Southern style tomato sauce with pasta

My friend Kathy’s brother is in the final days of his life and has been put into hospice care. They asked him what he wanted to eat. His choice—liver and onions and banana cream pie. What? They can give me liver and onions and banana cream pie if I’m dying and I’m totally unconscious. Can’t you just see those hospice people pureeing liver and onions, throwing in a pie, and putting it in my feeding tube? I really don’t want to go to my maker having just eaten liver and onions. It would be my version of hell.

The whole idea of food for terminal illness got me to thinking about what I would really want to eat, presuming I wanted to eat at all on my death bed. If I can request music for my funeral then surely I can request food for before my funeral. (I’ll come back to haunt you if you play any of the following at my funeral: Amazing Grace, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, or Country Roads. Given time to think, I’ll probably add to the list of banned songs.)

So here’s one of my most perfect recipes, what I could eat every day, including my final meal:

Southern Style Tomato Sauce with Pasta

1 32 ounce jar Rao marinara sauce

1 stick unsalted butter (or more to taste)

1 pound imported capellini

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese (not the stuff in the green can!)

Warm the marinara sauce over low heat. Meanwhile, cook the capellini in boiling salted water until cooked al dente. Drain the pasta. Add butter to sauce until it just starts to melt. Put cooked capellini onto a platter, pour marinara sauce on top, and add grated Parmesan.

Mucous train like a snail

Inspired by the last day of August, a freewriting exercise . . . choose a line from a book, eyes closed, and just write, working up to the line.

The Dog of the South—Charles Portis, p. 124

“The old man left a mucous train behind him like a snail.”

“Maveen! Maveen!” he shouted, “get down here and find me a switch so I can beat your scrawny ass.” Maveen and I were sitting on the roof again, trying to see if we could get a glimpse of the big cargo ships sailing up the channel toward the port in Baltimore. Maveen didn’t have a scrawny ass and soon as her daddy hollered for her to find a switch he’d forget what he was mad about. Everyone called her daddy Young Chester or Big C but he was neither young nor big. He was a runt of a man, old as the hills, and purely mean, but in his old age Big C forgot what made him so mean. Still, out of habit, he yelled and threatened Maveen just so he could blow off steam. Maveen said she wasn’t sure how old her daddy was but he lost his arm fighting in the big war and was a widower twice over when he married Maveen’s mother, Ada, who was only 16 at the time. We figured he had to be at least 50 years older than his teenaged bride. It was a big town scandal when Big C and Ada got married—a shotgun wedding no less. Big C gained the loud disapproval of the town’s women and the unspoken esteem of the town’s men. In a small town like that no one’s sins were kept secret. Maveen had a crush on a merchant marine who called himself Ace. Ace was working a big cargo ship out of Baltimore. Maveen had met him down at the beach early in the summer. She gave Ace a huge shark’s tooth—the pride of her daddy’s collection—just because he admired it so. He told her he would hang it on a chain around his neck, that it would be near his heart to keep remind him of her. Maveen ate up that sweet talk. She was sure she was in love. Ace sent her occasional postcards from ports in Africa and he promised he was going to see her as soon as he got back to Baltimore. He wrote that he would be back sometime in late summer, so around about the first of August she made me sit with her for hours, scanning the bay for the cargo ship that she was certain she would recognize. Just before Labor Day I was sure that all the waiting and pacing and sitting on the roof had finally made her crazy. She swore that one of those big ships—the one with the big orange stripe on the hull—was Ace’s ship. She said he flashed her some sort of signal from the deck. I couldn’t talk any sense into her and I couldn’t convince her to wait until she heard from Ace. She insisted that he was in port and she was going to get to him before she had to wait one minute longer. She grabbed a six-pack of National Bohemians and a bucket of ice and sat them at the feet of her daddy who was sitting on the back porch. He chuckled and said, “You do something wrong, Maveen? You trying to make up to me for something?” She said, “No, Daddy, not at all. I just thought you looked thirsty.” He drained one after the other and his head began to nod just as the sun slipped behind the pine trees. She grabbed the keys off the hook in the kitchen and headed for her daddy’s truck in the side yard. Big C was old and drunk and had just one arm but he caught up with her before she could get the truck into drive. He jumped off the porch and reached through the truck window and grabbed the steering wheel. “Just where you think you’re going, missy?” Big C didn’t know that Maveen was as strong as he was and nearly as mean. She pushed the door open as hard as she could, smashing her daddy in the face and knocking him to the ground. She floored the ignition and flew down the driveway, spewing gravel in her wake. He pulled himself out of the dirt and hobbled after the truck in vain. The old man left a mucous train behind him like a snail.

