It’s Mary, here in Rock Island, awaiting yet another 8″ or so of snow (extra added bonus today – ICE! Whee!).

My kids are driving me out of my mind. They do that all the time, but this week’s topic is LUNCH. What do picky eaters take in their lunchboxes that isn’t completely toxic with HFCS, hydrogenated this and saturated that?

That’s all for now. Got to go do (more) laundry. Hope y’all are having a pleasant evening!

A month ago I had a chili craving, but my usual recipe requires a lot of time standing and chopping, so I tried something ridiculously easy:

Pour two large (40 oz) cans of kidney beans (I used dark because that’s all the store had that day!) into your crock pot.

Brown 1 or 1.5 lbs of ground beef (I used 80/20% fat beef for a slightly more decadent flavor) with a little salt and pepper. Put beef (sans most fat) into crock pot on top of beans.

Chop up 1 or 2 green peppers and an onion and layer on top of beef. Add one chopped clove of garlic if you wish.

Pour in one 28 oz can of diced tomatoes in puree.

Sprinkle pot liberally with paprika/chili powder and a little more salt and pepper.

Set that baby to cook, and that’s it!

I set my crock pot to cook over 6 hours, since the meat was already browned.

Makes a whopping full pot of really tasty chili with a little sweetness from the puree and a tiny bit of zip from the peppers. Serve with cheese, fresh bread, crackers, whatever you want. Made dinner for me for a whole week, and I think I’ll be making it again for the new year!

Yeah, it’s shameful. But that stupid car accident made it nigh on impossible for me to stand over the stove and actually make Real Food. Truth is, the back still hurts, but I’m not going to use it as an excuse anymore. I’m back on this pony, and ready to go.

Who’s got a good recipe for me to try as I make my slow trek back to real life? I made this uber-simple crock pot chili recently, and it kicked ass. I’ll pull up the recipe and share it here.

Welcome back, folks!

2 cups All-Bran Optional: Craisins, raisins or other berries
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tblsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1-1/4 cup flour
1-1/4 cup fat-free milk ( 2% is also OK)
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400°F. Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl combine All-Bran and milk. (I like to add a handfull of Craisins (or other berries) for a different taste.) Let stand 5 minutes or until cereal softens. Add the egg and oil. Beat well. Add the flour mixture, stirring only until combined. Portion into a muffin pan which is coated with a vegetable cooking spray. Bake 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Mike, the “Handyman”

Here is my question – my 11 year old wanted to make bread a couple of weeks ago so I gave him a go at one of my bread books (yes – I have a few. . not that I use them THAT much!) and he decided bagels sounded good. They included boiling them and turned out good but not the real chewy and crusty like a good NY bagel. Any ideas?

Cheers
Roberta

Being in downtown Bethesda, I had a lot of food options. Sushi? Can’t eat it due to some health limitations. Skip that. Chinese? Hell, you can always have Chinese. I’d just had Indian last week, so, no thanks. The Salvadorean place was full of guys drinking beer and watching futbal. But next door was Sweet Basil, a modest-looking Thai place on Fairmont. What the hell. It was so bitter outside, a little bit of Thailand sounded like an excellent option.

And so it was. There’s nothing like some enormous, crispy tiger prawns and tangy sweet sauce to take your mind off a cold winter day (and a deepening well of debt.) Goong Kra Bog it’s called. And, man, it was tasty. I followed that up with Pad Ke Mow (drunken noodles) – chicken, a variety of peppers and onions, and the most deeply fragrant Thai basil, all wok-fried with wide rice noodles. There was no menu notation that the dish was hot, but holy crow – the peppers were blazing with enough heat to melt me from the inside! And that was most excellent, indeed. (Handy hint from your intrepid traveler friend here: if you are in Thailand and you buy skewers of chicken sate on the street, do not be foolish and assume the pineapple-colored tidbits are pineapple. They’re likely flaming hot yellow peppers. If you consume them, be prepared to lose sensation in your lips and lower face for a couple of days. No joke, kids. That was a major surprise for me. Amused the hell out of the Bangkok food vendor, though.)

A waitress came by at one point and said, “Spicy, huh?” (My nose was running and I was gulping down water and that brilliant red Thai tea.) “Oh yeah!” I answered. “But that’s a very good thing.” My waiter kept bringing me more tea. He looked out the window and shuddered. “I know it’s winter, but… I’m Thai. I’m used to ninety degree weather. Here – have more tea! Stay warm!”

I was happily stuffed to the gills when I finally left, ready to continue walking around downtown, checking out store windows, gaping at things I couldn’t afford, like some overgrown matchgirl watching the yuppies fest on disposable crap. But it didn’t matter – a little taste of Thailand in the middle of a Mid-Atlantic winter can change your point of view. Hell, I even smiled as I wrote my name on the charge slip at Midas a couple of hours later.

A big thumbs up for Sweet Basil. On my next trek to Thailand, I’m going to take some cooking classes so I can make this stuff myself, but until then, I think I found a winner.

