M is for… memories and musings…

It’s 7:30 a.m. on a cool Wednesday morning, no wind, gorgeous Arizona sky. Plants I started from seed --now ready to be potted up -- beckon me to the patio, but they must wait a bit longer. My neighbor is out with her weed whacker annihilating the newly sprouted weeds along the alley that popped up after a heavy rain two days ago. Having neighbors who are meticulous about their yard pleases me for the aesthetic but machinery before 10:00 a.m. irritates the hell out of me. If I were queen…

Instead, I close the slider door to the patio, open the cabinets of the living room bookcases, take a deep breath and stare at the unsorted collection that’s been on my ‘to do’ list since I moved here in December. I sort a stack for cookbooks, another for travel, classics, art, spiritual/religion, and one for random genre… I can sort about a dozen books this way but invariably one intrigues me so that when I open it, there is a message I cannot ignore. It’s this one: The Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock, 1987 with a bookmark inserted on page 83… 

Just now remembering those many years ago how friends would gather in the evenings over wine and we’d randomly open the book and attempt to answer a few of these soul-searching questions with honesty, deliberation, and often levity. Question #93 is a challenging one to ask ourselves today…

While in the government, you discover the President is committing extortion and other serious crimes. By exposing the situation, you might bring about the President’s downfall, but your career would be destroyed because you would be framed, fired, and publicly humiliated on other matters. Knowing you would be vindicated five years later; would you blow the whistle? What if you knew you would never be vindicated? 

 

L is for lemons, life and love

Though I haven’t written for a long time, I still love life and writing. Here’s the fix. When creativity wanes and life is giving me lemons, I turn to a beloved dessert — lemon sponge pie. It’s sweet, light and comforting. So good, in fact, it may have the magical power to unlock writer’s block (testing this theory).

Today, March 14, is also Pi Day… pie without the ‘e’. Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 (3/14) around the world (who knew?). Pi (the Greek letter Π) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Thus we have, March 14, and the perfect day to make pie and celebrate! Let me be honest here, a deep understanding of mathematics is definitely, not my super power! But pie making? Yea, I got this!

Lemon sponge pie is an old Pennsylvania Dutch favorite. Recipes for it can still be found in most Amish, Mennonite or Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks published these days, attesting to its popularity. 

The sponge part of this pie is created when the egg whites are beaten separately and then folded into the other batter ingredients. This process creates a layer of lemon custard on the bottom of the baked pie with a light, spongy, cake-like layer on the top. 

Recipes vary in the amounts of sugar to egg to lemon juice ratio but are otherwise the same. I make smaller pies so the 2-egg version with 3/4 cup of sugar worked best for me. Some of the older recipes just call for the juice of a lemon or 2 along with the zest. I favor recipes that give exact quantities; i.e., 1/4 cup of lemon juice instead of ‘the juice of 2 lemons’ for the obvious reason that not all lemons are the same size. Here is the version I made for a recent event. It’s sweet and tart, just right and very light. It received rave reviews! The following recipe makes one 8-inch or one 9-inch pie plus one custard cup* (no crust).

Lemon Sponge Pie

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (I used Meyer lemons here, but regular lemons are fine)

2 tsp. lemon zest

2 large egg yolks

1/4 cup melted, unsalted butter

1/8 tsp. salt

1 cup milk

2 large egg whites

One 8-inch or 9-inch unbaked pie crust

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together the sugar and flour. Add the lemon juice and zest, egg yolks, butter, and salt. Mix well with a whisk. Stir in the milk. Beat egg whites until firm; fold into batter**. Pour into prepared pie crust. 

For one 8-inch pie plus one custard cup: Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then reduce the heat and bake 35 minutes more at 350 degrees.

For one 9-inch pie: Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then reduce the heat and bake 45-50 minutes more at 350 degrees or until pie springs back to a light touch. Cool on a rack then refrigerator for a few hours to firm up the custard. This pie is especially nice in the Spring, for Easter or Mother’s Day or heck, any day you need a little sweetness in your life. Enjoy!

*I like to make 8-inch pies so when there is extra batter, I butter a small custard cup, fill it with remaining batter and bake it alongside the pie. It’s a nice treat for me if I’m giving the pie away with the added bonus of taste testing the baked filling without cutting into the pie.

** If the egg whites are overly beaten, they can become dry and create clumps of egg white that are difficult to incorporate into the batter without compromising the lightness. If this happens, it’s not a disaster, the separate layers just may not be as distinct in the finished pie; it will still be light, airy and delicious anyway. Promise.

K is for Ketchup

'Still been gardening all this time, but now I'm starting to harvest... tomatoes, no less so K is for ketchup! I found this ketchup recipe on Jay DeMay's blog. She has recipes for paleo and whole30 (right in line with my current eating plan) so I tried her ketchup recipe using my home-grown tomatoes. I love ketchup on so many things, but most store-bought varieties have too much sugar for me.

Using my latest tomato harvest, I whipped up a batch today using Cherokee purple, Costoluto Genovese and smaller stupice and punta banda. First, I cored the tomatoes, then chopped them and cooked them in a big pot until they were quite soft, about 30 minutes. After they cooled, I ran the whole batch through a ricer to remove the seeds and skin. It worked like a charm with a resultant velvety smooth tomato puree.