Grandbabies

My children have made me proud in so many ways. But the best thing they have ever done for me is to give me grandchildren. I have five now and I've spent most of August visiting with them in Telluride and Seattle. Here they are in order of birth.

This is Scarlet. She is five years old, she lives in Seattle, and she just started school today!

This is Lucy. She lives in Austin and she is going to be five years old on September 10th.

This is Harper. She lives in Austin and she's going to be five years old on September 10th also. Isn't that an amazing coincidence?

This is Theo and he lives in Seattle. Theo just turned three a few days ago and we had a birthday picnic for him on Lake Washington.

This is Ignatius, born two months ago, the newest addition to the Seattle contingent of grandbabies. Aren't they fabulous?

Parsnips

I’m feeling bad for parsnips. Parsnips are America’s least favorite vegetable. I don’t detest parsnips, but truthfully I haven’t paid much attention to them and don’t think they’ve ever been on my shopping list. So now I feel like I’m part of the problem. Parsnips aren’t pretty; they’re not the sexy darlings of trend-setting foodies; they’re just lowly root vegetables.

This information about the popularity of vegetables came out in a poll by Consumer Reports this year. Here’s a summary of the vegetables American like and dislike.

The most popular vegetables were:

§          lettuce

§          tomatoes

§          carrots

§          potatoes (not sweet potatoes)

§          broccoli

§          corn

§          peppers

By contrast, the least popular vegetables were:

§          parsnips

§          Swiss chard

§          bok choy

§          turnips and rutabagas

§          artichokes

§          eggplant

§          okra

Parsnips were the biggest loser—87 percent said they rarely or never ate them. Parsnips lost out to okra? I thought the slime factor would have put okra at the top of the least popular list. I've cooked with everything else on the unpopular list, and lest you think I'm prejudiced against unattractive root vegetables, I must confess that I'm a bit of a rutabaga fanatic. I guess I just don’t understand my fellow countrymen and their vegetable preferences. Frankly, I thought potatoes would be on the top of the popular list. Isn’t this the supersized nation that eats a ton of French fries per capita each year?

I’m trying to do my part to rescue the humble parsnip from the top of the hated vegetable list. So I found a recipe for a parsnip side dish that sounds delish. Please note that I haven’t made this dish yet, but I’m going to look for parsnips at the farmers market and try it. Soon, I promise. (I have not been compensated by the National Parsnip Advisory Board for this product endorsement.)

Sauteed Parsnips and Carrots with Honey and Rosemary

(source Bon Appetit, November 2007)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound carrots (about 4 large), peeled, cut into 3¼ by ¼ inch pieces

1 pound large parsnips, peeled, halved lengthwise, cored, cut into 3¼ by ¼ inch pieces

Coarse kosher salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 ½ tablespoons honey (such as heather, chestnut, or wildflower)

3 ounces sliced pancetta (optional)

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add carrots and parsnips. Sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and pepper. Sauté until vegetables are beginning to brown at edges, about 12 minutes. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.

Add butter, rosemary, and honey to vegetables. Toss over medium heat until heated through and vegetables are glazed, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with more salt and pepper, if desired. 

Optional: To add richness, sauté three ounces sliced pancetta until crisp; crumble over before serving.

