The Making of a Foodie

Avocado Milkshake

Avocado Milkshake

1 ripe medium avocado

1 cup ice

1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

1/4 to 1/2 cup milk

Scoop the avocado flesh into a blender. Add the remaining ingredients, except the milk, and puree until completely smooth. Slowly, begin to add the milk the the rest of the ingredients, a little bit at a time until you reach the consistency you desire. More milk for a thinner shake, less milk for a thicker shake. The shake tastes better (the buttery avocado flavor becomes more pronounced) if it sits in the fridge for about 10 to 15 minutes. Makes 2 servings.  

Foodie Notes:

Here in the States, many of us do not realize that the creamy avocado can be used as a vehicle for both savory and sweet treats.(It is a fruit, after all.)

Our friends south of the border, in Mexico, have given us the most common use of the avocado in this country with gucamole. A savory dip in which avocado is diced and smooshed with a little salt, lime juice, red onion and tomato.

But in other parts of the world (most of Asia, Vietnam and Brazil, to be exact) the avocado is used in any number of sweet desserts. Custards, puddings, sweet sauces, ice cream and milkshakes are prepared using their soft buttery flesh.

Granted, if you aren't a fan of the flavor of avocados to begin with, you probably won't enjoy a milkshake made from them, but you should at least understand the additional health benefits you are missing by not at least giving this treat a shot.

Where avocados were once avoided because of their fat and calorie content, we now embrace them, knowing the fats, vitamins and minerals they contain are the good kind that can help lower our cholesterol, enhance our vision and help our bodies fight off certain kinds of cancers with the antioxidants they contain.

When Spring has sprung, my body starts craving lighter and greener food stuff, and this always fits the bill. I feed this to my son, Tastie, as it makes me feel like I have gotten something green in him for the day. You can lighten this treat up even further by substituting Agave in place of the sweetened condensed milk, and using skim or almond milk in place of whole milk. (If I have coconut milk, I might even use that in place of the skim or almond milk.) If you want a little brighter flavor add in some lime zest.

It might not be easy being green, but is sure is tasty. Enjoy!

 

 

Turkish Yogurt Cake

Turkish Yogurt Cake Recipe

 

For the cake:

4 large eggs, separated

½ cup superfine sugar

3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 2/3 cups strained Greek-style yogurt

grated zest of 1 washed orange

juice of 1 orange

 

For the optional syrup:

2/3 cup water

1 ¼ cups sugar

1 Tablespoon orange juice

grated zest of 1 orange

1 fresh Rosemary sprig

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar to a thick, pale cream. Beat in the flour, then the yogurt, orange zest and orange juice until it is thoroughly blended.

Whisk the egg whites until still and fold them into the yogurt mixture. Pour this into a round, nonstick baking tin (about 9” in diameter) greased with butter. Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is brown. It will puff up like a soufflé then subside.

Turn out onto a serving plate, and serve warm or cold.

If you are making the syrup, boil the water with the sugar, orange juice, grated orange zest and crushed fresh rosemary sprig for 3-5 minutes. Let cool, then chill in the refrigerator. Serves 6

FOODIE'S NOTES: Chef Alex Pope and I were doing our homework in preparation to open Saffron Street: A Moroccan Bazaar, our latest pop-up restaurant installation called Vagabond. We were reading, cooking and thinking about nothing but Morocco & Turkey.

My Mom had given me the cookbook Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey & Lebanon by Claudia Roden several years ago, and I found myself buried in this cookbook looking for inspiration for our pop-up. Alex and I were concerned that this culinary event look, sound and taste as authentic as we could make it.

As Christmas rolled around, I was still in Vagabond research mode and found myself making more and more dishes from this cookbook, always with my own tweaks to it. I was going to my family’s house for Christmas, and they assigned me dessert to bring for our big Christmas Eve meal. They begged me to bring something light as the meal itself was going to be so rich. I immediately thought of my take on this Turkish Yogurt Cake from Claudia’s cookbook.

Light like a soufflé, and made with high-protein Greek yogurt, this cake was the perfect choice. The recipe calls for a syrup that is suggested to be served on the side. I agree. I found I did not need it, but some may, to take the sweetness up a notch or two. The original recipe calls for lemon zest and lemon juice, I switched it to orange, you could even use blood oranges, and added the rosemary to the simple syrup.

The first night we popped-up with Saffron Street: A Moroccan Bazaar, I had decorated a long table with turquoise blue crinkled silk table cloth and placed a metal bowl with lemons in the center of this table.

Alex walked by and said; “You know that table looks exactly like the cover of that Moroccan cookbook you’ve been reading for the last few months.”

When I went back and looked at the cover, I realized he was right. This cookbook was a major inspiration for me during my Moroccan themed pop-up, and this cake recipe is one of my favorites from my time in Morocco.

Even if you cannot afford to travel to exotic lands, you can always enjoy a taste of a country through cooking the dishes and cuisine of their people.

I will go to Morocco someday, and when I do, I will eat well.

Enjoy!

If loving you is wrong...

Pumpkin Squish Cake

1 can evaporated milk
(1) 29 ounce can of 100% Pumpkin
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice

1 box of yellow cake mix
2 sticks butter

Mix all ingredients together and pour into a greased/sprayed baking dish, 10X13 or so.

Then sprinkle the dry yellow cake mix on top of the pumpkin mixture and melt 2 sticks of butter & pour over the dry cake mix.

Finally, sprinkle 1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans on top.

Bake for 45-55 minutes at 350 degrees.

FOODIE NOTE: I attended my first dinner at the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma back in November of 2010 in Tulsa. It was a cooking class/ dinner taught by Executive Chef Jeff Marlow from the Oaks Country Club.

I found Chef Jeff Marlow to be an extremely personable & passionate Chef who also happens to have been raised in Oklahoma, just like me. He was a good old boy, and I liked him.

His class was all about Holiday Dishes and he prepared some wonderful but very traditional holiday items. Like Turkey...dressing...and a butternut squash bisque that was simply delicious.

But it is when Chef got to dessert that my mouth literally dropped open, and not in a good way. I was shocked at what he made.

With no shame, Chef, proceeded to demonstrate a recipe he knew from his childhood called "Pumpkin Pecan Pie." This was no pie, the recipe read more like a super sweet pumpkin crumble. If such a thing, really existed.

The recipe was made with evaporated milk, eggs, sugar and pumpkin pie from a can (which I distastefully refer to as pumpkin squish, because of the many different types of gourds that are usually found in a can of that stuff and passed off as pumpkin) and yellow cake mix from a box.

In the most public display of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade dessert making I had ever seen, Chef made the pumpkin base of this dessert come together. I cringed when I noticed Chef putting both white & brown sugar into the pumpkin batter. He told the crowd he liked sweet desserts. I hope so, I thought.

But when he poured that pumpkin batter into the pan and started shaking dry yellow cake mix batter on top, then drizzling on melted butter, finally sprinkling it with pecans, I lost my mind. Tell me Paula Deen was this boy's grandmother! How is this dessert even going to work, my mind was screaming.

