freestyle cooking
I’ve been a pianist for all but a few years of my life. Of course, I wouldn’t have called myself a pianist at age six any more than I would have called myself a soloist when I performed in a school talent show at age five.
During all those years of taking piano lessons, I always played from printed music. I didn’t realize how limiting this was until I got to college and discovered that everyone knew how to play from chords or by ear. Granted, some of them couldn’t read music, but who needs sheet music when you’re sitting around a dorm lounge with a piano and a few guitars? So I taught myself to play from chords… and then by ear.
People at church are sometimes amazed when they ask to see a copy of a song I played and I show them some lyrics with a few extra letters scattered around. “But where’s the MUSIC?” they’ll tease. My answer depends on who’s asking. What I want to say is, “I create the music. These are just some helpful guidelines.”
I took Home Economics for several years in middle school and high school. I sewed a few items of clothing that seemed lovely at the time, including a plaid jumper, a paisley dress (did it have lace too?), and a floral princess-seam dress with puffed sleeves. Think early 90s. Just like the piano music I knew how to play, my sewing endeavors were limited by the patterns available. It wasn’t until the past year or so that I started either significantly modifying patterns or making my own patterns from grocery bags. It’s so much more gratifying.
Not surprisingly, this follow-the-instructions tendency has also shown up in my culinary pursuits. If I were teaching Home Ec (or whatever the modern terminology is), I’m afraid I’d take a pretty unorthodox approach. We would smell and taste herbs and spices and then talk about what types of foods each one is typically used in. We would taste the food while it’s cooking. We would pour salt into the palms of our hands and learn what a half teaspoon of salt looks like. Unless we were making a delicate pastry, I would never allow my students to level off a 1/2-cup measure with the flat edge of a dinner knife. Shake it. I would give my students a list of 25 ingredients and ask them to come up with a dinner menu. Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun than anything you ever did in Home Ec?
I still cook most foods while glancing at a recipe, but just like I did with music and sewing, I’ve been trying to teach myself the art of improvisational food preparation. Last evening the outcome was a delicious chicken stirfry with green pepper and basil from my mother’s garden… along with some onion, garlic, salt, pepper, rice vinegar, and soy sauce.
This morning’s breakfast was the result of indecision, not intentional freestyle food preparation. As I peeled a small potato, I knew I soon needed to decide whether I would dice or shred the potato for hashbrowns. As I was shredding the potato, I decided to add some garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. (Are you sensing a theme?) As I chopped the basil, I decided to add a beaten egg and turn my breakfast into… well, I’m not sure what you call it. A frittata of sorts? I spread out the mixture in a small frying pan with some olive oil, then walked off to water some plants, check my email, and pick up the newspaper from the porch. When I returned to the kitchen, I grabbed a spatula and flipped my potato-egg concoction. Perfect.
I’ll never abandon my cookbooks, but I’m certainly enjoying my freestyle cooking adventures!
In the McSpotlight
In 1986, a small activist group in London began distributing a brochure called “What’s Wrong With McDonalds: Everything They Don’t Want You To Know.” The leaflet attacked almost every aspect of the McDonalds Corporation, claiming that their fast food was unhealthy and that McDonalds was responsible for destruction of rainforests, starvation in the Third World, exploitation of children, animal cruelty, pollution, and more.
McDonalds infiltrated the group with spies, and in 1990, McDonalds brought libel charges against five people. Three apologized, but two refused to back down. Thus began the infamous McDonalds Restaurants v. Morris & Steel — the longest-running court action in England.
You can read the story HERE or watch the documentary HERE. Both are long, but they’re definitely worth your time (82 minutes if you watch just the movie).
ooey-gooey lasagna
As a single woman, I typically make only a fraction of a recipe so that I don’t end up with six or eight servings of something. I enjoy leftovers, but no matter how good the food is, I’m rarely interested in eating the same thing every day for a week.
Some recipes, however, don’t lend themselves to being divided. Lasagna is one of those. It does freeze well, but I rarely think about making an entire 9×13 pan of anything just for myself. Lucky for me, Mom often makes a pan of lasagna when our family gets together for a few days… which means I got to eat lasagna for Sunday dinner yesterday.
Here is Mom’s recipe that I copied onto an index card years ago.