NOTE: Carrots can take a bit longer to cook than parsnips, so if the carrots are large and mature, sauté them for a minute or two to soften slightly before adding the parsnips.

Truth, fairy tales, belief, and unbelief

She asked me if I ever doubted the existence of God. “Yes, I often have doubts,” I admitted, “but I prefer belief to unbelief.”

She said, “But I just don’t get it—the whole thing about Adam and Eve, the predictions about the birth of Jesus, his miracles, his death on the cross to save us, and his rising from the dead. Doesn’t it seem like a fairy tale to you?”

No, it’s not a fairy tale. To me, the difference between truth and a fairy tale is that the truth changes your life and a fairy tale is just a story. So whenever I have doubts I remind myself of the passage from the Gospel of Mark where a father asks if Jesus can cast out a demon from his son:

And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

Although this father’s natural inclination was to be a skeptic, he saw that indeed Jesus was able to heal his afflicted son. His skepticism dissolved when he saw tangible results of the existence of God.

Like the troubled father, I see tangible results of the existence of God. The most powerful result I see is when lives are changed because of belief—the lives of others and my own life. Belief gives my life focus, a grounding that I could never find in unbelief. And because of that belief I know all things are possible.

3 new ways to fat

A couple of weeks ago I had a lovely birthday lunch with two of my dearest friends. All three of us were born in the same week, same year, same time zone. We went to a restaurant and made rather restrained, sensible lunch choices as befitted women who make restrained, sensible lunch choices. I honestly can’t remember what I had for lunch—as I said, it was restrained and sensible. And apparently it was completely forgettable. Dessert? A shared piece of deep-fried cheesecake. Unfortunately it didn’t live up to its promise. It was okay, not worthy of the lard factor—some sort of marbleized cheesecake, coated in a crusty thing and deep fried. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a dessert to die for because I was hoping it would be something so delicious that it wouldn’t matter about the calories, grams of fat, or days subtracted from my life. Oh, well. Life is full of disappointments.

Then I heard about the newest, hottest food at the Iowa State Fair this year. In honor of the butter cow’s 100^th birthday, food vendors at the fair were serving deep-fried butter on a stick. (Imagine my naiveté—I never even knew there was a specific cow that produces butter and I’m amazed to know that a cow could live 100 years.) Someone needs to explain to me how they get the butter on a stick and why it doesn’t just melt when it’s deep fried. If I put a lot of butter in a pan, melt it, and insert a stick in the pan isn’t that the same thing? That’s what I had for dinner tonight. And I've never knowingly gone to Iowa.

Paula Deen wouldn’t be surprised by any of this. After all, Paula Deen is the one who has a recipe for deep-fried butter balls. (You can see for yourself at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/paulas-fried-butter-balls-recipe/index.html.) The recipe is basically butter, cream cheese, and a pinch of flour, deep fried. Paula Deen is probably going to live to be 100 years old, like that butter cow, and we’re all going to feel like fools when we spend our lives eating transubstantiated fats. (Don’t write a letter to the editor to correct me—I know that I wrote transubstantiated but it’s a theological concept that I don’t have time to explain.)

Standing in my gospel shoes

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Ephesians 6:14-15

I need to get me some gospel shoes. You probably think you really can’t buy gospel shoes. You’re wrong. I found them online. They look like high-top black Chucks with a cross on the tongue and the verse from Ephesians—"and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace"—written on the side. Of course these man-made gospel shoes that can be bought aren’t the kind I need.

For the past few weeks Pastor Mark has been preaching on the Whole Armor of God passage in Ephesians. He has stressed Paul’s exhortation to us to stand firm, to stand our ground, to stand with steady confidence rooted in the gospel.

Life has been hard lately. Death, illness, violence, sadness, and fear have been coming at me like darts, from all angles. But I keep reminding myself to stand firm. I realize that nothing I do on my own is enough to help me to stand in the midst of this onslaught. I need faith. It is faith, the complete reliance on God, that will give me the strength and peace to stand firm. I’ve got to put on my gospel shoes.