When he served it to us, Chef had piped on whipped cream to hide the fact that it was just a scoop of pumpkin goo on a plate, I assumed.

Then, I tasted it.

Woooo-wheeee! It was delicious. It was sweet, warm pumpkin goodness. The dry cake mix on top had with the moisture from the pumpkin & fat from the butter cooked into a texture & flavor similar to a St. Louis ooey-gooey, butter cake. It was dense, moist and melt in your mouth buttery lusciousness punctuated by perfectly spiced pumpkin custard that had set like a loose flan in the oven.

When I emailed the Chef the following day to ask for the recipe, I apologized for ever doubting him. One bite of his unpretenious Pumpkin Squish Cake made my small town Oklahoma farm roots come screaming out from behind my thin, city girl veneer in a way that surprised me and truthfully, shook me to my core. Some Foodie I am, loving this .  . .this delicious dessert. Sometimes, you just can't fight it.

Hmmmm. I'll be damned. She is still in there, after all. My precious secret heart...my alter ego...my Prairie Girl...LIVES.

If loving Pumpkin Squish Cake is wrong, people, then I don't want to be right. Just file this one in your recipe box along with your No-Bake Doo Doo cookie recipe. Don't lie, I know you have one in there. We all do. Enjoy!

Chilling Obsession: Ice Cream

Right now, as I type this post, I can hear the ice cream man coming toward my street. I can hear his recorded ragtime music punctuated with little bell clangs from almost three blocks away. When he rounds my corner and comes down my street, I can see that the old-fashioned music is warbling out of the front of the dirtiest white van I've ever seen. It is a van that is covered in faded, ripped and curling stickers promoting a long forgotten menu of items that the ice cream man supposedly at one time had for sale. Most of his frozen treats are made with chemicals to help them keep longer in the freezer, and they are typically full of artificial colors and flavors. Um, bleck.

When the ice cream man stops at my corner, to assist a customer, usually a small child, I shudder. He does not appear in the window in a sparkling white starched uniform and paper hat, but instead, he is wearing an AC/DC concert t-shirt with a sweat ring around the neck and arm holes big enough to see his armpit hair. Who really wants to buy their tasty ice cream treats from that?

Thankfully, I no longer have to deal with the ice cream man, now that I have learned how to make my own homemade ice cream from scratch. You can too. It's easy. I'll show you. 

Making your own ice cream is very chic right now. The wilder the flavors, the more we like it. We put herbs, peppers and spices in our ice cream now. We use different kinds of liquids and mix-in's to give our ice cream unique and different flavors. I celebrate this creativity.  Because I know it will still always come back to vanilla and chocolate (and maybe even strawberry) at the end of the day. Old favorites die hard, but the shiny new flavors are fun to play with right now.

You could blame it on talented Chef Christopher Elbow and his lovely new ice cream shop, Glacé, for creating this new obsession of mine with ice cream flavors as wild as Friday night. Chef Danica Pollard, Pastry Chef at Lidia's, is also a gifted ice cream maker on the dessert scene. What about Pastry Chef Nick Wesemann at The American Restaurant? He has successfully made beer-flavored ice cream absolutely, work. The hottest ice cream I've had to date was made by Executive Chef Alex Pope of the R Bar. His habanero pepper ice cream was sinfully hot. Hurt so good.

But ice cream making is not just something to be left to the professionals, oh no, you too, even without and ice cream maker, can make easy and delicious ice cream. You're imagination is your only limitation to the flavors of ice cream you can choose to make. Last summer, I experimented with "bacon and eggs" ice cream and "dark chocolate and fresh basil" ice cream. Both flavors were absolutely, stunningly, good and put me on the path of ice cream experimentation.

There are basically, three ways, I know of, to make ice cream. The extra long way, the long way and the short way. I will not judge which path you choose to take, I promise. This is about getting you to see how easy it is to make your own, and then as your comfort level progresses you can move on to other, more complicated methods, if you so choose. I would tell you that I have made ice cream using all three recipes now, and I find if each is done correctly, there is very little flavor difference between the methods.

EXTRA LONG WAY TO MAKE ICE CREAM: (You will need an ice cream maker for this.)

This recipe was handed down to me by my great Aunt Dorothy Lowry, who basically made this recipe every year on the Fourth of July for my family growing up in Claremore, OK. We could hear her old rock salt electric ice cream maker cranking away on her front porch before we even got out of the car in those days.

I will tell you this recipe has a bit of controversy to it and a couple of important words of warning for you.

The controversy about this flavor of ice cream is that it was always called vanilla, but the fresh lemon juice that is added to it at the end does give it a hint of lemon, making this ice cream never truly taste like pure vanilla . . .and never truly tastes like lemon either. I suspect the lemon is added at the end to cut the "cooked egg" flavor and aroma that this cream base can take on from being on the stove as long as it takes to cook this base. We always just called it "homemade ice cream", so I'll let you be the judge as to what flavor it truly is. 

The warning for you is that this ice cream requires you to stand in front of the stove and stir it constantly for 1 and a half hours. Seriously, one potty break, and you will scald this mixture to a bitter end. Once you have it on the stove, you have to stand right with it. My wise mother when writing this recipe down from my Great Aunt, actually wrote on the recipe card "get a stool to lean or sit on, you will need it."

The video at the top of this post is me, stirring this ice cream, while making it for my family this year for Fourth of July.

Aunt Dorothy's Homemade Ice Cream Recipe

4 eggs

2 cups of sugar

2 Tablespoons of flour

2 large cans of Milnot Milk

3 quarts of Whole Milk

1-2 lemons squeezed of their juice

2 Tablespoons of vanilla

Beat the eggs in a big kettle or pot. Add the sugar and flour and beat some more. Mix all ingredients well and add the canned milk. Mix that well and add the whole milk.

Cook over Medium heat on stove for 1 1/2 hours (keep stirring or it will burn.)

Take off heat and cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge. Once cold, add the vanilla and lemon juice and mix together completely.

Place in ice cream maker and follow instruction manual for making ice cream.

LONG WAY TO MAKE ICE CREAM: (You will need an ice cream maker for this.)

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of a cook book called Spice Dreams: Flavored ice creams and other frozen treats by Sara Engram and Katie Luber with Nancy Meadows and Kimberly Toqe. This book had some really creative flavor combinations for incorporating spices into your ice creams.

My favorite was one that sounded like a creamy dreamy exotic oasis in India called "Almond Ice Cream with Turmeric, Cardamom and Cloves." I decided to kick it up by adding coconut milk in place of some of the whole milk in the recipe and tossing in a few handfuls of toasted coconut into the base while it was freezing in the machine. I am going to give you their recipe, with my substitutions. 

You are still making a custard base on the stove, but you only have to cook the milk and then temper the eggs with it making this a faster way to make a custard thick enough for ice cream. The previous recipe actually had you cooking all of the ingredient together, slowly and reducing it until it thickened.