Sadly, this year, I’ll be having chicken soup, diet 7-Up, and saltines. (America’s miracle cure.)

Bleech.

I can’t help but wonder what funky special dishes (surely not good for you, but damn tasty) others will be endulging in today…

One of my favorite cookbooks is this wafer thin, barely paperback tome I got at a Russian Orthodox church here in the ‘States. It was a ladies auxilliary-type cookbook, with recipes typed in Courier font. It had the most wonderful borscht recipe, among others, but, sadly, I appear to have lost it. I think I may have loaned it to someone who never returned it. That borscht recipe was a favorite of my mother’s in her later years. It’s funny – she decided she liked borscht when she came to visit me in Moscow, and, I swear, she’d ask me to make it whenever I came home to visit Moline. “Are you going to be making borscht?” Words I never figured I’d hear my mother willingly say. Of course, she also really liked my eggplant and garlic pizza in Moscow, too – made on a fresh Georgian lavosh bread dough crust. And she normally hated eggplant. Go figure. I remember at one point, in the last year before she died, I came to visit and one of my sisters said that she really wasn’t eating anything. I made a pot of borsht, and damned if she didn’t eat some. (As did my sister’s teenage son!)

Last weekend, I had dinner at the home of two dear friends, Ben and Natasha. Natasha made some kick-ass borscht for our first course, made even better, of course, with Russian brown bread and a dollup of smetana – sour cream – on top. Man, it was good. She followed that up with homemade pelmeni, or, as I call them, Russian ravioli, also served with smetana and a dusting of dill. Yeah, you can buy bags of frozen pelmeni at the Russian grocery store, but it’s just not the same as homemade.

I remember my first night living in Krasnodar as a student, back in 1987. Our group had just arrived in the southern Russian town, jet lagged, culture shocked. Local people had been enlisted to be our “friends.” (I imagine that they had orders to do some reporting back on us, but they also seemed genuinely interested in hangin’ with the foreigners.) I ended up in a small group with the leaders of the local youth theater. They took us down the street to see the theater, and, backstage, they brought out an industrial-sized mixing bowl of fresh, hot pelmeni. There were no plates. We were just given forks, little bowls of smetana, and, god help us, shot after shot of samogon. Hootch. Moonshine. Seriously bad-ass, make you go blind, homemade jet fuel. We spent hours drinking and eating pelmeni out of this huge bowl.

I have a vague recollection of getting home late that night. I have a less vague recollection of being hideously hungover and bloated on the tour bus the next morning. Ah, college memories!

Regardless of that inauspicious evening, I still love me some darn tasty pelmeni. My friend Rachel and I used to go a kafeteria down the street from the embassy in Moscow (across the street from the really sad Moscow Zoo) and get a plate of pelmeni and a really sugary coffee for about 5 cents. There were no seats, and you were always shoulder to shoulder with soldiers grabbing a quick meal, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. (It’s a little disconcerting to have someone’s high-powered weapon bumping you as you slam your coffee and ravioli lunch…)

I actually bought a pelmennitsa at GUM (the massive department store on Red Square.) It’s this crosshatched, hinged metal framework on which you lay out the pelmeni dough. You put little spoonfuls of the meat mixture in between the metal lines and then close the device. Voila! You have a pile of little tasty pelmeni, just waiting to be dropped into boiling water.

Except I can’t make dough to save my life. So, the pelmennitsa sits unused on a kitchen shelf. (Shame on me.) But, man, was it ever nice to have some homemade guys last week. Thank you, Natasha!

Natasha also loaned me a cookbook she picked up on a recent trip to Russia. It has a chapter on borscht. We started laughing going through it, as there are probably 50 different recipes for that damn soup. Each one might have one tiny difference in ingredients. Very silly. If I find one that looks close to the church ladies’ recipe, I’ll share it here. I made borscht all the time in Moscow, and I’m astounded that I can’t remember a thing. What can I say? My brain is like a sieve these days.

I used to make plov in Moscow, too. Plov is Uzbek pilaf – the national dish of Uzbekistan. It’s a lovely, hearty mix of rice and garlic and carrots with tender pieces of lamb throughout. It’s incredibly tasty, and that’s what I’m planning to have for lunch this coming Friday at the stripmall Uzbek restaurant next to our hotel in Hollywood. My friends will simply have to humor me. Uzbeks make their own variation on the ravioli theme (helps that they were on the Silk Road from China, eh?) The Uzbek ravioli are called manti (that’s pronounced mahn-TEE), and, manti are really big and seasoned very differently from their Russian cousins. Very, very tasty, although the spices really catch you off guard the first time you taste one.Again, as the preparation of manti requires a mastery of dough, I have never made them. So, there will be an order of manti on our Uzbek table on Friday, too. (I hope my traveling companions are ready to EAT!)