Colorado fish lips

I just got back from being in Colorado for nearly two weeks—in Aspen and Telluride. Both towns are in stunning locations. The feeling of standing on the heights of the Rocky Mountains at nearly 14,000 feet, inhaling clean air, seeing meadows of wildflowers and rushing mountain streams is breathtaking.

And both towns, particularly Aspen, are dripping in money. The rich aren’t stupid—they know where to go and where to be seen by other rich people.

But I’ve got the feeling the women of Aspen and Telluride aren’t representative of the average women of Colorado. For example, I drove from Aspen to Telluride and stopped in Paonia, Colorado, a small town surrounded by mines and fruit orchards. In Paonia the women wear beehive hairdos and false teeth. In Paonia the women wear polyester clothes left over from the last century. But at least the women in Paonia don’t look alike.

In Aspen there are a bunch of women who seem to have been punched out of a cookie cutter, like an updated version of Stepford wives. They all have Jennifer Anniston hair. They are all rail thin. Beyond rail thin. (It’s useful to be rail thin in Aspen because all the uber-expensive clothing stores carry clothes sizes that range from size 000 to size 4. Those of us who shop in the “women’s” section at Target might as well wrap ourselves in a table cloth.)

But here’s the thing that startled me most about the women in Aspen (and the non-hippie women in Telluride)—they all have those fish lips that you see in the plastic-surgery-gone-wrong photos. They walk around town with frozen faces and glossy lips way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. I swear I just don’t get it. When did it become fashionable to look like a domestic abuse victim?

Saturday night

It’s Saturday night and I found myself singing, “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody. I got some money ‘cause I just got paid.” (I love that song—where else could you find a rhyme that says, “instead of being my deliverance, she had a strange resemblance to a cat named Frankenstein.” Is that high art or what?)

I’m sitting here staring out the window, occasionally pecking on my computer keyboard, feeling like a giant nerd. Don’t all the cool people go out on Saturday night? Isn’t everyone at the movies or having romantic dinners with their sweethearts? Don’t get me wrong because I could be going out if I really wanted to. Like I need to go to the grocery store to pick up skim milk and multivitamins. Or I could go to Home Depot to get caulk. Maybe I could drive by the post office and drop my almost overdue phone bill in the mailbox. That’s exciting stuff.

I know rationally that there are plenty of people like me, people sitting home alone on Saturday night, doing laundry. Maybe this Saturday-night nerd thing is a leftover from high school. I never had a high school boyfriend. I just hung out with the girls. We girls found plenty of things to do and maybe we were better off because we didn’t have boyfriends, but we didn’t have very strong self-esteem and we thought something was wrong with us because we weren’t desired by teenaged boys. I’ve grown out of that—I no longer want to be desired by teenaged boys. Sometimes I just think it would be nice to have a reason to put on pantyhose, to wear that little black dress that I don’t even own. Is Saturday night overrated?

Watermelon salsa fresca

Totally got this from Lydia at the Perfect Pantry. (One of my favorite blogs--www.theperfectpantry.com.) It's a great recipe and everything except the mango is available now at my local farmer's market. I changed one thing by substituting sea salt for the kosher salt. I served it with a simple grilled chicken. It's delicious, fresh, and beautiful. Thanks, Lydia!

Watermelon, mango, and tomato salsa fresca

1 cup watermelon, diced
1 mango, diced
1/2 cup ripe tomato, seeded and diced

1/2 cup seedless (English) cucumber, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeds and ribs removed, minced
Juice of 1/2 lime (or more to taste)
Sea salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Chill until ready to use.

