After I returned from a shift at the home, farm and auto supply store I scrubbed and cut up potatoes to roast for dinner. Roasted potatoes, a burger patty and frozen peas made a dinner — comfort food as winter approaches.
The Thanksgiving leftovers are gone, our pantry and ice box are full. There was no need to grocery shop after my shift comme d’habitude.
In eight weeks it will be time to start onions, leeks, and shallots inside, then begin soil blocking at the farm a week or two later. For now there’s indoors work of reading, writing, cooking and cleaning.
A neighbor put out bird feeders to attract birds, then expressed concern that cats were hanging around, chasing the birds away and prompting her dogs to bark at them. I wrote a response.
This is an interesting topic. Although I don’t have any solution to the issue of dogs barking at wandering cats, by putting out bird seed, like I have, a person attracts a variety of animals to the yard, which includes not only birds but mice, voles, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, deer, and maybe others.
Because of our proximity to the state park, we see almost every species native to Iowa here.
The bird feeder also brings predators of small animals, including cats, but also hawks, owls, and foxes. Then there are the scavengers like possums, turkey vultures and crows.
My point is when we decide to place a bird feeder out we are creating an ecosystem, especially if we fill feeders year-around. If members have pets, they should be kept on a leash or indoors, that’s long been our policy. However, there is a bigger ecosystem that will continue, even in the event pets can be controlled.
Thanksgiving was a quiet day at our house. Neighbors were off with their parents, and the two of us prepared a simple meal of holiday fare.
We made some of our favorite dishes — home made baked beans and wild rice. Both of these have complicated recipes so they are relegated to days that can be devoted to cooking.
I worked the phone in the morning, but after that, could be found in the kitchen. I left the house one time — to empty the compost bucket.
The meal was a success, although the baked bean recipe requires some tweaking. I wrote it in my red book of recurring recipes with a note for next time.
The surprise was that seeing the pie pumpkin on the counter I decided to cook it, even though it wasn’t on the menu. I made a loaf of pumpkin bread and roasted the seeds. I made two cups of cooked pumpkin into one-cup balls and froze them for later. I served sliced pumpkin bread with home made apple butter on top at the meal.
Today I return to the home, farm and auto supply store where it is the eight-hour Black Friday sale. I have to be there when the doors open at 6 a.m. I also work on Saturday and there are plenty of uses for the extra money. For now, it’s my main source of socialization outside of home.
I placed a couple of on line orders this week. One for the bulk of my garden seeds for 2020 and another for a sweatshirt a size smaller than I have been wearing. I’ve maintained the 14 percent weight loss created by my anti-diabetes regimen and the current size is too bulky. We’ll see how that goes.
Our daughter had a twelve hour shift working for the mouse yesterday. At a thousand miles away it’s too far away and too busy there for a visit. Thanksgiving was the two of us sustaining a life in a turbulent world.
Tree Decorating Contest the the Solon Public Library
Happy Thanksgiving readers!
Thanksgiving week continues to be a special time. There is a certain something in the air. As a writer I should do a better job describing that. Doing so would reduce what’s special to mundane. Let’s not go there.
We all need time to recharge after this long year. The days find me planning next year’s garden, determining how to improve our community in the months ahead, and budgeting. Those are markers along the way that don’t get to what’s special this week.
It seems unlikely we will decorate our home for year-end holidays. We’re in the middle of down-sizing, organizing, and re-arranging for coming years. Translation: stuff is pulled out everywhere. The library in town displayed the results of a competition to decorate Christmas trees. We took it in last night and gained a bit of holiday spirit without the work it would have caused us at home. That will have to do.
Thanksgiving is a quiet time for us. With our daughter a thousand miles away and all four of our parents deceased, there is little reason to get too carried away. We will celebrate with a special meal that includes home made baked beans, wild rice, baked sweet potatoes, a relish tray, sweet apple cider from the orchard and an apple crisp made with backyard apples. It will be good, filling and with some calculated adjustments and portion control, nutritionally balanced.
According to the American Farm Bureau, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is $48.91 this year. Ours would feed the same number at a fraction of the cost, due to no meat products on the table and producing and sourcing items from our garden or from the local food projects where I work. When most food is produced close to home, eating well is not expensive.
There’s more to the special feeling of Thanksgiving than food. Describing it escapes me. I’m better off not knowing what it is and basking in the glow of its exceptional character. At least for this year.
On a bleak, drizzly Sunday morning I visited our parents’ grave with my sister. Cemetery workers had piled sod on top of Mom’s grave with a carve-out for the foot stone designed to look like Father’s. We are waiting for delivery.
I was glad to visit before winter.