Jay's recipe calls for canned roasted tomatoes which I would have used too but I had fresh so that's what I went with. I've made ketchup before so I added some extra spices that I've used in previous batches. In her photos, the ketchup looks chunky but I wanted mine to be smooth like regular ketchup so I pureed it in the Vitamix. The taste and texture were perfect with just enough sweetness! Here's my recipe:

Paleo Whole30 Compliant Ketchup 

• 1/2 cup chopped, pitted dates
• 1 6-oz can tomato paste
• 1-1/2 cups of fresh tomato puree (cooked)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup bone broth or water
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon each of smokey paprika, cayenne, ground cloves, and ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Add all ingredients to a small saucepan.
2. Cook on medium low for 30 minutes and then turn heat off.
3. When cool, add tomato pulp to a ricer to remove the seeds and skin.
4. Blend in Vitamix for smoothest consistency.
5. Store in mason jars or similar jars in the fridge for 2-3 weeks. Yields 3 cups.

J is for Jesus

I had planned to write about the vegetable, jicama in keeping with my food-themed A-Z writing project which has now gone woefully unpopulated due to my current gardening obsession. ‘Had my jicama salad recipe all ready to go and photos were taken, but then yesterday while sorting through some older digital photos, I came across a photo that changed my J word. It’s a photo I took a few years ago of a wooden-carved bust of Jesus. It must be a sign I kid myself as today is Palm Sunday, the celebration of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. What could be more perfect? And so today, J is for Jesus!

The carving came into my life this way: We were living in Nebraska on our country property not far from the town of Seward. I’m driving down the gravel road past the old farm where Jack’s mother once taught school when I come up to the intersection at the highway and see this:

I thought it odd, of course; how often do you see a carving of Jesus sitting on a post along the highway for no reason whatsoever? I knew that it wasn’t a marker for someone killed in a car crash at this spot because I would have heard about it living so close by and besides that, I took this route to town almost every day and it was never there before. I tell myself I’ll stop and pick it up on my way back from town if it’s still there. Sure enough, hours later, it’s still there. I take it home and put out feelers to the community to see if anyone knows where it came from and why it ended up on the side of the road. No luck. I decide to keep it as a reminder of how weird and mysterious life can be.

While my knowledge of Biblical teachings is scanty and my faith a private matter, this passage often comes to mind when I contemplate the message Jesus brought to the world, “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Words to ponder this Easter season. Peace be with you all dear friends.

I is for iceberg lettuce

The prime ingredient in the retro wedge salad as well as many other salads produced since the 1920s, iceberg lettuce has been around for a long time! Crisphead, as it is also known, was the only lettuce I remember from my childhood in the 1950s; I didn’t even know there were other kinds of lettuce until I was well into my teens. Back in the day, it was typically found on every sandwich made at home from egg salad to bologna to BLTs. It was often served as a salad too with Russian dressing, occasionally topped with tomatoes or cucumbers or sometimes just dressing if toppings were scarce. 

Iceberg lettuce was so popular in mid-century America that Tupperware even invented a plastic container in which to store it! Many of you will remember these green containers that took up so much space in the refrigerator; the inside had a removable plastic disc with a spike sticking up so you could push that into the core of the lettuce head and then add a bit of water to the bottom of the container to keep the lettuce from drying out. Attach the lid, burp it and voila, crisp lettuce for weeks. Ingenius! I had one of these at some point in the past but got rid of it when we started eating more romaine and other greens.

The story behind the demise of iceberg’s no-rival popularity fascinates me. It happened like this, more or less: back in the 1970s when Caesar Chavez organized a boycott to protest the working conditions of California lettuce pickers, iceberg suddenly disappeared from grocery store shelves and/or became so expensive that shoppers looked to other alternatives. Alice Waters had a little something to do with the unraveling of iceberg’s celebrity as well when she opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in 1971. Waters simply dismissed iceberg lettuce as inferior produce while promoting the more delicate, flavorful greens she had discovered in France while training there as a chef. As a champion of the fresh and healthy food movement, Waters recognized the nutritional shortcomings of iceberg lettuce (substandard by all accounts) over other greens such as romaine, endive, mesclun, and arugula. These two accidents of history changed our tastes and broadened our culinary choices forever. Who knew?

Today iceberg still remains popular in America especially at steak houses, small town diners, and now, with the resurgence of the wedge salad, it can be found in many fancier restaurants too. I love iceberg lettuce on a good wedge salad; and, of course, one cannot have a real BLT sandwich without iceberg… it would just be wrong and un-American as well. My iceberg wedge salad recipe adapted from Bon Appetit magazine is listed below the photo.

Wedge Salad
Serves 4

4 slices of thick-cut peppered bacon
1/2 finely chopped small shallot
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh chives
1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar in a small bowl
1/2 cup crumbled Maytag or other mild blue cheese
Adjust consistency with buttermilk, if needed. Season dressing generously with kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, and more vinegar, if needed. Cut 1 small head of iceberg lettuce into 4 wedges; place on plates and spoon dressing over. Top with bacon, chopped chives and more freshly ground black pepper to taste. Enjoy!