Recipes

I'm at risk of destroying my reputation by posting these recipes. Both are recipes that I developed and refined. But both are so easy that I should be ashamed. Is this not the woman who makes bittersweet chocolate ricotta torte that takes all day to bake? (All day to bake and less than an hour to eat. By myself.) Is this not the woman who makes Moroccan chicken couscous with about 120 ingredients? Yep. But truth be told, there is something so satifying about a simple recipe that works. You don't have to go to the grocery store with a spreadsheet as a shopping list--you can simply remember it. And you can add or change ingredients for variations.

For example, the chicken burgers started out as turkey burgers that someone at Weight Watchers told me about several years ago. The original version had defrosted frozen chopped spinach instead of sun-dried tomatoes. (That's great too but I prefer chicken to turkey and I like serving the chicken burgers with the spinach/orzo salad and need not to repeat the spinach.) And you can add julienned red bell pepper or marinated artichoke hearts or pinenuts to the salad. But again, there's something addictive about the simple light spinach/orzo combination that doesn't really need anything else.

Greek Chicken Burgers with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1 pound ground white meat chicken
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes (in oil), chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese, diced
1 teaspoon Greek seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a bowl mix ground chicken, egg, sun-dried tomatoes, feta, and Greek seasoning. Form into 4 or 5 patties.

Heat oil in non-stick skillet and sauté burgers until brown, about 5 minutes per side.

Spinach/Orzo Salad

1 pound orzo

¼ cup olive oil

2 medium-size lemons, juiced

1 teaspoon Penzey’s lemon pepper

8 ounces baby spinach leaves, shredded

Cook orzo in boiling salted water. (Do not overcook!) Drain and transfer to a large bowl. Add enough olive oil to thoroughly coat the pasta. Add lemon juice and lemon pepper. Let the mixture sit until it has cooled to room temperature. On a cutting board, shred spinach (like shredding cabbage for coleslaw) and add to orzo mixture. Stir gently and chill for about an hour before serving.

Gibran, sorrow, and joy

I woke up today thinking about Khalil Gibran. In The Prophet he wrote, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?”

It’s a concept that I’ve carried with me for years, the concept of having a capacity for feeling that can be filled with sorrow or filled with joy. So maybe the capacity for deep feeling—feeling either sorrow or joy—is indeed a gift. Should I be grateful for such a gift? Even when it seems there's a load of sorrow in my cup?

You know how some people are relatively flat?  They smile occasionally, they may get a little angry or sad, but on a scale of one to ten, they go from zero to two, maybe all the way to three when their mother dies or they win the $250 million lottery. Maybe they were genetically engineered that way, they just got skipped over in the distribution of feeling genes.

Then there are others like me, those who cry when they see a dead cat in the road, those who catch their breath when they see the sun breaking through the mist over the river, those who have to dance when they hear Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie. How many times have I had to remind myself that it’s a gift when I am saddened over something that may not seem to affect others? It’s a gift because it’s the capacity to feel high, content, or madly in love, but the flip side is the capacity to feel hurt, anger, discouragement, or grief.

So now I grieve the senseless murder of my brother. I am saddened to see my dear friend going through grueling cancer treatment. I am concerned about my sister who had difficult surgery last week. I wish I were and I long to be in one of the joyful times. But for me, now is one of those times when the cup holds more sorrow than joy.

"The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears." Gibran

Grilled chicken strawberry salad

I'm being gently chided (prodded?) for not posting for a week. Am I out of town? No. Am I depressed? No. I'm simply otherwise engaged. Certainly not otherwise engaged in the terms of "when the hogs ate Willy they was otherwise engaged"--that's an inside joke.

COOKING? Not much. I'm not cooking anything interesting because I'm in my first week back on the Weight Watchers wagon and trying to get my bearings.

PRAYING? Of course! I'm praying for my sister and praying to stay focused.

However, even though I'm not really cooking much, I'll share a great salad that I made twice this week. No measurements, just delicious in a guidelines sort of way.