Almond Ice Cream with Turmeric, Cardamom, Cloves and Coconut

1 cup of whole milk

1 cup of coconut milk

1/2 cup plus another 1/2 cup of sugar

1 teaspoon ground turmeric (for color)

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon of salt

4 large egg yolks

2 cups whipping cream

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup of toasted slivered almonds

1/2 cup of toasted coconut

Combine the milk (whole and coconut). 1/2 cup of the sugar, the turmeric, cardamom, cloves and salt in a medium heavy saucepan. Scald the milk mixture over medium-high heat, stirring often, for 5 minutes. While the milk is scalding, whisk together the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Add the remaining  1/2 cup of sugar and whisk until the eggs are light and fluffy.

Whisking constantly, add a small amount of the hot milk to the egg mixture. Gradually, whisk the remaining hot milk. Return the custard mixture to the pan and cook over medium low heat, stirring often, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and place in a bowl of ice water to quickly cool the custard. Let the custard cool, stirring often, for 5 minutes.

While the custard is cooling, combine the whipping cream and almond extract in a medium bowl. Stir in the custard mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and press the wrap directly onto the surface of the custard. Refrigerate until completely chilled or 4 hours to overnight. The custard may be stored for 3 days before freezing.

Freeze the chilled custard in an ice cream maker adding the almonds and coconut when suggested by the manufacturer.

SHORT WAY TO MAKE ICE CREAM: (You will need an ice cream maker for this)

This recipe comes to me by my youngest brother who is a fireman for the Tulsa Fire Department. He is also the cutest man you ever laid your eyes on. His work at the fire department has made cooking a new interest for my brother, and I have been enjoying swapping recipes with him and in this case, he has provided me with this recipe.

Firemen get their recipe from family, friends, co-workers and recipe books .  . .just like the rest of us do. My brother swore by this method of making ice cream, which does require an ice cream maker, but DOES NOT require any cooking.

I was highly suspicious of this no-cook ice cream method, until I tried it. It is wonderful and totally works. I could not believe the results. The secret ingredient is that you use JELLO pudding mix as the base flavor for your ice cream. To stack the deck, I chose the weirdest JELLO pudding flavor - Pistachio . . .and ended up with an amazing result. Try it, you'll like it.

Fireman's No-Cook Ice Cream

1 quart Half and Half

1 cup of sugar

2 small boxes of your favorite JELLO pudding flavor (I used Pistachio)

3 quarts of Whole Milk

1/2 cup of chopped, salted pistachios (omit if you choose another flavor of pudding)

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until very well blended.

Making sure all of the pudding mix and sugar have been stirred together and dissolved as best as you can.

Chill the base until completely cold.

Add to ice cream maker and make according to the directions.

ANOTHER SHORT WAY TO MAKE ICE CREAM: (Requires NO ice cream maker . . .)

As promised there is one other method that does not require you own an ice cream maker of any kind. It is a recipe from the Tulsa World food writer, Natalie Mikles, and it is a winner. I would suggest you try the Butter Pecan flavor, first.

Now, you, can be your own pusherman, I mean, ice cream man. It will have you singing like Van Halen: "I'm your ice cream man, stop me when I'm passin' by . . .they say all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy."

Download Aunt Dot's Ice Cream

Bread Making for Non-Bakers

Almost No-Knead Bread from Cook’s Illustrated January-February 2008

 A note from my Aunt Becky: You bake this bread in a 6- to 8-quart cast-iron Dutch oven. This recipe is for an enameled Dutch oven (an enameled Dutch oven has a color on the outside). I use a Lodge Dutch oven, which is relatively inexpensive, but doesn’t have the colored enamel on the outside. It’s the same color as a cast-iron skillet. The Lodge Dutch oven gets hotter because it’s all dark, so I lower the baking temperature. I’ll put both temps in the recipe, just in case.

 From the Cook’s Illustrated recipe with a little editing from my Aunt Becky:

 An enameled cast-iron Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid yields best results, but the recipe also works in a regular cast-iron Dutch oven or heavy stockpot. Use a mild-flavored lager, such as Budweiser, Miller, or Coors. [It’s the yeast in the beer, not the fizz, and a mild lager doesn’t flavor the bread. You can save the remaining beer for another loaf. It’s okay if it’s flat.] The bread is best eaten the day it is baked, but can be wrapped in aluminum foil and stored in a cool dry place for up to two days.

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting work surface

¼ teaspoon instant (quick-acting) yeast

1½ teaspoons table salt

¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons water at room temperature

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons mild-flavored lager

1 tablespoon white vinegar

Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in large bowl. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Use a wooden spoon and stir/fold mixture until shaggy ball forms. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours. [Save the plastic wrap because you’ll use it again.]

Tear off an 18-inch long piece of 12-inch wide parchment and spray it with cooking spray. Put the parchment inside a 10-inch skillet. Transfer dough to a floured work surface and knead 10 to 15 times [I usually knead it a bit more than that, but I enjoy kneading bread dough]. Shape dough into a ball and place the dough (seam-side down) on the parchment in the skillet. Spray the surface of the dough with cooking spray. Cover the dough loosely with the piece of plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature until dough has approximately doubled in size, about 2 hours. Dust the top of the dough with flour and use kitchen scissors or a sharp knife and cut a slit across the top of the dough.

About 30 minutes before you want to bake the bread, adjust the oven rack to the lowest position, place the Dutch oven, with the lid on, in the middle of the lowest rack, and turn on the oven to 500 degrees for an enameled Dutch oven OR 425 degrees for a plain Dutch oven.

After the Dutch oven has been in the oven for 30 minutes, carefully remove the hot Dutch oven from the oven. Take off the lid. Lift the dough by picking up the parchment and lower the whole thing into the hot Dutch oven. Put the lid back on, letting the excess parchment hang out. Put the Dutch oven back into the oven and reduce the heat to 425 degrees for an enameled Dutch oven or 400 degrees for a plain Dutch oven. Bake, with the lid on, for about 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake until the top of the loaf is a deep brown. Remove the bread from the Dutch oven and peel off the parchment (watch out for the steam). Let cool on a wire rack. [We usually can’t make it to the “cool” stage because this bread is so good warm out of the oven with butter on it.]

FOODIE NOTES: I am not a baker, but I love bread.

This is a blessing, and a curse. It's a blessing because my physique could do without the rush of white flour carbs crashing, like a wrecking ball, through my carefully maintained metabolism, which it certainly would be if I knew how to make really great bread. 

It's a curse, because there is nothing better in the world than fresh baked bread, hot from the oven. Especially during the Fall months. The smell, the taste and the texture of bread when you make it and eat it are comforting to your core. Bread gives you a sense of familiarity in a way that no other food group can really match. Bread calls you home.

I am not a baker, not because I do not have an interest in being one. I do have a great interest in learning how to bake. The truth is, I am not a baker, because I am not someone who cooks with the precision required to bake. I cook with intention and passion, but not precision. I know how to cook something by looking at it. I know what is in a dish by tasting it. I take a pinch of this and that, and toss it in there. If I have some of those, they go in the pot too. I know how to cook using my eyes, ears and nose. I am a rough and rustic home-cook. And as Julia Child put it, "I am fearless."

