Food n Love

"Good food ends with good talk." -Geoffrey Neighbor


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Missing My Grandmother’s Cooking

Right about now I really miss my grandmother’s cooking.  The last meal she cooked for the family was Thanksgiving dinner & let me tell you, for a 95 year old woman, she threw down in that kitchen!!!  Maybe she somehow knew it would be our last family meal with her, maybe she didn’t, either way, she went all out for us.

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving 2012

You would think that she would want help from the family with all the different types of dishes she whipped up, but if you stepped into HER kitchen you’d better beware of banging pots & flying silverware.  She did everything at twice the cooking speed of a normal person & she didn’t want anyone messing up her flow or getting in her way in that tiny, hot, bungalow farmhouse kitchen.  She might let one of us stir the gravy to keep it from getting lumpy, but otherwise we were expected to just “sit pretty” at the kitchen table & talk with her to keep her company while delicious smells bubbled out of various sized pots on her gas stove top.

Baba was of the generation where everything she prepared was generously seasoned with butter, salt & love for her family.  It didn’t matter if it was breakfast, lunch or dinner – she mixed all three staple ingredients together into the perfect combination of wonderfulness every single time!  This past Thanksgiving she served up turkey with stuffing, gravy, mashed squash, mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms with garlic & onions, green beans, two types of salads plus a lettuce salad, homemade bread, pumpkin pie & coffee……

 

My very favorite, favorite, favorite memory about Baba’s cooking is her coffee.  No one in the world can serve coffee like hers (not even the Dominicans & I dream about the Cafe con Leche I drank in Santo Domingo just about every other night).  She made it in this ancient dented percolator with an egg & of course she would toss a little butter, salt & love into the pot for good measure.  She would then bring the coffee to a scalding boil before pouring it into olive green ‘50‘s style coffee mugs.  Even better than the coffee were all the times when I would sit at the table & talk with her while slowly sipping my drink – to avoid burning my tongue & to enjoy the salty, butter flavors.  If it was just the two of us, I’d ask her all sorts of questions like how did she meet my grandfather or did she like being married or what did she do when she was my age?  The one thing that I always had to beware of was leaving my coffee cup unguarded on her kitchen table.  When I did our conversation would turn into a little something like this:

Me:  Baba, where’s my coffee?

Baba:  I thought you were done with it.

Me:  No! I was still drinking it.

Baba:  Well it was cold & you left it on the table.

Me:  But you know I drink my coffee slowly, it’s so good, I savor it to make it last.

Baba:  I’m not so sure you like it, if you did you’d drink it more quickly.  I can’t believe you like cold coffee.

Me:  I love your coffee both hot & cold.  I wish you’d stop dumping my coffee out.

Baba:  Do you want another cup?

Me: Yes please, thank you.

 

For sure, right about now I really miss my grandmother’s cooking & I could totally go for a cup of her coffee!!!  Treasure the moments & savor the food while they are around, because it can all disappear in a flash.

Coffee & Conversation With My Cousin & Baba

Coffee & Conversation With My Cousin & Baba

Coffee & Conversation with my cousin & Baba

 


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Breakfast at Beth’s

I have this fantasy.  I’m a chic modern version of June Clever & I’m wearing an apron over a cute outfit that is accented with a pair of sexy heels & a black pearl necklace.  (Stop laughing, I can hear you!  The key word is “fantasy”.)  So, I’m in the kitchen cooking a huge breakfast over one of those stainless steal gas stoves – you know, the kind professional chefs use – for my family or any friends who have happened to drop by for the morning.  Of course I’m not slaving away all by myself because my hot, fabulous husband who knows I’m the best wife ever is working right along beside me to make this meal happen.  There’s only one problem with this fantasy. I don’t know how to make breakfast.  Yes, that’s right, I’ve never cooked a full traditional breakfast.  I’ve prepared at least a dozen dinner parties for a dozen people, but never one complete homemade breakfast for even one person.

I decided to solve this problem by inviting one of my favorite people over for a breakfast cooking experiment last week.  I was really excited about it!  Learn how to do something new while doing something nice to show my friend my appreciation for our friendship.  Seemed like a great deal to me.  Hmmm…..what to make?  French toast, turkey bacon, scrambled eggs, strawberries & juice.  It seemed pretty straight forward & easy.  That is until I went to actually prepare breakfast.  Then I realized I was missing a skillet.  What to do now?  I decided the best way around this technical difficulty was to cook the items in stages.  So I pulled out my one frying pan & started to fry up the turkey bacon.  Now I’d never made turkey bacon before & the last time I fried pork bacon was about 10 years back.  I got a little nervous when I discovered  it wasn’t crisping like I imagined it should.  My solution this time was to text my best friend (who happens to be a fantastic cook) & she told me to make sure I cooked it well enough to avoid giving my friend salmonella.  Salmonella???  Good grief, poisoning him was NOT what I had in mind.  I spent the next 20 minutes of my life making sure that bacon was well fried!

By the time my breakfast company arrived, the bacon was done & I was ready to tackle the eggs & French toast.  As you might remember I only own one frying pan & both items needed to be served piping hot.  Time to get creative & make do with what I had.  After beating up 4 eggs with butter, salt, pepper & a dash of Italian seasonings I dumped the mixture into the non-stick bottom pot from my double boiler.  It was around this time my guest politely asked if I knew what I was doing.  Nope, I sure didn’t know what I was doing, but I had ideas!

It had been about 3 years since I’d last made French toast.  That time I had burned it pretty badly because of all the cinnamon I’d dumped into the batter.  Lesson learned.  This time when I prepared it I left the cinnamon out & just mixed 4 eggs, vanilla almond milk, vanilla extract & a drop of coconut extract.  However, it’s practically a sin to not have cinnamon with one’s French toast so I got creative again.  I sifted a mixture of powdered sugar & cinnamon over each piece of toast once it had been toasted to crispy, buttery perfection using Olivio.  (Olivio is a butter spread made with sweet cream, canola oil, olive oil & flaxseed oil & in my humble opinion the combination of oils brings out the flavor of foods in a nice smooth way.  Plus it’s suppose to be healthier than straight up butter.)

Success!!!  My cooking was loved  🙂 The only thing left was one strawberry…..and then that was history too.

 

I also learned two very important things.  One, I NEED a skillet asap.  Two, if I hadn’t tried out my breakfast fantasy on one person, I wouldn’t know I needed a skillet & therefore my future self would be very unprepared when I tried to cook breakfast for my future family without one.  Whew, future crisis averted!