We met our brother at an Italian restaurant in the dying mall. We all had salads with iced water to drink, a sign of dietary requirements of the times. The food was good in a way Italian restaurants can be. The conversation started on Democratic politics. We don’t agree on who should be the next presidential nominee so we moved on to the topic of our family history.
Of our parents’ generation, aunts in Florida and Virginia are the only ones remaining. Sister contacts them every so often. I heard from both in the last five years via email or snail mail. Last time I visited my aunt in Virginia was in 1983. I haven’t seen the one in Florida for longer than that. Word is the family kept Cox Hollow when my great aunt died, and we didn’t discuss who owns the home place in the Appalachian hills where one branch of the family is buried. None of us have seen the family cemetery where ancestors who fought for both the Union and the Confederacy are buried. The stories we share as siblings are common ones, although each time we retell them some new nuance emerges. The luncheon was okay.
Suffering a cold for the last two weeks, I continued to make a life. I also cancelled a lot of plans.
Tonight I’m scheduled to attend a house party for the U.S. Senate candidate Michael Franken in Marion. We’ll see how I feel after work. The local Elizabeth Warren organizer arranged a Democratic debate watch party in town, which because it is so close, I also plan to attend. The debate starts at 8 p.m. local time and that is pretty late to be out for me. Organizing for the caucus doesn’t happen on its own and I hope to recover from my illness soon to help the effort.
The ambient temperature warmed and we are getting respite from wintry weather. We are in a dank, in-between time of hoping for relief from what ails us, and from the emotional burdens life presents. Thankfully today is another day to live.
Corn-rice casserole for the annual orchard potluck dinner.
A hard break from autumn accompanied last week’s snowfall.
Outdoors there is garden clean up, raking leaves, and another mowing to be done, however, we’ve turned mostly inside.
A main issue has been determining how to get exercise without an active garden and walks along the lake. Yesterday I cleaned and set up the NordicTrack ski machine. This morning I tried it. It will serve for a while and, in any case, seems more focused than walks along the lake and yard work.
As orchard season ended I took an eleven day hiatus from carb counting. The point was to see the impact formal training and weeks of habit had on daily food consumption. Some things were easy: eating only one slice of bread at a meal, portion control, and selecting snacks that had less than 15 carbs in them. What was harder was dealing with cravings. I was mostly, but not always able to do so. At the end my average weight remained unchanged at a 15 percent loss. Clothes still fit and if I exercise daily indoors, I may have to get pants a size smaller. I went back to carb counting this morning and return to the clinic for more tests in three weeks.
The time between harvest and year’s end has been for reflection and for making plans. After a struggle when I retired in 2009 our situation stabilized with adequate income to meet short term needs and engaging work in the community. I feel fortunate to be approaching my 68th birthday with an ability to think beyond it.
I expect to continue to write short posts, although a format change at On Our Own is overdue. Before changing the look of the blog I want to print out past years for the book shelf. Financial constraints held me back from making a paper archive every year so I’m behind.
There is other writing to do. I recently ran into a former editor at the Iowa City Press Citizen and we discussed freelancing. It would take a compelling reason for me to seek publication more than I get in letters to the editor of the Solon Economist or an occasional guest opinion in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. If anything, the next period will be one of working on an autobiographical work. Whether that has import beyond family and close friends seems doubtful. It’s what an educated person does or at least that’s the paradigm through which I view it. Our daughter might appreciate the effort of culling old papers and artifacts so there is less for her to deal with when we’re gone. I don’t plan to be gone anytime soon.
Perhaps a few more autumn days lie ahead. The forecast looks dry through the end of this week. I took a vacation day from the home, farm and auto supply store to clean up the garden. If all goes well we’ll be able to turn inside when winter arrives in earnest.
What should we make of Tuesday’s October snowfall? Not much, I guess.
It was another day in the neighborhood, where melting snow delayed yard and garden work, and a final mowing with grass clipping collection.
It’s unclear whether further mowing will occur.
Weather has me turning inward. A technician is schedule to inspect our furnace, a pack of 9-volt batteries is ready to install in smoke detectors, and I bought a new snow shovel to replace the aluminum one that proved too flimsy.
I’m also prioritizing November reading.
October has been a great month for this blog with the most monthly views since I began blogging in 2007.
It’s time to take a breather before the rush to year’s end. After today’s shift at the home, farm and auto supply store, that what I plan.
An acquaintance from the Climate Reality Project posted a photo essay depicting the process of making a “‘No-Tuna’ Salad Sandwich” on Instagram. I found the recipe on line and made the dish for lunch.
Mostly vegetarian, I long for food eaten at home with Mother. Because of over fishing, slavery in the Asian tuna business, and the negative impact of global warming on fish stocks there are plenty of reasons to eschew tuna and other seafood. If I don’t consume it, someone else will and that’s another problem of society on a long list of them.