:: LASAGNA ::
1 lb. ground beef
garlic powder (to taste)
1 T. dried basil
1 1/2 t. salt
1 qt. tomato juice
10 oz. lasagna noodles
2 eggs
3 c. cottage cheese
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese
1 T. dried parsley
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 lb. mozzarella cheese
Brown meat; drain. Add next four ingredients. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook noodles until tender.
Beat eggs; add remaining ingredients, except mozzarella. Layer half of the noodles in a 9×13 baking dish; spread with half the cottage cheese mixture. Add half the mozzarella cheese and half the meat sauce. Repeat. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes (or assembly early, refrigerate, and bake for 45 minutes). Let stand 10 minutes before serving.
(Source: Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook)
Photo not available. Just imagine a bunch of layers of ooey-gooey goodness.
a pickle for each little hand
This is a kid who loves pickles.
Since I spent the whole day hanging out with my three favorite little boys, a picture will have to suffice for today’s NaBloPoMo FOOD post. Fortunately, Aunt Rachel has learned to like pickles, so she was able to enjoy one too.
lunch of good and evil
My entire lunch today cost me exactly one dollar. This may seem backwards, but the good part was free and the evil part cost me a buck. The good part was a serving of delicious green beans from a friend’s garden. He dropped them off last Friday evening, but I didn’t get around to cooking them ’til today. Aren’t they beautiful??
If the green beans were so amazing, why did I bother to pay good money for evil food? Well, man shall not live by green beans alone. Neither shall woman.
I know the French would say that no food is “sinfully” delicious, and that any food you enjoy can and should be eaten in moderation, but maybe they’ve never heard of hotdogs. I wouldn’t describe them as “sinfully delicious,” but as much as I like them, there’s something that just seems wrong about hotdogs. When I can no longer recognize what plant or animal I’m eating, I begin to question whether I should eat the food in front of me.
But today I suddenly got a hankering for a hotdog from my favorite hotdog stand outside my favorite grocery store. Each week the hotdog stand is staffed by a different church or community group, and the grocery store donates half of the proceeds to the group. I’ve volunteered there several times, and it’s really a lot of fun.
I hadn’t bought a hotdog there in several years, so I stopped by today to get a dog and drink for a buck. A hotdog in a white bun isn’t exactly the picture of good nutrition, but I’m pretty sure one won’t kill me. (The Mountain Dew, however, might.) When I was a kid, I didn’t even like hotdogs. Obviously I had never eaten a fried Kunzler beef frank from the Red Front hotdog stand…
if a squash can make you smile
“If you like to talk to tomatoes,
If a squash can make you smile,
If you like to waltz with potatoes,
Up and down the produce aisle…
Have we got a show for you!”
I love veggies… especially when they’re bouncing around the screen and singing and talking in those ridiculously cute voices. If you’ve never seen a Veggie Tales movie, you’re missing out. This weekend our church is hosting a Veggie Tales-themed Bible school for children. Tomorrow’s big day will feature the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, so all of us volunteer Bible school staff went to church this evening dressed as pirates.
Arrr.
“The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” movie isn’t out on DVD yet, so this evening we held a showing of a different Veggie Tales movie that was just released — “Tomato Sawyer & Huckleberry Larry’s Big River Rescue.” Like every other Veggie Tales movie I’ve seen, it was quite clever. If I were familiar with the storyline in Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” I would have picked up on a lot more similarities highlighted in THIS review.
The best part of the movie was not Bob and Larry’s antics, or the visit to Muscatine, Iowa (hometown of my friend Jess), or even the lesson about helping others. It was the “I can’t swim” - “I only dogpaddle” scene lifted directly from The Princess Bride.
“There’s never-ever-ever-ever-ever been a show like Veggie Tales…”
chocolate logic
Looking for an excuse to eat more chocolate? You may have seen this circulating on the web…
::
A good piece of chocolate has about 200 calories. As I enjoy two servings per night, and a few more on weekends, I consume 3500 calories of chocolate in a week, which equals one pound of weight per week.
Therefore… in the last 3 1/2 years, I have had a chocolate caloric intake of about 180 pounds. I weigh only 165 pounds, so without chocolate, I would have wasted away to nothing about three months ago!
I owe my life to chocolate.