I make a mess when I cook, and I don't care. I once made an entire leg of pork for our extended family one Christmas, and it was only when I placed it in the oven, I realized it was so big I could not close the oven door. I have been known to snap during first-time tried culinary maneuvers. Do not mention to my family the night I attempted to make Chinese Pork Buns at my house. Shhh-shh, just don't. It was ugly. Maybe I was on my period, who remembers . . .my family jokes that I could never repeat the same dish twice because of my tweaking and substitutions.  It's kinda true. I just never really want to eat the same dish the same exact way twice.

There are many reasons we refer to bread as the Staff of Life in our society:
Bread is simple. It takes only 5 or 6 very basic ingredients to make good bread.
Bread is inexpensive. These basic ingredients cost less than $1 to make 1 loaf of bread at home.
Bread is versatile. It can be found playing major roles on our tables at breakfast, lunch and dinner as a start to the meal all the way through to dessert. Ever had incredible bread pudding? I rest my case.
Bread is biblical. Bread is used in parts of our Christian religious traditions. During Communion, bread is used to symbolize the body of Christ. In the Jewish religion, Matzah or unleavened bread is eaten during Passover and Hallah is eaten on Shabbat. Some say the bible describes "manna from heaven" in bread-like terms.
Bread is cultural. Some form of starch is used in almost every culture's food traditions, whether it is made from wheat, corn, rice or even tapioca flour.
Bread is political. It is what we use to symbolize the desire to make peace with our enemies, by breaking bread with them.
Bread is traditional. Tell me what Thanksgiving looks like without hot buttered rolls on the table? How about your first sandwich? Remember how good your first peanut butter & jelly sandwich tasted on white Wonder bread? Did you make one for your kids when they got old enough?

I was talking to my Aunt Becky about the fact that I was not a baker. She told me she found this recipe in Cooks Illustrated that was a simple "no-knead" bread recipe that she had tried and it worked beautifully. When she sent it to me, I pooh-poohed it for a couple of days because it seems so long and complicated.

I was lucky enough to watch Camille, Chef Jonathan's wife, and right hand at the Justus Drugstore make her world famous bread one day. She makes hers this exact same way, using cast iron Lodge pots in the oven. When I realized that I could make bread like Camille does at Justus Drugstore, I ran to the store to get yeast immediately. This I had to see for myself. The picture above is of my finished product. It was easy, perfect and absolutely wonderful with a little butter dunked into a hot cup of coffee. Eatie took the rest to work, and it was gobbled up before lunch with high praise coming from his team.

Guess what? I can now officially call myself a baker, and if you try this recipe, you can call yourself one too. Enjoy!

Poblano Cream Soup

Poblano Cream Soup

4-5 Poblano Peppers chopped (roasted over fire, until the skin blisters is removed then de-seed & chop.)
1 Yellow onion chopped
1 Celery Root Ball, peeled and chopped
1 large or 5 small potatoes peeled and chopped
1 bunch of cilantro chopped
1/2 cup of basil chopped
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 Beef Soup Bone (optional, gives the soup more flavor and fat.)
Water or Beef or Chicken stock
1/2 cup wine or cooking sherry
1/2 cup to a cup of heavy cream or milk
salt & pepper to taste

Garnish with: shredded cheddar cheese, tortilla chips, bacon bits, sour cream, salsa, shredded chicken, beef or pork or chopped cilantro.

ROASTING THE PEPPERS: First, to intensify the flavor of the peppers for this soup, it is important to roast them over open fire on your grill or gas stove. Simply wash the peppers, then set them directly on the grill or fire. You will see, hear and smell the skin burning on the pepper. Blister the peppers until the skin is black all over, equally. Once the entire pepper is nice and charred, then stick them in a paper sack or plastic ziploc bag and close the bag. The steam from the hot peppers will help make your job of removing the skin even easier. The longer you leave it, the better. Then once entirely cool, remove the peppers from the bag and cut off the top of the pepper and the stem. If you are lucky, a large part of the seeds and veins of the pepper will come out when you pull the top away. If not, simply slice the pepper open down one side and lay it flat on your cutting board. Scrape the seeds and veins inside the pepper with a knife or spoon. Remove and discard any seeds. Then flip the pepper over on your cutting board and with a sharp knife gently scrape away just the blistered layer of charred skin, revealing the soft mossy green pepper underneath. Chop the pepper into pieces.

Take a soup pot and fill it with 6-8 cups of water or chicken or beef stock or a combination of both. Add the soup bones all of the rest of the chopped vegetables and herbs and the sherry or wine. Season with salt and pepper to taste and bring all ingredients to a boil. Boil until the potatoes are tender and the liquid in the pot has reduced almost in half. This just intensifies the flavors of the soup.

Take your blender or food processor and scoop out all vegetables and herbs from the pot into the food processor. You may need to do this in batches. Puree all vegetables together, begin to add back in a little (maybe a 1/4 of a cup) of the soup broth for flavor and to loosen it a little. Not too much, because you still need to add the cream or milk which will also loosen the soup.

Final step add 1/2 cup of cream or milk to the soup in the processor or blender and taste. If it needs more seasoning or salt, add it. If it is still too thick, more milk or broth. If it is too runny add more vegetables from your stock pot or return it to the stove to cook it down a bit more. It should be creamy, but not watery or runny soup. I like it thicker.

Top with shredded cheddar cheese and corn tortilla chips etc. and serve.

FOODIE NOTE: I am absolutely lousy with Poblano peppers this time of year. We plant one little plant in our herb garden and by August we are a hot pepper family. I have roasted and stuffed them with ground beef, rice and cheese for dinner and I have chopped them into sauces and salsa's for a smokey hot kick . . .but I still have a bunch of them on hand.

That's when you need a friend who has a green thumb and who also happens to be a great cook. I met Rebecca Walker-Garoutte through her husband, Jeff Garoutte who happens to work with my husband at Propaganda 3.

Rebecca is in charge of the Greenhouse at JCCC which grows plants, vegetables and herbs that the culinary program uses in their dishes. Her and her husband came to our July 4th pool party this year and she brought a stunner of a dish: "Green Tomato Salsa". It was full of green tomatoes, tomatillos, fresh hot peppers and herbs and was fantastic with chips.

I just saw her this week at the T-bones game, where my husband, Eatie, has won the use of a suite in an auction. He invited his whole office and several of Tastie's friends and parents to join us at the game.

We were comparing notes on tomatoes this year and I mentioned to her my poblano pepper problem. She told me she made this Poblano Cream Soup for her parents from a wagon-load full of produce left over from the greenhouse and that it turned out delicious.

It would have never occurred to me to make a soup out of poblano peppers, but it sounded tasty. The great part about a recipe like this is you can clean out your produce drawer and it will still taste amazing every time. No matter what vegetables you have on hand, as long as you have poblano's and potatoes you can't go wrong.

