Fast, Cheap and Easy (I Like My Cornbread Like I Like My...)

...Dinner?

I keep hearing insinuations that Keith and I put massive effort into our food all the time, that we eat huge fancy meals every day. I thought I'd set the record straight here! We do eat good, home-cooked food for the most part (though I have to confess a weakness for Annie's Mac & Cheese and Pizza Roma). But it's usually not fancy. You just hear about it when it is, because I'm proud of a special occasion.

Tonight was a far more typical night. We had blackeye peas and cornbread for dinner. Sounds homely, but it was delicious, healthy, and hearty. The trick to a simple frugal meal is to do it right from scratch; it takes maybe an hour of mostly passive time to cook, which admittedly is longer than microwaving something, but it's worth it. These blackeye peas were pretty simple, just simmered in broth with balsamic vinegar and pepper flakes and then topped with a little bit of grated cheddar cheese. The cornbread... well, I'm feeling generous, so I'll share a cornbread recipe that took me years to perfect. Enjoy this cornbread - it's never once let me down.

HONEY CORNBREAD

1 Tbsp canola oil (see note)
1 c cornmeal
1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 c honey
1 c buttermilk (or 1 Tbsp cider vinegar + milk to equal 1 c)
1 egg

Note: If you have a cast-iron skillet, put the oil in it and stick it in the oven to preheat right along with the oven. If you're making this in a regular pan, then omit the oil and understand that the cornbread won't have that nice crispy crust on the bottom.

Preheat the oven (and oiled skillet) to 425 F.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a fork or whisk. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients (I usually just mix them all right there in the measuring cup), beating the egg into the honey and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and give it all a quick stir just to moisten it. Don't overmix! Some lumps are okay. Pour it all into the preheated skillet and bake it for half an hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

See? Not fancy, not hard, just quick and delicious and dirt-cheap. You can't get better than that.

UPDATE 3/18/11: Some friends of mine have gone gluten-free and I tried making this recipe with brown rice flour instead of wheat. Since the cornmeal dominates, the wheat isn't necessary, and I've repeatedly found that it's actually better with rice flour. So if you're not into the gluten thing, no worries, and if you normally eat wheat, try something different and enjoy the surprise!

"I'm from the government..."

Here in Portland, we have the most delicious tap water in the country (and yes, I know Memphis makes a similar claim but when I go home to visit, that stuff tastes like pool water from all the chlorine). It's been proven in study after study to be the cleanest metropolitan water in the USA. This delicious, clean water comes from an open reservoir (see pic) located in a wilderness area with no humans, no cattle, and hence no threat of harmful contamination. The sun's natural UV radiation kills dangerous bacteria, and good minerals flourish in this environment. This system has worked since the reservoir was built in the mid-1800's and continues to work well today.

Enter the government, and its corporate backers.

Now the EPA, at the urging of a multinational corporation called Montgomery Watson Harza Global, Inc., has decreed that our water be buried, filtered, and chemically processed, at a cost of several hundred million dollars. You can read all the background here, but the long and short of it is that we stand to pay three or four times the price for inferior, potentially dangerous water. This isn't a sexy issue like abortion or health insurance so it's not making the news, which means it has quietly built up a momentum that is going to be difficult to stop now. Moreover, the proposed water changes seriously threaten Portland's world-famous independent brewing industry, as you can't make good beer without good water (excellent explanation here).

Coincidentally, when this came to my attention I was in the middle of reading an excellent book with the beautiful title Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal. Written by Joel Salatin, a true prophet of the modern age, this book is not only about farming; it's an indictment of big-government interference and the way it destroys innovation. Call me a conspiracy nut if you will, but we live in a day and age where the rules of commerce have been arranged to favor the large multinationals at the expense of smaller independents. Newcomers can't even get started in many industries, and smaller businesses are pushed out of existence by complex regulations.

In no area is this as problematic as it is with food and water. Our most basic needs are now threatened by an Orwellian "food safety" system that poses an unprecedented risk to actual food safety. Why take the cleanest water in the country and destroy it in the name of safety? Why prosecute Amish farmers under a system supposedly meant to protect consumers from diseases that proliferate in the corporate system, not on independent family farms? Meat and produce from independent farms has been demonstrated time and time again to be cleaner, more nutritious, and safer than anything from the corporate system (to say nothing of its superior flavor). Grass-fed beef has ZERO E. coli in its system; in fact, you can even destroy E. coli in a corn-fed cow by switching her to a grass diet for a mere two weeks before slaughter. But changes like this aren't required or even mentioned by government agencies, because they would cost Con-Agra too much money.