The recipe produced a tasty meal, reminiscent of tuna sandwiches of my youth, but not. With a few tweaks the recipe will be a keeper.
Chickpea Salad (Modified from an original recipe by Dana Schultz)
Ingredients:
1 – 15 ounce can of chickpeas or 425 grams cooked, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup diced red onion
1/4 cup diced celery
1/4 cup diced dill pickle
1 teaspoon capers, drained
Salt and black pepper to taste
Preparation:
Mash the chick peas in a bowl, leaving the mash uneven with some peas left whole.
Add tahini, mustard, honey, red onion, celery, pickle, capers, salt and pepper and mix to incorporate. Adjust seasonings as needed.
Refrigerate to enable the flavors to meld together.
Scoop a generous amount on a slice of toasted bread and garnish with lettuce, tomato and Dijon mustard or as desired. Can also be used on crackers as a party appetizer.
Daylight remained as I drove into the driveway after a shift at the orchard.
If the garden appeared scorched by the previous night’s first frost, some tomato plants survived and the kale looked resilient.
The weather forecast is a couple of days without rain. I scheduled garlic planting for Tuesday when the ground should be dry enough. Fingers crossed I get a crop in this year.
I picked another bushel of fully ripened Red Delicious apples yesterday morning. This morning I used apples knocked down and damaged during the picking process to make an apple crisp for the county party’s fall fundraiser. In September I bought 30 aluminum food service trays for potlucks. This was the fifth one used.
We were busy at the orchard Saturday. Because of rainy weekends there is a pent up demand for the u-pick apple experience. I was tired at the end of my shift. I fixed eggplant Parmesan for dinner and could go no further. I was so tired I left the dishes to clean this morning. If there was any doubt, autumn has definitely arrived.
Hot peppers gleaned from the garden before the first frost.
When we had insufficient income to pay bills few errands were run.
We made almost no home repairs, delayed maintenance on everything, and minimized activities that required resources not on hand.
Now that our retirement income is set, and supplemented with a couple of extra jobs, I can afford to run errands. Yesterday I did so for the first time in a while.
The day began in the kitchen. Using onions and Swiss chard from the farm I made frittata for breakfast. Next, I sliced apples and filled the dehydrator. Sunday is the county party’s fall barbecue so I tested a recipe for applesauce cake to see if it would fit in the foil pans I bought for potlucks. The recipe fit without modification. In between this cookery I managed to glean the garden, bringing in peppers and tomatoes that would be damaged by frost. The kale looks really good right now and a freeze would make it taste better.
I cut five pieces of applesauce cake, put them on a plate, covered with foil, then delivered them to the public library while still warm. The librarian was making tea so the timing was perfect.
Next stop was the orchard where I hiked half an hour up and down hills, picking five varieties of apples: Regent, Crimson Crisp, Mutsu, Fuji, and New York 315. I also got some Snow Sweet and Honeycrisp in the sales barn. The season is about over yet there are lots of apples remaining on the trees.
From the orchard I drove to the recycling center in the parking lot of the former Hy-Vee supermarket on North Dodge Street. This is my go-to place for paper and magazine recycling. With our new clean-up project we are getting rid of lots of old magazines, too many for the curbside bin.
I pulled into nearby Hy-Vee where I bought organic celery and a packet of Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles for a pot of chili planned over the weekend. I’d been discussing nutritional yeast with one of the orchard owners so I bought a small container of Bragg’s brand to try it. The recipe we discussed was serving boiled or baked potatoes with a sprinkling of nutritional yeast and a dollop of yogurt. I’m now one step closer to trying it. They did not have the organic mayonnaise I sought, so I continued to Trader Joe’s.
Trader Joe’s is a store on the island that is the Iowa River Landing. This 180-acre mixed use development borders on the weird side. An arena is being built there and there are high rise apartment buildings, a hotel, a university-affiliated clinic and retail outlets. Despite having a range of activities, there is no sense of community at Iowa River Landing. I picked up two jars of organic mayonnaise and two of French Dijon Mustard. Staff was very friendly.
Westward to a big box home improvement store where I sought a replacement baseboard register for one of the bathrooms. Borrowing a tape measure from staff, I found the one I needed. On the way out I made an impulse purchase of a small bottle of 50:1 fuel mix for my trimmer. Expensive, but the right fuel is important for high-speed, small engines. My trimmer has been repaired twice since I purchased it so paying extra for proper fuel.
Final stop on the loop of the county seat was a drug store where I bought sundries, then drove home through three roundabouts and over two lakes.
Later that afternoon we went to the public library where Jacque delivered a book project she’d been working on as a volunteer and picked up the next. While she reviewed things with staff, I browsed the used book cart to see what was available.