I made this soup this week, and it is so good I have had it everyday for at least 3 days straight. It is mild with a touch of smokey heat in the background. It's like the best southwestern soup you have ever tasted.

When I talk to people about joining a community supported agriculture group or CSA to get their veggies and/or meat from, many times I hear: "I am just never sure what to do with some of the things I get and so it goes bad and I feel like I am throwing my money away."

If you aren't into the "Iron-Chef-secret-ingredient" of it all, like we are at my house, then all you have to remember is this: when you have exhausted your creativity and talent, and your veggie drawer is about to go bad . . .there is only one thing left to do . . . make soup.  Enjoy!

Hot Borscht

 
6 small to medium beets, peeled, and cut into 1" pieces
4 potatoes, peeled, and cut into 1" pieces
5 whole carrots, peeled and cut into coins
1 yellow onion, diced
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped fine
1 32 oz. box of chicken broth
1 cup of wine or cooking sherry
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Herbes de Provence fresh herb bundle or 3 Tablespoons of dried herb mix
Salt and pepper to taste
Small container of Greek yogurt to top the soup with
Dried Dill to sprinkle on top of yogurt for garnish and flavor

Plug in crock pot and set it to high. (This is a perfect fix-it and forget it meal.) Peel and chop all vegetables and toss it into the crock pot, along with all the liquids and herbs. The liquid should cover all the veggies you cut, if it doesn't add water until it does.

(When peeling beets, be aware the beet juice will stain your hands purple. Wash them immediately after peeling with hot water and soap or wear gloves while peeling.)

Put the lid on the crock pot, leave it on high and cook for at least 4 hours. Check the tenderness of your beets after 4 hours, if it needs more time, cook it longer.

When beets are tender and can be stabbed with a fork, then ladle heaping spoonfuls into your bowl and top with a dollop of Greek yogurt and add a sprinkle of dill on top.

Enjoy.

FOODIE NOTE: Every year in January I go to San Francisco to eat and drink my way through my wish list of restaurants. I never get them all crossed off my list, but I really have had some great meals in this fine city and always look forward to returning.

Last year, I made the pilgrimage to the "mothership" of eating local and dined at Chez Panisse Cafe upstairs. I was expecting of course, a really terrific local meal made with exactly what was perfectly in season in January. But I was unprepared for how simple and rustic the food would look and taste. No fancy French sauces, no gelees or frozen balls of stuff . . .just a simple meal you might have in someone's home at a dinner party, only done with the finest and freshest ingredients. It was eye-opening and educational and delicious. I walked out and bought my first cookbook with Alice Waters name on it.

One of the things I enjoyed most of that meal was a type of hot borscht vegetarian style soup. Here's a photo I snapped of it at Chez P. I always thought of borscht as a cold beet soup. Turns out many Eastern and Central European countries claim borscht as a national dish or at least a staple dish in their diet. There are hot and cold versions of this soup. There are ones loaded with meats and vegetables . . .there are even some without beets entirely . . .I can't image calling something without beets - borscht.

The little touch of red wine vinegar and wine really makes this a sweet and sour tasting soup, which is just what sweet vegetables like beets and carrots need to make this a most complex and flavorful soup.

I made this a couple of days ago when the snow hit and it was so unbearably cold. When I am wearing my fur hat just to dash out to get the newspaper or the mail you know it is bone-chillingly cold. I had some beets and potatoes and wanted something warm and filling. This was the perfect solution. I served it with a green salad and a homemade salad dressing made from the left over Greek yogurt and a single, lonely fresh lemon I had in the bottom of my vegetable drawer, some crusty bread and butter and a glass of your favorite red grape and you are ready to light a fire in the fireplace and dig in. Which is exactly what I did the night I made this delicious dish.

Bundle up, stay warm and eat your beets!

Halloween Pumpkins

I have been on the road to Tulsa frequently these last few weeks leading up to the election. My best girlfriend from college, Georgianna Oliver, is running for Congress there, and I am a part of her campaign team. The week of Halloween was a crucial and busy one for the campaign, and I flew in for a few days, early in the week, but explained that I needed to be back in KC to take my son, Dominic, trick-or-treating. (See him here as Commander Cody from Stars Wars, the Clone Wars.) So I left on Wednesday last week, and I promised to be back in Tulsa by the Sunday before the election.

I love Halloween. It's always been my favorite holiday as long as I can remember. I love dressing up, costume parties and candy, loads and loads of candy.

As an adult, I find myself skipping the dress-up part, because honestly, if I want to wear fishnet hose to work, I can. There is no one stopping me from dressing up to suit my own wildest fantasies. I no longer need to use Halloween as a day to make a daring fashion statement or wear something I would not normally have the guts to wear. I don't need to wear a costume, I am a sexy witch . . .naturally.

My food cravings have also shifted, away from the buckets of Halloween candies to a more natural, but equally interesting sweet treat . . .pumpkins. Not just any pumpkins but local pumpkin pie pumpkins which I found on sale at my local Hen House Market. They are much sweeter and smaller in size than the ginormous ones that we use to carve.

It was the first thing my son said when I walked through the door from Tulsa - "Oh good, you are back, just in time for us to find and carve our Halloween pumpkin." See, traditionally, Halloween Eve is the night our pumpkin gets carved. I learned my lesson the hard way . . .a pumpkin carved too early seems to decay faster and when placed in a forgotten formal dining room window, by the time you smell the rotting flesh it is too late and too bad. Dead pumpkins are not happy pumpkins.

So in keeping with tradition, I went on Halloween Eve to the grocery store to pick out our pumpkin, and that's when I spotted the cute little pumpkin pie pumpkins. I bought three little guys, not really sure how I would use them and brought them home.

Then I bought one, really big one, that with the help of a pumpkin carving kit, I was able to transform into this haunted castle you see here. Not bad, for a tired Mom, at the end of a long day. My son slept on the couch while I dutifully scraped flesh, transferred the design and eventually carved it myself. Girl Power.

I ended up making Halloween Eve all about pumpkins, as I carefully spent my afternoon roasting all three little pumpkin pie pumpkins in the oven with a little olive oil on them, then carefully scraped the flesh out of the skin, which, once fully cooked, removed quite easily. Then I used two pumpkins to make pumpkin pies from scratch (I'll admit it, the pie crust is store bought. I don't do crust, I just suck at it, and besides I don't really like to eat the crust, so why bother.) I used the third pumpkin to make a wonderful Brazilian dish called Picadinho na Moranga or Chopped Beef Baked in a Pumpkin.

Finally, I saved all of the pumpkin seeds and roasted them with butter, salt and Buffalo hot sauce. They are really good. I am a sucker for roasted pumpkin seeds this time of year as a snack.

