rhubarb oat crumble… stuff like that is a different story.  I experimented with putting oats into my diet by just having some home made “granola,”  oats, raisins, walnuts and some honey in a bowl with milk.  Not too bad, but a bit too chewy.

Then I had a thought.  I jumped up on top of the stove, pointed my finger skyward, and shouted, “EUREKA!!”  No one was home at the time so the gesture was a bit anticlimactic.   Oh OK maybe I didn’t do that at all.  But I did have a thought.  Maybe if I let the oats soak overnight in some milk… and YES!!  They are not mooshy but not difficult to chew.  Very tasty.  Added some other goodies and I now have it for breakfast on a regular basis.  I borrowed one of Dr. Seuss’s terms for the stuff… although it had a rather negative connotation in his book The Lorax.   So, without further ado, here’s my recipe for:

Gluppity Glup:

1/2 cup uncooked thick rolled oats

1/2 cup fat free yogurt

The rest I don’t measure:

approx. 1 tbsp honey  (maybe a little more… I like it a tiny bit sweet)

handful of blueberries (any fruit is fine… sometimes I use raisins or cut up strawberries)

handful of walnuts (approx. 1 oz)

approx. 1/2 cup fat free milk (maybe more)

Instructions:

Put all the ingredients in a 16 oz. glass jar (I use a Meijer Naturals Peanut Butter jar ) (oh and yes it’s empty when I start…) and fill the balance with milk.

I usually put the oats in first, then the yogurt, honey, berries, and walnuts.

Then I add the milk, sometimes I need to take a butter knife and “drill” through the yogurt so the milk makes the oats moist.

Fill the rest of the way with milk, put the cap on and shake to mix.

Variations depending on container are obvious… but there’s the gist of it.

I make this before I go to bed and put it in the fridge… oats are ready to eat by morning.

I have a morning ritual of stuffing my face and reading e-mails, etc. before zooming out into the plant to go fix things.  I find that a breakfast like this keeps me satisfied well through the morning.  Hope you get a chance to try it some time.

Now those of you who follow this know that I like to post a video at the end of each “Happy Friday!!!”   I try to find something that ties in with the subject matter, and when I go video hunting I find some interesting stuff.  Never would have dreamed to find this “commercial” from 1939…

I come from a long line of cat lovers; so it seemed quite natural to marry one when I fell in love with my beautiful girlfriend. Both of us believe with our hearts that cats deserve to go outside, so we have dealt with all the interesting antics of the small predators. For awhile, we even went as far as to install a cat door that gave them the freedom to go in and out as they pleased. Seemed easier than opening the door to let them in or out every 12 minutes. OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that often, but at times it sure seemed like it.

We love our cats and all, and we do allow them outside. We also got just a wee bit tired of uninvited “guests” showing up in various corners of the house though. “Ken!! There’s a mouse in the compost bucket again!!” My wife would always dispatch me when “the one that got away” was busy trying to score a free meal after escaping the jaws of one of our feline hunters. Then of course there were some birds… Oh, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve stepped in a pile of guts on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night.

It took several years but finally, thank God, we came to our senses and boarded up the cat door. They still go outside and hunt, but they’re not allowed to bring in any take-out items they may have scored in Mother Nature’s garden. So now we still get the occasional mouse in the house, but it’s the kind we humans love to eat. This delicacy was first introduced to us by Mrs. Spoelma.

God bless Mrs. Spoelma, the “Hollander” (Michigan term for Dutch) lady who lived next door to us when we first moved to Muskegon. She and her husband were often outside cleaning up the yard, and we’d have many a conversation across the fence. That was 35 years ago (wow!!), and one couldn’t ask for nicer neighbors.

When our daughter came into the world, she started bringing us food. Most often, she brought an odd mashed potato dish we’d never had before. “This is mouse,” she said. “It’s an old family recipe: mashed potatoes, kale, and barley. Oh and a little bit of onion, too.” It was simply wonderful. Perfect food for a couple of tree huggers with a brand new baby. Free food is pretty doggoned perfect if you ask me; especially when it’s delicious. “Mouse” is not merely wonderful as a side dish for meat and another vegetable, maybe even some gravy. It is especially yummy the following day, reheated with an over easy egg or two on top. MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

When I sat down to write this evening, I thought I’d go on the web and try to find a recipe that resembled this remarkable dish. No such luck. After many variations of the words potato, mashed, kale, barley, and Dutch, I found several interesting cooking ideas but nothing that resembled what our dear Mrs. Spoelma made.