So children die, and innocent vegetables like green onions and spinach wind up contaminated by animal diseases somewhere in their journey through the factory food system. Why does the FDA/USDA respond to what is clearly a corporate-food threat by working harder to make us more dependent on corporate food? And why does the EPA respond to a clean, healthy water system with a mandate to destroy it?

Ronald Reagan (himself a questionable friend to the little guy) once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" We're hearing those words all too often now, and all of us should indeed be terrified.

So much for autumn.

So here it is on the first day of autumn and we're breaking yet another temperature record here in Portland with a high of 97. Sigh.

At least that means it's warm sunny weather for all our outdoorsyness today. We had a trillion errands and now I've got to do some gardening this afternoon, and finish painting our chicken coop. (Shyeah. Like I'll ever be done with this chicken coop project. Doubtful!)

The day started with a trip to the vet for my mamakitty, Roxy, who has gained an astonishing amount of weight. For those who are new, back in March we adopted a homeless pregnant kitty who still looked like a kitten herself. On April 4 she birthed six kittens, including a tiny runt who couldn't push past her brothers and sisters to nurse and had to be bottle-fed by us. We kept Roxy, the runt (Fry), and a boy kitten named Davey. Roxy lost all her babyweight quickly and reverted to a very small, svelte 7.5 pounds. Since weaning her kittens, being spayed, and moving to the house, she has ballooned to almost 10 pounds and has a rather alarming matronly look about her. So as of today, she's on a diet, poor gal. And Davey has to be on probiotics, and Fry still needs extra food, so it looks like we're going to have to start feeding all three of our cats separately. You know, just because life isn't complex or demanding enough around here.

And speaking of feeding animals, our hens have outgrown their little chick feeders and they keep knocking them over. We now need to install large hanging feeders on the underside of the coop, so we went to the Urban Farm Store (my favorite store!) and bought them. I can't figure out how to get the lid on the feeder, because I'm an idiot, and the water regulator isn't working so it just overflows gallons of water all over the chicken run. Our afternoon agenda now demands that we resolve this problem.

We also bought some asparagus starts at the UFS so I can start our asparagus patch in the front yard. Yay! We won't be able to harvest any asparagus until 2011 but it should be worth the wait. And in the meantime, next year, it'll look pretty... and the important thing is that it's another patch of grass GONE in our Quest To Eliminate the Lawn.

Further continuing the quest today, we dropped by the Portland Nursery to spend some of a gift card we got as a housewarming present. We got a handy-dandy little weeding tool and some completely frivolous iris and crocus bulbs - no, we can't eat them, but dammit I want pretty flowers in the spring. And anyway they attract bees. Bees are important, right? *innocent look*

We also got an obscene quantity of garlic to plant, which knowing us is still not going to be enough garlic. We were going for more vegetable starts but we decided to come back later and spend the rest of the gift card once the first raised bed is built. And that's going to have to wait until the next job comes through for both of us as funds are getting tight.

So it's a day of drama and melodrama and hard work. Tonight I really need to put up some pumpkin seed pesto sauce, pumpkin butter, and pumpkin gnocchi. My list of "preserves to can" on the fridge is getting ridiculously long but I haven't gotten around to it for awhile. Maybe when winter comes I'll be able to sleep in once or twice and lounge about reading... but there's no sign of winter today.

Happy New Year 5770!

L'Shana Tova to all the Jews! May we all be inscribed and sealed for a good year.



We celebrated Rosh Ha'Shanah at our house with, what else, dinner. Apples and honey are traditional, as are any sweet foods for a sweet new year. We had roast chicken, cheesy hazelnut-stuffed apples, collard/kohlrabi greens, delicata squash in an herbed glaze, and a homegrown tomato salad. For dessert, we dressed up the apples-dipped-in-honey standby with a lovely little apple tart. I made the pastry, Keith made the filling, and we had a great time making a dessert that was surprisingly low in sugar and flour; as baked desserts go, this one was pretty good for you! Spiced apples in a potato pastry, topped with light sour cream and honey. Mm-mm-mm.