Let me give you the recipe for both the homemade pumpkin pie and Brazilian Beef in Pumpkin recipe, so you can try them before all of the pumpkins fly off the shelf.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

1 small pumpkin pie pumpkin, (split in half and scraped to remove stringy pulp and seeds)

1 cup of sugar

4 eggs

(1 and a half) 12 oz. cans of evaporated milk

A palm-full of your favorite pumpkin pie spices all mixed together. (For precision, assume 1 teaspoon of each of the spices you plan to add. I used Chinese Five Spice for a different, yet similar take . . .traditional recipes call for cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves or just buy ready made pumpkin pie spice.)

Roast the split and cleaned pumpkins in the oven on 350 degrees until the flesh is fork tender and scrapes easily away from the skin of the pumpkin. Usually around 30 to 45 minutes.

Take the scraped flesh from one pumpkin and blend it in the food processor or blender with all of the remaining ingredients. Take care to cool the hot roasted pumpkin down before adding the milk or eggs to avoid cooking them. Blend together until smooth. Mixture will look like liquid, no worries, it will firm up nicely in the oven.

(Make your own pie crust from scratch or poke the Pillsbury Dough Boy in his tummy like I do and use store bought.) Pour pumpkin pie mixture in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then cover the edges of the crust with tin foil to prevent it from burning and turn the oven down to 350 degrees for another 45-60 minutes until firm in the middle and when a toothpick is placed in the center it comes out clean.

I have to say, I have never really loved pumpkin pie. Oh, I would eat a piece on Thanksgiving, because you had to have something traditional to chase down that piece of pecan pie, which is truly my favorite kind of pie in the world. I grew up eating them at holidays, when my great aunt called them Karo pies, after the corn syrup used in them. But this pumpkin pie, made from real, local pumpkins was absolutely delicious and sweet and spicy and a much lighter, smoother consistency than those made with the dark brown pumpkin squish from the can. Did you know canned pumpkin is mostly made with butternut squash and not pumpkin at all? Guys, buy a pumpkin, roast it in your oven, and fall in love with pumpkin pie for the first time. 

Chopped Beef Baked in a Pumpkin (Picadinho na Moranga)

1 small pumpkin pie pumpkin

1 lbs ground beef

1/2 lbs. chorizo sausage

1 onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

finely chopped garlic

Olive oil for sauteing

1 large can of tomato puree

1/4 cup of red wine

2 Tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

1 package of shredded potatoes for hash browns, cooked first

1 can of black beans

2 handfuls of raisins

2 handfuls of green olives

1 bag of shredded mozzarella or cubed cheese of any kind that melts easily

salt and pepper to taste

Cut the top off of your pumpkin and scrape out the pumpkin and seeds to clean it. Season with salt and pepper and roast in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. Drain off any excess liquid that has accumulated in the bottom of the pumpkin.

In a sauted pan place a little bit of olive oil and saute the onions, bell peppers and garlic until translucent, then add the ground beef and chorizo and sauted all of the ingredients together until the meat is fully cooked with no pink showing.

Add the tomato puree, wine, Worcestershire sauce to the meat mixture and simmer. Then when the mixture comes back up to temp. add in the raisins and green olives and simmer for a few minutes.

Finally, add in the cooked hash browns and black beans and simmer to bring all ingredients up to temp and to thicken the mixture. 

Once it has come back up to temp. take the pan over to the pumpkin and begin filling the pumpkin with the meat mixture. Layer the shredded cheese or cubes of cheese with the meat mixture as it goes into the pumpkin.

Place the pumpkin and lid back on the cookie sheet lined with foil and place it back into a 350 degree oven for another 20-30 minutes until the pumpkin flesh is fork tender, but the pumpkin has not collapsed with the ingredients on the sheet.

Remove from oven and place the entire filled pumpkin on the table . Use a serving spoon to scoop out the pumpkin flesh and meat mixture to be eaten together. Serve over white rice, with a green salad and crusty bread. Brazilians would typically serve this dish with Parmesan cheese on the side that you could sprinkle on top.

I think from now on Halloween Eve will include pumpkin carving, and dinner and dessert made from real pumpkins. Enjoy!

October-Feast

It's just been cold enough lately for thoughts to turn to Fall and comforting, cold weather food. Something about October . . . and perhaps the small percentage of German blood I have running through my veins, but this is the month I crave hearty German dishes, soft pretzels and popcorn and of course, the delicious beer that goes along with it. Bring on the carbs!

Not to mention the fall produce - apples and pumpkins always put me in the mood for pie. I am definitely NOT a good pie crust maker, so I usually have to get my pie fix somewhere else made by someone else's hands to really enjoy the experience.

So far this month, true to my pattern, I have managed to find some new places to find and fulfill my October-Feasting, that I thought you might be interested in knowing about as well.

Craving #1: Handmade Sausages
Something about the look and smell of a perfectly grilled handmade sausage really says October to me. Boiled in beer with onions and caraway seeds, then once the insides are fully cooked and juicy, taking the sausages outside to the grill to crisp up the skins or casings to get that perfect snap when you bite into it. Whether it is served sitting on top of a bed of kraut, apples and onions or snuggled into a hearty brat bun with a squeeze of spicy brown mustard, I love to eat them this time of year.

To buy good quality sausages, I usually go to Fritz's Superior Sausage Company at 103rd and State Line or Werner's Fine Sausages on 57th and Johnson Drive. Both have a really excellent selection of various kinds of German sausages. Werner's was introduced to me by my grandmother when I first moved to Kansas City, as they have been making German sausages for over 30 years. Fritz's is a little closer to where I live now, and I have enjoyed their selection of ethnic sausages and always pick up one from the grill outside for my lunch when I stop in to purchase my wurst, the German word for sausage.

I had my biggest sausage surprise of all yesterday, after my son's soccer game. We all decided to go out for a bite to eat and we let my son choose the place. He grabbed his Daddy's iPhone and hit the Urban Spoon utility (which I have come to love as a feature on my phone as well) and with Magic 8 Ball accuracy we were pointed towards Barley's Brewhaus & Restaurant in Shawnee, KS on Midland Drive.

My son was very excited to be going to this unknown place, but my husband and I were a little less enthusiastic. Our memories of this place were neutral, not bad, but not really good either in terms of the food. It was brew pub food. Boy, were we in for a surprise when I spotted this little note printed on the menu that said "Sausages made fresh daily." What? I thought, no way. We called the waitress over and asked her about it, and she confirmed that "Yes, Lorenzo has been making them from a family recipe by hand, since the day they opened the place." That was it, my husband ordered the Bratwurst sandwich and I got the Kielbasa sausage on grilled sauerkraut with sweet herb butter on the side and cole slaw. Fantastic sausage, both of our sausages were indeed handmade and smoked by the smoker in the back of the place. The sauerkraut with herb butter was delicious and even the cole slaw appeared to be house-made with a little sweetness to it.

I was pleasantly surprised and will be going back to Barley's for the sausage. Lorenzo, dude, keep up the good work.

To make really good sausage is a skill (much like making good pie crust) . . .trust me, after eating my share of sausages as a BBQ judge at the American Royal Barbecue Competition last weekend, I do know there is such a thing as really awful handmade sausage. I also know there are several people in that competition who are very talented at it.    