I eschewed community cookbooks this time (how many of those can a person digest?) and bought good copies of a couple of works on my reading list. I also bought Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and In Her Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World by Gabriele Galimberti, the latter of which I read last night. What a marvelous book of women’s stories, recipes, and photos of the women with their ingredients facing a photo of the dish they created.
Moving from low wages to an adequate retirement income won’t make us rich, except in the ability to get out, run errands, visit with friends, and buy things we need to sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
Stew of potatoes, eggplant, tomato, black beans and vegetables.
Who wants to reinvent home cooking every time they enter the kitchen?
Here’s a better question, how can I work to be present in the kitchen and produce tasty, nutritious food for our family?
While I have a strong memory of Mother’s cooking, I don’t recall many of the dishes. For me, home food begins in 1959 when we moved to Northwest Davenport where I lived at home until going to university in 1970. During those years Mom cooked what I believed was standard fare for working class people. If there was a typical dinner, it included beef or chicken as a main course, potatoes or rice, and a vegetable. Sometimes there was dessert. Dad got a discount at the butcher shop co-located at the meat packing plant where he worked. He brought home mostly beef and pork products, and we had plenty. Memorable tastes include liver and onions, beef vegetable soup served on white rice, and usual fare of hamburgers, grilled cheese and meat loaf. It was a staple cuisine that tasted good and provided nourishment.
When I became mostly ovo-lacto vegetarian in 1982, traditions associated with Mom’s cooking went out the window except when we visited her. I started cooking while I was in college and like most beginning home cooks was not very good at it. I recall serving Mother tuna and noodle casserole during the visit she made to my small apartment. I used her recipe, which included canned tuna and condensed mushroom soup. We got through the meal, one of the few during my life where she came to my place for dinner. I liked the dish with its savory richness. Today, I wouldn’t use tuna because of my mostly vegetarianism, but also because of over fishing of the species combined with the use of slave labor to harvest it in waters off Asia.
There is a utopian impulse in American society in which groups of people separate from social traditions and strike out anew. In that sense, a cook has a choice. Should we learn and perpetuate cooking traditions in our kitchen or improvise new meal solutions against a perceived and newly created blank slate? My choice is to make a cuisine from an ecology of food I identified and help create that borrows from everywhere to create new dishes. I may write a cook book to record the journey, but have little interest in creating traditions. A tasty, nutritious meal is enough.
In retirement for 16 months, I’ve found we have become increasingly isolated from society. Even though we rarely use the television set, I now understand the archetypal image of retired man yelling at the TV from a chair. It is harder than imagined to get out of the house for anything other than my part time jobs. The new paradigm has been good for our marriage and provides a natural break for utopian culinary endeavors.
The meal began with weighing out a pound of small potatoes from my barter arrangement with Farmer Kate. When I brought them to the kitchen, I didn’t know what I would do with them.
While looking through the weedy, end of season garden, I found three large Galine eggplants behind the foliage. I picked them and brought them inside.
On the counter was a good supply of garlic and cherry tomatoes. In the ice box was half a Vidalia onion, the last of the fresh garden celery, part of a bell pepper, some leftover black beans, and jars of thick tomato juice.
There was a meal in these ingredients.
After cleaning and trimming the potatoes I put them in a large sauce pan and covered them with tomato juice. My tomato juice is very thick due to a process I developed to use excess tomato water while canning. I brought the mixture to a boil then turned it down to simmer until the potatoes were fork tender.
I cut the eggplant with skin on into large chunks, soaked the pieces in room temperature tap water for 30 minutes, dredged them in flour, then fried them in two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil until browned on all sides.
In the Dutch oven I cooked the onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic in a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil on high heat until tender. The only seasoning used was sea salt.
When the potatoes were done, I dumped the whole pan into the Dutch Oven, added the black beans and some cherry tomatoes, then added the eggplant. I scraped the bottom of the frying pan into the Dutch oven with a spatula to get all the flour and oil mixture and thicken the sauce.
I turned the heat to medium low and warmed until everything was evenly heated and the sauce thickened.
In retrospect, I could have added some frozen okra and seasoned it with red or green hot peppers. We keep the spicy dial turned to low in shared meals. It made four servings and was satisfying.
Humans consume only so many vegetables. 20 percent of an estimated 20,000 species of edible plants represent 90 percent of our food. Others may have made dishes similar to this potato eggplant stew. Each ingredient, each technique and each vegetable has its own detailed and unique history. There are a finite number of ways to pull them together into a tasty, nutritious dish. Improvisational cooking need not be unique, just as utopian living works to meet the same human needs as the rest of society. As a seasoned home cook, I no longer have to reinvent things. At the same time, improvising based on available ingredients renews our interest in cuisine.
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