Grilled chicken strawberry salad

Butterhead lettuce (I just like the tenderness of butterhead in this salad)
Handful of pea shoots
Grilled chicken breast (leftover chicken, grilled the night before)
Persian cucumber, sliced thin
Sliced strawberries
A few walnut halves
Trader Joe's cranberry walnut gorgonzola viniagrette

Fat prayer

Dear Lord—You know how I write you letters when I get really desperate? I’m really desperate. And the additional indignity of posting this on my blog for all the world to see brings the indignity to another level. (This is a huge leap of faith, this assumption that all the world is going to see what I write on my blog. I have a total of three readers and they are all in the United Arab Emirates. They are English 101 students and their interpretation of this will be something close to Yes, I'll have fries with that.)

I’m fat. I have to admit it and I have to realize that I haven’t been very effective correcting the situation on my own. I need you, Lord. I need you to keep me focused. I need you to give me the willpower not to eat what I shouldn’t eat. I need you to give me the energy to work out.

I can blame it on a thousand things—age, metabolism, bad genes, my hurt shoulder, emotional upheaval, my love of cooking. But placing blame doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. Please, Lord. I feel awful. I don’t understand what has happened but I’m trusting in your wisdom, your limitless power, and your patience to move me in the right direction.

Please, Lord. I promise you that I’ll try if you’ll just stay with me. Guide me to solutions, help me to find strength and focus. When I scream and yell in frustration, please be with me. In prayer, with you, it will happen.

Baguettes, Pete's, and beans

I just hate it when this happens. I’m innocently minding my own business when various forms of food jump out from behind the bushes and attack me.  You guessed it—I’ve found more things to love.

(1) Seeded baguettes from Leonora Bakery.

I was waiting in the dermatologist’s office, reading an article in Washingtonian magazine about local food sources. One of the things mentioned in the article was the baguettes at Arrowine. “How convenient,” I said to myself, “I’m only a few blocks from Arrowine.” So after the dermatologist burned some offensive items off of my body I consoled myself with a stop at Arrowine, a shop in Arlington on Lee Highway that features wine, cheese, and other gourmet foods. (http://www.arrowine.com/) I was just going to buy one of the infamous baguettes, but the man behind the counter told me there were even better baguettes and directed me to a basket of bread behind the counter—the Leonora baguettes. I humored him and bought one. How good could they be? Ummm . . .  it’s about a ten minute drive home and I ate almost an entire baguette in the car. I went back the next week to make sure they were that good. They are that good. The baguettes are delivered warm to Arrowine on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  You can get them delivered directly to your home for a minimum order. (www.leonorabakery.com/HOME.html)  So I can be a shut-in and still have baguettes? Dangerous.

(2) Pete’s Crazy Chicken Blend.

I found this on that trip to Arrowine too.  It’s a dry spice rub with an unlikely magic blend that includes things like wasabi and paprika and maple syrup. Go figure. I marinated chicken breasts in a simple mix of olive oil, lemon juice, and a very generous portion of Pete’s Crazy then grilled the chicken. Drop dead delicious. It comes from a spice vendor, the Spice and Tea Exchange, that sells online as well as from retail outlets. (www.spiceandtea.com) Just looking at the website makes my imagination run wild—like how can I use green chile sugar?

(3) Rancho Gordo Heirloom Beans.

You knew about heirloom tomatoes, of course, but did you know you could buy dried heirloom beans? I can’t even tell you how I ended up at the Rancho Gordo website.  I don’t know if was the work of the Lord or the work of Satan.  (http://www.ranchogordo.com/) Rancho Gordo makes beans fun again. (Maybe for you beans have always been fun but for a while I had lost the fervor.) There is a wide variety of beans as well as chiles and rice and spices. I got some Tiger’s Eye beans (Ojo de Tigre) and some flageolet beans to make cassoulet.  Tomorrow I’ll make the Tiger’s Eye beans into some sort of slow-cooked bean concoction but the cassoulet is on hold until cooler weather.

I was not compensated for any of these product endorsements. Doggonit.