I'm off to get ready for services today... quite late, but oh well. There's a synagogue in town I've been meaning to check out since we moved here. In a new house at the dawn of a new year - what better time?

Flexibility, Serendipity...

A couple days ago, my father sent me a box of goodies from his garden, which is almost entirely hot peppers and experimental sugars. I got some sugar beets, stevia, and a hilarious variety of sugar cane which looks exactly like marijuana and will get me arrested if I try to mail it again. I also got an assortment of hot peppers, including a lovely bright orange habanero and a couple other varieties I didn't know before. I promised to make chile chutney and send some back; Jamie Oliver's got a great recipe for chile chutney and I wanted to try it.

I collected a few ancho chiles from my own garden, which has been prolific in other departments but disappointing in the chile department due to our cool wet weather here. And then I began a day which felt like an "I Love Lucy" episode, but which turned out to create one of those delightful little kitchen accidents that result in something better than what I was going for in the first place.

Step one was light the grill to roast the peppers. Cook's Confession: I totally fail at charcoal grills. I love the flavor, but I was just never taught the fine art of charcoal grilling; I think it's a guy thing. Keith wasn't home so I gave it my best shot, but half a bottle of lighter fluid, one singed eyebrow, and a pile of dead coals from a gust of wind later, I gave up and retreated inside. I roasted my hot peppers in my cast-iron skillet on the stovetop.

I still intended chile chutney, but I can never follow a recipe exactly; I have to mess with everything. On this occasion I remembered some tomatoes from my garden that were peaking. I skinned them, threw them in the food processor with the chiles, and got... liquid. Right. Because tomatoes are juicy, especially when they've just been blanched and skinned. Derrr.

By this point I was already caramelizing onions with rosemary, cinnamon, smoked salt, and pepper. I poured in the tomato-chile liquid, along with the balsamic vinegar called for in the chile chutney recipe, and some honey. As it came to a boil I looked at it and realized it would never be chutney. It might, however, be a decent ketchup.

I tasted it. Yes, a pleasantly spicy, slightly sweet balsamic ketchup! I simmered it for awhile, occasionally adding things - too spicy, so a bit of cider vinegar; too bland, so a sprinkling of garlic and paprika and some more cinnamon; not as spicy as it was, so a squirt of sriracha. Finally I got it all balanced, then realized if I made ketchup out of this thin liquid, I might have four ounces of it by the time it cooked down. I wanted enough for me and dad to each have a jar, at least. So then I had another idea - what about jam? After all, the tomato-chile jam was good. So I stirred in a half a packet of pectin and yanked up the heat, boiled the hell out of it for a minute, and canned it.

I got two 8-oz jelly jars full. Once they were cool I checked it out. Basically, I have BBQ sauce, at least in the flavor. It's a very nice BBQ sauce if I may say so! Spicy, sweet, and a bit zingy. It had me reaching for my water glass. I think it'll be great on a grilled cheese but it could also work as a spread on any kind of sandwich.

It's a bit too thick to be called BBQ sauce though. It has a jam consistency. It could be thinned with a little water or apple juice, and then brushed on grilling meat. Or it could be stirred into gravy or another sauce for flavor. It could even be spread onto a steak after cooking. I'm not really sure what to call this odd little product, even though I can think of uses for it. It's a quirky animal that doesn't quite fit in.

Got to say, though. It tastes mighty fine.

Hurray for life's fortuitous accidents. Viva la experimentation!

Grape Jelly: A Photo Essay

As you know, I've been canning like Ma Ingalls this summer. I did a bit last year and I've done a little canning before, but this summer I've been especially busy (considering we're eating it all just as fast as I can can it, which kind of misses the point of canning but whatever). It only started to feel like real old-fashioned canning, though, when we began The Concord Grape Jelly Project. Click on any picture here for a larger version.

There's a house down the street from us, for sale, and as far as we can tell no one's living there. On a recent walk, we noticed a long fence on the property that was completely covered with perfectly ripe Concord grapes. These little grapes are famous for the jelly and juice you get at the store; people tend not to purchase these grapes whole, as they have tough little skins and large, crunchy, acidic seeds. I like to eat them myself, but not many people do. Their flavor is excellent for processing though.