Another thing that requires the mastery of dough – and baking in this case – is the traditional Georgian cheese pastry, or khachapuri. There have to be at least 20 varieties of khachapuri, and they are all incredibly tasty. (Okay, the ones with the goat cheese are a wee bit on the salty side, but you can always make adjustments.) One small khachapuri – or a big one shared – with a bowl of soup makes for a great meal. There used to be this little bakery in a horrid industrial area of Moscow that made the most wonderful khachapuri. They sold five different types, and they all cost something around a penny a piece. I’d stop and buy a bagful and bring them back to the office. (Thank you, embassy, for giving me a job that granted me access to a car all the time!)

I would kill for a Georgian cafe to open up in DC. I understand that there are a couple of Georgian places in the Chicago area, and, if I’m not mistaken, there’s at least one in Los Angeles. (Although, time will be too short for a visit this trip.) Of course, I’m willing to bet that there are a dozen Armenian places in the L.A. area, but I can’t visit them. There is, I have recently been told, still a price on my head in Glendale, California (aka, Little Yerevan.)

But that’s a story for another time, and another blog.

Dang it. Now I’m hungry, and I haven’t been out to the store for a week. Guess ye olde bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios gets the vote today. Never mind. Less than a week to Uzbek yumminess!

For some reason, the clearest memory I have of making those twisted guys with my mother is mixed with images of watching old movies on the tiny black & white TV in our kitchen – “Babes in Toyland” with Laurel and Hardy, and “Porgy and Bess” (excellent, excellent, but an odd choice for Christmas programming, perhaps.)

Another cookie recipe that brings me back home immediately is the my mom’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. This is a nice, sweet, chewy cookie. I have no clue where the recipe came from (like most of the ones I grew up with.) It was really popular with my friends in Moline. Mary and others might remember us bringing a Tupperware container of these to a movie once (good god, it was the Lone Ranger movie – I remember how we all laughed when people left via the exit behind the screen during the credits – it looked like people were walking into this huge boulder on screen, vanishing into solid rock.)

I think it’s the lemon extract that makes this cookie special. I might try it sometime with lemon zest and see how the real deal works. But, I like the sharp citrus bite that comes from the extract. Give these a try. I love them. For a first try, skip the optional nuts. Just savor the oatmeal and chocolate. It’s nice.

Mom Jordan’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C flour
1 t salt
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 T water
3/4 C brown sugar
1 12-oz. bag chocolate chips
1 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1 C shortening
1 t lemon extract
3/4 C sugar
2 C oatmeal
1 C nuts (optional – walnuts work best)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together in large bowl.

In another bowl, mix eggs, shortening, vanilla, lemon extract, and water until creamy. Then, add to dry ingredients. When well mixed, add sugar and brown sugar. Blend well.

Then add oatmeal, chocolate chips, and nuts (if desired.)

Place spoon-sized drops on ungreased cookie sheet and cook 8-10 minutes.

Best with a really cold glass of milk. (But that’s just my opinion.)

Lisseroo’s Chili

Ingredients:

3 lbs ground beef (2 pounds 90% lean or more, 1 pound 80% lean)
1 large (52 oz.) can light red kidney beans
2 large onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
2 green pepper, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
4 small (14 oz.) cans stewed tomatoes (2 cans “Mexican style”, if possible)
1 T minimum multiple chili powders of your choice
1 T paprika
1 T ground cumin
salt and pepper
a few pinches of sugar
grated cheese of your choice (I recommend mixing Monterey Jack and Cheddar)
butter (or if you’re me, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Light)

Preparation:
In a large fry pan, brown onions and garlic in generous amount of butter, adding salt and pepper as you go. When the onions have softened, add the chopped jalapenos. Then, add the ground beef. Cook on medium/high heat until meat is cooked through.

While meat is cooking, place kidney beans, including all liquid, in a large cooking pot over medium/high heat. Add stewed tomatoes, including all liquid. You can dice them or simply squish them with your hands (great fun for kids- if you have a drop cloth on the floor!) as you add them – I go for the squish method, myself. Mix together.

Add 1 tablespoon each of at least two different chili powders* plus 1 tablespoon of paprika and 1 tablespoon of cumin (if you like cumin). Mix well, and then add browned meat mixture (including any liquid – this meat is mostly lean, so the amount of fat/fluid added to the pot is minimal) to the bean pot. Stir.

Add 1-2 pinches of sugar and mix in. Reduce heat and begin to simmer.

Using same fry pan and a small amount of butter, heat green and red peppers, softening them and slightly browining them. Add to the bean and meat mixture. Taste for spice, salt/pepper, and sweetness. This chili is not designed to be a tongue burner!

Add additional chili powder, salt/pepper, and, if desired, another pinch of sugar. A tiny bit of sweetness brings out the tomatoes and adds a great deal to the flavor. Allow chili to simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Top with whatever you wish, or serve it naked. Eat it hot, preferably with fresh, warm bread.

*I use, when I can find them, a mix of Gebhardt’s (Texas-style) chili powder and Grandma’s chili powder (Kansas-style, formerly sold as “Grandma’s Spanish Seasoning”) – they are a very tasty mix. The Gebhardt family originated chili powder as we know it – German immigrants to Texas who missed the paprika they cooked with back in Europe.