(Source)
sugar and spice and everything nice
I spent most of this evening with a paintbrush in my hand. I wish I could say that I’m creating an artistic masterpiece, but really, all I’m doing is painting trim in my house. Lots and lots of trim. I listened to music while I painted, but it was impossible for me to get a certain nursery rhyme out of my head.
What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of, made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and everything nice,
That’s what little girls are made of.
I don’t usually have nursery rhymes stuck in my head, but when I got home from work today, I happened to see a recipe in the newspaper for Sugar and Spice Popcorn. The accompanying article was very poorly written, but I thought the recipe looked good. When I finally reached a good stopping point with the painting tonight, I decided to mix up a small batch of the Sugar and Spice seasoning. I even followed the recipe, which means I blended together brown sugar, chili powder, paprika, and cumin. It sounds better than it tasted.
No sugar or spice, just plenty of salt,
That’s what THIS girl’s fond of.
painter’s tape and gummi worms
At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably finish fixing up my house right around the time my youngest child leaves for college. No, I’m not a mom, and I’m not even dating anyone, much less married. I’ve owned this cute house for five years, but I have only lived in it for two years (non-consecutively, I might add). I’ve done a few projects around the house, but when I look at my humble abode, sometimes all I can see are the things I need to change, work on, fix, etc. And then I go curl up on the couch with a good book.
When I got home this evening, I changed clothes and gathered my supplies for painting trim — a perfect opportunity to wear the green and blue plaid flannel shorts that I thought were so cool when I was 18. I painted the walls in several rooms last summer, and tonight I was finally going to start painting the trim. What was I waiting for, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. Motivation. Time. Desire.
After moving the furniture away from the walls and cleaning the trim with a rag, I was ready to start painting. Or so I thought. I went down to the basement to get my painter’s tape… which is apparently all painty and in a landfill somewhere. I hate making a trip to the store for one thing, but I really did need painter’s tape, so I changed into normal clothes and hopped in the car.
As I walked past the candy section at Walmart, I suddenly remembered a rather interesting fact that I learned recently. According to the National Confectioners Association, today is Gummi Worm Day. My favorites are the sour gummi worms, and when I participated in the 26Things photography project last year, I bought a bag and took this picture to represent the word “multicolored.”
The gummi worms were calling my name, so I snatched a bag from the wall of candy. As a member of the Friendly City Food Co-op, I felt like a heretic with a bag of artificially colored corn syrup in my hand. I suppose there’s no such thing as a fresh, local, natural, organic gummi worm, is there?
I opted for the self-checkout. I didn’t want anyone in a blue vest to think that I was some kind of crazy woman who would go to Walmart just to buy painter’s tape and gummi worms…
McDonalds Menu Song
Remember the McDonalds Menu Song? Twenty years ago, when I was in fifth grade, McDonalds promoted their menu by writing a song that they distributed via a flimsy record in the newspaper. (Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?) All but one of the 80 million records went something like this.
A teacher comes in and tells a group of students that today they’re going to learn the McDonalds Menu Song and give a listener a chance to win a million dollars. The teacher sings the entire song for the students and then they try to sing the song on their own. It falls apart almost immediately. The teacher reminds them that if they can sing it all the way through, a listener will win a million dollars. (”Win a million dollars?!” the class echoes.) The class tries again and sings almost the entire song in unison, but when they get to the very last line, they suddenly make mistakes. Sadly, the catchy song ends in a collective groan.
On exactly ONE record, however, the class successfully sings the entire song, and the lucky recipient of that record also becomes the lucky recipient of a million dollars. Or so the story goes. I remember anticipating the arrival of the record in our newspaper, and I remember feeling hopeful that ours just might be the winning record. It wasn’t. Perhaps nobody’s was. Apparently it’s not known whether anyone ever won the million dollars. (What?!)
After the records were distributed, some of my classmates soon started bragging that they could sing the entire song. I never tried to memorize the whole thing, but I can still sing the first couple lines of the song: “Big Mac, McDLT, a Quarter Pounder with some cheese, Filet-O-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal, McNuggets, tasty golden french fries, regular or larger size, and salads: chef or garden, or a chicken salad oriental…”
And the song goes on. Thanks to YouTube, you can listen to the song even if you don’t own a record player. The accompanying images aren’t original, of course, so you can follow along with the lyrics and not miss anything. However, if you’re going to sing along, be aware that you won’t have any chances to take a breath!