So Keith devoted a couple of days to harvesting and came up with several baskets full of lovely little grapes.



We put on "Firefly" and kicked back to pick and sort all those grapes. The little shrivelly ones, the overripe and underripe, went into one bowl for the chickens (who love them), the vines went into a bag for the compost heap, and the good grapes went into many large bowls (and my tummy).



Next I had to take a potato masher and squish all the grapes up. Would've been fun to pile them up in a tub and stomp them like Italian wine grapes, but I didn't want to mess up my pedicure. About halfway through mashing them, I added about half a cup of water.



The mashed grapes then need to come to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes. This looks kind of nasty, but it makes the most delicious smell - I can't even describe it. It's a sweet, earthy, kind of childish smell. I think it comes from the yeast bloom on the grape skins.



After this I had to strain the hot squished grapes thoroughly through clean pantyhose. I didn't get any pictures of this part, but let me tell you it is damned messy. I did some, Keith did some, and for a couple of days we both had purple hands. The countertops were stained and had to be bleached, and thank goodness I had on a black shirt. The dried solids went into the compost heap, and the strained juice went into many jars. It didn't come out looking like grape juice at all; it was a bright pink color. And it didn't taste like the grape juice you want to drink. It was very acidic, tart in the way that's unappealing to a gal like me who eats limes by themselves, and not at all sweet. The juice had to sit out on the counter overnight.



At this point more solids sank to the bottom, so the juice had to be strained again. Then I poured it all into a pan and turned on the heat. This has to be made one batch at a time or it won't set right. I used four cups of juice per batch and stirred in four cups of sugar (yeah, it needs to be that much to jelly and also to keep it from spoiling; most people use even more) and 2 Tbsp lemon juice just to be safe. I brought it all to a boil...



And here's the cool part, which I couldn't get a good picture of. At the moment that it starts to boil, the bright fuschia color instantaneously turns to dark purple. I have no idea how or why this works but this is what happens. It's amazing, it's incredible, it's alchemy! This is why I love canning.



I have several jars put away already and still more to do; I'm going to try and finish up the rest of it today. The grapes have all been harvested, so there's no more to do once I finish this. It's been a fun project, though I'm now drowning in more grape jelly than I can ever use. But here's the reason I love Portland - there will be a preserve swap at the end of the month, where I can trade my extra jelly jars for lots of other interesting things that other people have made! This way I can fill out our larder without eating too much of one thing or spending any money. I can't wait to see what I can trade for.

In the meantime, I'm happy to report that this jelly tastes excellent with peanut butter. Welch's really just can't compare.

Housewarming!

We woke up to a beautiful day today. It's sunny, and gorgeous right now but going to be hot later; they're predicting a high of 94. (So much for last week, when it was autumn.) It's a great day for a cookout, though! People will be potlucking drinks and/or side dishes, but here's what we're making. I made the cherry-chipotle BBQ sauce myself a little over a week ago and it's delicious, so I'm looking forward to using it.

Chicken Grilled in Cherry-Chipotle BBQ Sauce
Vegetarian "Chicken" Skewers with BBQ Sauce
Grilled Baby Eggplants & Sweet Onions
Spicy Balsamic Bean & Corn Dip
Keith's Semi-Famous Guacamole
Fried Green Tomatoes (from the garden!)
BBQ Beans
Tomato Salad (also from the garden!)
Apple-Kohlrabi Slaw (Kohlslaw?)
Hushpuppies
Homemade Pickles
Fresh-Picked White Grapes

Now that I look at all that, I wonder that maybe we're overdoing it.

...Nah. Too much at a cookout? Ain't no such thing.

If you can't be here, try this recipe for kohlslaw. If you can't find kohlrabi, try jicama or throw in another apple.



APPLE KOHLSLAW
1/3 cup Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cabbage, coarsely shredded
2 apples, cored and shredded
3 carrots, shredded
2 kohlrabi, peeled and shredded
1 small onion, minced

Mix up the dressing in a small bowl and the veggies in a bigger bowl. Pour the dressing over the veggies and combine. Chill for a couple hours until ready to serve.