Being a BBQ judge for the first time really opened my eyes and my palate to what different people enjoy in a sausage and all of the different variations there are out there. Some of them being quite excellent and unusual, and some of them being just plain bad. I was judging the amateur competition, so it was my job to eat and judge the meat turned in from all of those tents parked outside the Royal. 

But as evidenced here, I did take an oath "to judge the meat with all fairness, to the best of my ability and palate, until death do us part, with liberty and justice for all. Amen." (Well, the actual pledge that we had to take went something close to that, perhaps not exactly, but you get the drift.)

Walking in and out of the judging on both Saturday and Sunday, I realized that the American Royal experience at the tent level is really just one big frat party, with 30-something year old men with their ball caps on backwards, drinking too much beer, playing with rather large fires and eating way too much meat. I think all that sun and fun stirs up their testosterone in an unpleasant and rather tribal way. Let's just say, it is not safe for a lady to wander the tents of the Royal alone. I never feared for my physical safety, but the comments were enough to steer me out of the campgrounds and back to my car quicker than I anticipated. There are only so many, "Hey baby, I'll be back to pick you up later." Mr. Microphone comments one girl can take from the Karaoke machine left over from the night before. Seriously, where is Brutus, my bodyguard, when I really need him? All I wanted to do was find the serious boys that wanted to talk some 'Que with me. Geesh!

Craving #2: Bierocks

Okay, I honestly had never even heard of German Bierocks until a few days ago when I stopped into You Say Tomato for lunch on Friday and decided to try their Veggie Bierock with house-made Tzatziki sauce. A traditional bierock is a pastry that is filled with meat, potato and cabbage (also available at You Say Tomato) and then baked into a small pocket of bread or pastry until golden brown. The origins are thought to be German or Russian - they are also thought to be the same thing as a Runza and a cousin to the Pierogi.

This was what threw me for a loop when I went to read about them, apparently they are still made and known mostly in Kansas, North Dakota and Northern Oklahoma. Really? Being from Northern Oklahoma and now living in Kansas, I can assure you I had never heard of Bierocks until Friday. 

The Veggie Bierock (pronounced "Beer Rocks") at You Say Tomato was filled with curried lentils, raisins, and chunks of potatoes all wrapped in a crunchy on the top, but chewy on the bottom pocket of dough. The spice from the curry needed the cooling that their house-made Tzatziki provided. Mine needed a little salt and I would have doused my with Tabasco to provide a little additional heat, but other than that it was really a tasty new treat.

Craving #3: Pretzels

I love soft pretzels. I have always been a freak for bread of any kind, which is why soft, salty pretzels are a definite weakness for me. I love the ones they sell at the mall with their cloying fresh baked bread and movie popcorn butter smell, and I love the ones I make at home.

Yes, you heard me, I found a great recipe to make these little babies at home. The recipe is very simple to make. It was torn out of my August 2006 Tastebud Magazine and I make it every October without fail. It took a few times to get the recipe just right, and the brown color is not always as even as those you find at the mall, but bite into them and they are the real deal. You can doctor this recipe up a million ways to make different flavored pretzels, but I like mine plain and simple.

Easy Pretzel Recipe

1 package of active dry yeast, add to that 1/8 cup warm water (105 degrees)

1 1/3 cup warm water

1/3 cup brown sugar

5 cups of flour

Box of Baking Soda

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Dissolve the yeast in 1/8 cup warm water. Stir in remaining warm water, brown sugar and flour. Beat until smooth by hand or electric mixer. Knead dough until smooth and elastic.

In a medium saucepan, measure 2 Tablespoons of baking soda to each cup of water you place in the saucepan to boil the pretzels in. Place enough water to fill the saucepan. Bring soda and water to a boil on the stove.

Tear off a chunk of the pretzel dough and roll it into a pencil shape. Pick it up by both ends and cross to form bunny ears, then twist the ends and pull them back to rest on the loop. Place the twisted pretzels in the water for 15 seconds, until the pretzel dough is golden or yellow in color. Remove pretzel from boiling water and place onto a salted cookie sheet.

Salt the top of the pretzel with course salt. Bake for 8-10 minutes until the pretzel is golden brown.

Craving #4: Kettle Corn

I think my love for popcorn around this time of year started when I first moved to Kansas City, as I am not a big popcorn fan on my own. But every year around this time, my Grandmother, who was born and raised in Kansas City, would always buy me a large tin of our own local Velvet Creme flavored popcorn. I can remember watching the beginning of every new Fall Season of TV with a large tin of this tasty treat sitting next to me on my couch compliments of Grandma Betty. My favorite was the cinnamon flavored popcorn or you couldn't beat the good old cheese flavored popcorn. 

Now, I am not sure if I would call the Velvet Creme flavored popcorns, Kettle Corn or not. To me the Velvet Cream variety, would be considered more Carmel Corn than Kettle Corn. In my mind Kettle Corn is something else all together, although just as tasty and delicious. Crunchy, corny, sweet and salty this combination is what makes Kettle Corn worth eating in my opinion. 

I used to only be able to find fresh delicious Kettle Corn at fairs and festivals around town, until I recently spotted this cute little log cabin shaped trailer holding court in the back of the Ward Parkway Shopping Center making and selling fresh Kettle Corn, until the weather forces them to close for the season.

They call their place Cravin' Haven Hillbilly Kettle Korn, and they make and sell their delicious stuff in three sizes of bags for you to take home with you.

I stopped by to meet the owners recently, a lovely husband and wife team who have had their Kettle Corn truck on the fair and festival circuit for many years. However, due to health issues, they needed to stay put this season, so lucky for us, they took their trailer with the permission of the nice folks at Ward Parkway Shopping Center and have parked it in the back of the main parking lot selling their delicious Kettle Corn to anyone who stops by.

They are ready to sell until the end of the year, as their Kettle Corn makes wonderful holiday gifts, hostess gifts or just to have on hand when company comes to your house. Provided you can keep your hands off of it. No worries, if you can't, they will happily make more.

The slogan they used to use to call people to their booth when they would do fairs across the country went something like this: 

Cravin' Haven Hillbilly Kettle Korn where:

Tryin' leads to Likin'

Likin' leads to Lovin'

Lovin' leads to Cravin'

Cravin' leads to Havin'

Havin' leads to Haven

Cravin' Haven Kettle Corn, that is.

Stop by to see them and tell them Foodie sent you . . .

Cravin', I mean Craving #5: Homemade Pie

With many places in Kansas City to get great pie, (my personal favorite is The Pie Lady in downtown Lenexa, KS)  I did not expect to have to cross state lines this month to enjoy the best pie I have had all season.

But it is getting closer and closer to Election Day, and so my trips back home to Tulsa to support my best girlfriend running for US Congress, Georgianna Oliver, are getting more important and more frequent. 

Our days are spent on the phone fundraising, and our evenings are spent going to various local functions to meet the voters all across District 1. She is coming into this race as an unknown and is having to introduce herself to the voters in District 1 via their television screens through expensive television commercials and by attending these local events to meet them one on one.