However, I feel it’s my duty to share the basics with you. I love to cook but I rarely follow any recipe exactly. Mouse is no exception; but without further ado here is a rudimentary description:

Mouse: Delicious Mashed Potatoes, Kale, Barley and Onion

Ingredients: ½ cup hulled barley (pearled barley is OK but not as nutritious as hulled)

Potatoes : enough to fill a 6 quart pot a bit more than halfway when diced

Kale: 3 cups chopped

Onions: one large onion or 4 or 5 small onions, diced

½ stick of salted butter

1 cup of milk

salt to taste

Place the barley and kale in separate pots.

Add more than enough water to the barley to cover, at least 2 inches higher than the barley

Boil the barley until tender, then drain, cover and set aside

Add 1 cup water to the kale, and cover. Bring to boil, remove from heat after 2 or 3 minutes boiling. Drain, then set aside

Wash and dice enough potatoes to fill a 6 quart pot a bit more than half way. (We leave the skins on.)

Fill with water till the potatoes are barely covered, and boil until tender, drain.

Add butter and mash, adding milk and a dash or so of salt along the way.

When the potatoes are creamy, add onions (raw), barley, and kale to the potatoes and mash together until mixed thoroughly.

Now, don’t just stand there, it’s time to eat!!

Very nutritious stuff this “mouse,” makes me wonder if maybe a certain famous rodent ever sampled any…

‘Tis the season up here in Michigan Land:   bugs are getting ready to invade.  Flu bugs.  Cold bugs.  Hopefully everyone got their flu shot already, right??  Well if not, they’re still available.  GO GET ONE.  Of course, there will probably be a few strains that will fly around under the radar; and people will bring them to work and spread them around for all of us to enjoy.  Coughs and sneezes spread diseases ya know.  Are you suffering from a cold?  Do you hab a stubby doze?  Or maybe you feel achy all over and are trying to cough your head off?  Well, if you must come to work, please don’t sneeze on my phone or anything.  While the flu is attacking, please fight back so the rest of us don’t get sick.

In other words, STAY HOME AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!!

Now, if you are achy and have coughing and stubby doze, you probably  are getting attacked by a virus.  So that means that if you go to the doctor and ask them for an antibiotic, you will get better, right?  Wrong… antibiotics are for bacterial infection.  They just don’t work on the flu.  The onliest thing that will kill the flu is YOU… in other words, your immune system.

So, this here Happy Friday is for me to pass gas.  NO!! That’s not it!!  It’s for me to pass along some tactics that have really helped our family fight the “cold wars” over the years.  We’ve learned from grandmothers, friends, and yes, even those “weird alternative medicine magazines.”   One of my favorite weapons against flu bugs is garlic.  Lots of it.  Sure… people say, “ya, kill the cold and those around you!”  Well, I’m married, and my wife has promised not to divorce me over garlic breath.  This is a very good thing, because we both eat lots of garlic even when we don’t have a cold.  One thing many people aren’t aware of, though, is that if garlic is boiled, it loses a lot of its cold killing power. Also, fresh garlic works best.  “Ok,” you may ask… or not… “how can I use garlic and not boil it??  Anyhow?  You expect me to eat it raw or something you crazy person you??”

Yes.  Eat garlic raw.  Cut a fresh clove in half and swallow both halves.  It actually knocks the snot out of a cold.  Too weird??  Ok, then cook it gently without boiling.  In fact, one of the best cold killing methods we’ve ever found is:

A) Mince 3 or 4 cloves of fresh garlic,

5) Heat one can (or about 20 oz.) of your favorite soup until it just begins to boil

L) Reduce heat and add one teaspoon of ground sage, and also one teaspoon of ground thyme

9) Simmer while stirring for a couple minutes, and finally

!!) Remove the soup from the heat, add the garlic, and cover.  Let stand for 15 minutes.  Eat the soup all gone just before you go to bed and you will kick the germ bugs in the booty.

Then, after you wake up, make with the vitamin C, the zinc lozenges, and lots and lots of water and stuff.  Oh, and not to forget the echinacea tablets.  Or even echinacea tea!!  Blecch you say?  Well it isn’t that bad ya know…

On the other hand, you have an ounce of prevention.  You know, eat yogurt several times a week.  Have generous portions of green vegetables and fruit.  And then there’s that nasty “E” word (exercise).

Back to this garlic monkey business:  call me crazy if you want.  I like garlic.  I eat it even when I’m not sick, because as my Grandma used to say, “it’s good for what ails ya.  If nothing ails ya, it’s good for that too.”   I like yogurt.  I like green vegetables and fruit.  I like… well, ok, sometimes I even…  once in awhile, um…. exercise is good.  I need to do more of that “E” word.  Yes, I am a very sick man.