The fundraising helps to pay for the television commercials and the events keep her shaking every hand she can touch with her campaign. It is a grueling schedule, but one that she has taken to with the passion of someone who really believes she can make a difference.

(And a lot of help at home from her husband Jack, who puts her signs all over Tulsa all day, and at night is the official dinner-fixer, homework advisor and bed-time ruler for their eight year old adopted son, Teddy Oliver. Now, that is teamwork.)

One of the last trips to Oklahoma, I had the pleasure of going with my friend, the candidate, to Coweta, OK located in Wagner County. Georgianna had been invited to come and meet the crowd gathered at the Disabled American Veteran's Hall for a good old-fashioned pie auction.

We were running a little late due to the never-ending construction in Tulsa, but arrived just in time for her to take the microphone before they started their pie-auction fundraiser to introduce herself to the crowd and tell them how hungry she was for some homemade pie. 

Just as she said that, I realized what a pie auction was . . .table after table, filled with delicious homemade pies made by the lovely ladies who support the Disabled American Veteran's. Every single pie was made from scratch and with love by someone there.

When Georgianna was done addressing the group, I turned to her and said: "What happens now?" She said: "Now we watch to see which pie we are going to buy to take home to my family for dessert tonight." She whispered that her husband liked nuts, so we should bring him home something with nuts.

Awesome! Foodie was officially going pie shopping for the Candidate, and after the first couple of pies were literally auctioned off to the crowd . . .it hit me, most of these pies were seasonal, made with the last of the summer fruit and using some of the new fall fruit. Homemade pie crust and fresh local fruit fillings were hand-picked and baked in these pies. I turned to ask the candidate if I could borrow her bidding paddle, a pie was definitely going home with me that night.

There were pies that the candidate had made in her honor by local Veteran's ladies that were auctioned off - A mile high Coconut Cream pie, a Banana Cream pie and this rich Chocolate Chip and Coconut pie were all those that were made in Georgianna's honor. It was fun to watch as the local Veteran's and their supporters fight over the pies that were their favorite.

For Georgianna's husband, Jack the nut-lover, we ended up with a still warm in the pan, locally picked, Pecan pie and a bag of Pecan brittle. Georgianna popped open the bag of brittle and offered me a taste. It was not at all hard and teeth-cracking crunchy, but instead was light and crispy breaking easily in my mouth and the brittle appeared to have air bubbles - a sign that baking soda was used.

Afterwards, I chatted with the lovely lady who made the brittle and she did confirm that she used baking soda, brought it up to a boil then poured the whole mixture into a pan and did not smooth it out, leaving the bubbles to cool inside of the brittle giving it the light texture. What a great tip.

The candidate had a fresh, homemade pumpkin pie purchased for her and given to her by a supporter which was so very nice, and I ended up purchasing a Texas Buttermilk pie from a lady who told me her Mother-in-Law was from Texas and taught her how to make them. It was lip-smackingly delicious and I took it home to share it with my mother and brother once I had my fill of it.

The pies that seemed the most popular were peach pies. And having tasted the juicy peaches we had this season in Kansas City, I could only imagine how good the local Porter Peaches from Porter, OK tasted when baked up in a flaky pie crust. 

The nice Veteran across the table from me bid and won not one, but two, Porter peach pies. I couldn't help but lean across the table and ask him if peach pie was his favorite. He was a gentleman probably in his mid-seventies and he responded, "Yes, ma'am it sure is, and I won't get peach pies much longer this year so I am stocking up."

He was a man hoping to make his peach pie stash last "at least until Election Day", he told me.

Enjoy!

Pickled and Fried Okra

Pickled Okra

6 pounds okra
12 cloves of garlic
12 pods hot pepper
12 teaspoons celery seeds
12 teaspoons dill seeds
1 cup of salt (not iodized)
2 cups sugar
2 quarts white vinegar

Wash okra and pack in 12 sterilized pint jars. Put equal amounts of garlic, hot pepper, celery seed and dill seed in jars. Combine sugar, salt, water and white vinegar and bring to a boil on the stove. Once the mixture has come to a boil, pour liquid into jars equally. Cap the jars and place in a canning pot full of hot water (doesn't have to be boiling, but almost) and let steep for 10 minutes. Remove and store in a cool dry place, once opened, refrigerate. Makes 12 pints.

Fried Okra

8 pods of okra
1 cup of yellow cornmeal
1 Tablespoon of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Slice okra into 1/4 inch slices. Sprinkle okra with cold water. Mix all dry ingredients together. Coat okra thoroughly with cornmeal mixture. Remove okra from mixture. Deep fry coated okra in 1-2 inches of bacon drippings or oil until golden brown. Serves 4-6.

FOODIE NOTE: Both of these recipes are from a cookbook, I picked up at a quaint gift shop on my first business trip to Atlanta many, many years ago called Big Mama's Old Black Pot.

The forward of the cookbook says straight up that this is a cookbook that should spark up nostalgia for any woman who has ever had to make do with scraps and make them tasty and delicious. It says that all the recipes are authentic, old-fashioned (as if you were still cookin' on a wood stove old-fashioned, mind you) calorie-ladened, country-style cooking. It says this is a cookbook to preserve the memories of those in the rural South. It ends with this sentence: "an old black pot can't be beat, when you want something fit to eat."

I have unconsciously been collecting cookbooks for years this way. Every time I would visit a new city I would head straight for the local cookbook section to bring home a memento of the place I had been, and a way to recreate authentic local dishes in my own kitchen back home. (I did not even know how to cook when I started this tradition, but I can't tell you how thankful I am now for having done it.)

I have a Justin Wilson's Homegrown Louisiana Cookin' from New Orleans, and I have a Zuni Cafe cookbook and a Malaysian, a Thai and a Chinese Dim Sum cookbook from two different trips to San Francisco. I have from my last trip to New York, The Cooking Club Cookbook about a handful of young women in NYC who started a cooking club once a month to learn new dishes and save a little money. Finally, what else but a copy of Skinny Bitch from a lay-over in L.A. The cookbook matched the culture and cuisine of each city I visited.

I decided to make this recipe for pickled okra, because my CSA veggie lady, kept giving us darned bags of okra in our weekly pick-up. And they kept sitting in my fridge because the only way I know how to eat okra is fried. At least, that's the only way I have ever had it. With the thick goo on the inside of the pods (usually used to thicken soups and sauces in the south) I just could not figure out another way to eat them. Frankly, frying something takes more time than I really want to spend on a Monday night after work.

Then, it came to me, I should pickle them. I love pickled okra as well, but had never tried it on my own. I went straight for Big Mama's cookbook and sure enough both my favorite okra recipes were on the same page. I am going to wait a few weeks for my okra to really cure before I try some, but considering I used okra and garlic from my CSA, dill seed and hot peppers from my herb garden, the only thing in this thing that came from the store is the sugar, salt and vinegar.

I can't wait to bite into one, I can almost hear the crisp crunch now.  Enjoy!