Come on over some time and we can have a garlic milkshake and some avocado flavored yogurt with a nice salad of lima beans and bananas.  Then we can take turns on our combination treadmill / electric generator and we’ll not only get fit, but you can help us keep the electric bill down.

We try to be hospitable, you know.

And now for some completely different cooking…

OK I admit it:  I’m a pretty simple person.  What I mean by that is, it doesn’t take much to flip my switch.  Anyone who knows me is very much aware that gardening and food both give me great pleasure; and life is always pretty doggone good when all that melds together.

I suppose it’s pretty natural; but my love of food and cooking came from my parents.  Mom always managed to feed us and usually made pretty delicious stuff.  I say “usually” because she did the best she could with a small budget.  Consequently, not every dish was a cosmic taste bud experience.   She did a great job overall though; and worked really hard to keep us all fed with the most nutritious fare she could muster.

Dad was the great experimenter.  He loved to try new things; but sometimes went a bit off the deep end with strange concoctions.  When Dad was on a roll with a certain dish, he would play with the ingredients in an attempt to produce something with real pizzazz.  Usually came up with some pretty wonderful delights; but once in a great while the results were a bit less than wonderful.  For example:   Dad went nuts with pot pies.  He made all kinds, and all were pretty good.  An inexpensive way to feed a tribe of four kids, right?  Well, all went swimmingly until we were introduced to Smelt Pot Pie.  It was just plain nasty.

“Dad, do we have to eat this??”

“No,” he said, shaking his head with a squint and an embarrassed chuckle.  (Hey, you can’t win ‘em all, right?)

Anyway, thanks to Mom and Dad we all learned how to cook pretty well.  I got pretty lucky with a dish recently so I’d like to share it with you if you don’t mind.  If you do mind, please change the channel.

My beautiful girlfriend sat down to my latest culinary achievement last weekend and she told me something truly wonderful:  “Honey, I think this is the best soup you ever made!”

Now, I made a large pot of it, and I’m not really sure how to reduce the recipe.  Also, lots of the measures are approximate.  But if you’re at all adept in the kitchen you already know that most recipes are a guide, not the carved in stone gospel.

So here it is, my recipe for:

VEGETARIAN GARBAGE LENTIL STEW

Doesn’t that sound delicious??  Well hey, don’t knock it till you try it.

First, the stock.  This is where the GARBAGE part comes in.  When you cut up veggies for other meals: save the peels and odds and ends in a gallon size freezer bag.  Keep this in the freezer until the bag is full.  My last bag full had parsnip ends, onion peels, swiss chard stems, and kohlrabi trimmings for example.  Empty the contents of the freezer bag into a 6 quart pan and fill the pan up to just a couple inches from the top.  Bring to a boil.  Take a metal spatula and chop the veggie trimmings occasionally to release the nutrients from inside their soft carcasses.

I let mine simmer for several hours at very low heat, just enough to make it boil gently.  Cover the pot when you’re not visiting it with the spatula but reduce the heat low enough so the contents bubble slowly but don’t boil over.

Finally, take the pot off the heat and strain the contents into another 6 quart pot.   This is the stock for the lentil stew.  Now please take the boiled out veggie peelings, etc. to the compost.  Thank you.

Stew Ingredients:

1 cup lentils

½ cup brown rice

¼ cup wild rice

½ cup barley

5 tablespoons Kikkoman Lite Soy Sauce

1 ½ to 2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes (or ¼ cup diced fresh parsley)

1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1 teaspoon ground cumin

————————–

3 large carrots, chopped (not too small of chunks… this is stew ya know)

5 large cloves garlic

½ cup frozen peas

1 cup “soup beans”  (string beans that were a bit too far along when picked)

1 cup diced okra

2 fresh tomatoes, diced

Directions:

Add lentils, grains, soy sauce and herbs to the stock.  Bring to vigorous boil then reduce heat.  Simmer at low boil until the lentils are just soft enough to eat.

Add the veggies and garlic; cover and continue to simmer at low heat until the carrots melt in your mouth.

Serve with a slice of rye bread or just enjoy it by itself.  Also delicious with a little grated parmesan on top.  Feeds two people about 180 times.  Well OK, maybe not quite that much; but my lovely wife and I had it for dinner and also lunch a couple times this past week and we’re really glad it’s about gone.  Obviously, you can always freeze half of it and save it for one of those days when you just don’t feel like cooking.

It was really good… as I mentioned before, probably the best soup I’ve ever made.  Of course you can add or subtract ingredients to your liking.

Remember earlier when I mentioned that I really get happy when food and gardening come together?  I got the carrots from the farmers market, but the garlic, “soup beans,” okra and tomatoes all came from my little organic plot on the south side of the house.  Is that cool or what??