The Local Color Tour - Everything Else

After completing the most important parts of trip preparation - asking Mom to bring her famous cream cheese brownies and my grandfather to make me chicken marsala - I made the long, long, loooong-ass drive from Atlanta to Cape May, with a welcome stop at College Buddy's house in Virginia and an unwelcome meeting with North Carolina's Finest about their secret traffic laws.

College Buddy and I weathered classes and finals and being RA's back in the day. I'm hoping we can close the circle by arranging a marriage for my niece and one of his sons. That's a sign of quality aunt-ing right there, isn't it? Anyhoodle, we had a terrific dinner at Kahill's in the South Hill area of Virginia. It pays to know locals with excellent taste, and few things are as uplifting as catching up with an old friend. I highly recommend all of the above.

Cape May, NJ is quaint and lovely and annoyingly quirky with its liquor laws. It had simply never occurred to my drink-with-dinner family that there would be dry restaurants - indeed, an entire dry side of the cape (if I understood correctly). Nothing makes you feel like a lush like trying to decide if you should walk out of a restaurant because they don't have wine... but then, nothing makes you feel like you come by it honestly when it's your own mother saying resignedly "Well, we can leave here and get a mojito."

Mom rocks. She made the brownies, too.

Godmother's, Cape May

Meh. The food was OK - not outstanding, but OK - but we did not care for the snippy hostess and lackluster service. This Italian girl expects more from a New Jersey Italian restaurant.

The Lobster House, Cape May

For our Nice Dinner - we showered after the beach and everything - we went to The Lobster House. This is the first time in my life I said "OK" when the hostess said "the wait is currently an hour and twenty minutes."

The Lobster House compound includes a restaurant, raw bar, takeout shop, cotton mill, Li'l Lisa's Fish Slurry plant (that's for you Simpsons fans), gift shop, ballet studio, bar, gift shop, preschool, etc. It's effin' HUGE.

**Name drop alert** And on the night we were there, Ann Hathaway - last season's funniest SNL host, in my opinion - was eating one table over from us.

The food was amazing. My huge portion of salmon was absolutely perfectly cooked, as were the garlic green beans on the side. Mom and Sis were perfectly happy with their shellfish extravaganzas. It's pricey but worth it.

Pop-Pop's House

And then... oh, then... it was off to spend a few days with my grandfather. A first-generation American, polio survivor, and cook- and vegetable gardener-extraordinare, the man can put together a meal like nobody's business.

I had really hoped to get his recipe for chicken marsala. Of course, "recipe" is a rather loose term where my grandfather is concerned. A little of this, a splash of the other, some time in the pan. Oh, and half the discussion (his half) was in Italian, which I don't speak.

He asked when he had last made me chicken marsala. "When I was in college and you were still living at the old house," I said. Well, he informed me, that was the last time he had made it. Whatever - it was terrific. Best as I can tell, you saute some onions, then dust some chicken thighs with flour, salt, and pepper and saute them in the pan. Then add mushrooms and a little butter, some more flour, and some marsala. Mangia!

We did genealogy, we visited my Aunt Jackie, we ate, we ate, and we watched Lawrence Welk. I was privileged to attend his monthly high school class reunion luncheon with him. Monthly because "who can wait a year at our age?" and lunch because "who can drive at night at our age?" THANK YOU, class of 1938, for the warm welcome and showing the rest of us how it's done!

And on the way back, College Roomie did an impromptu re-arranging of her evening so that we could experience some fine dining at the Richmond, VA Cracker Barrel together. No sarcasm there - I love high-falutin' restaurants with famous chefs and innovative dishes, and I love Cracker Barrel. And Roomie really did make extraordinary schedule adjustments so that we could spend time together.

Some trips are about exploring new places. This was the "These Are A Few Of My Favorite People" tour, and it's just what I needed.

As vacation was vacation from lots of stuff - work, daily routine, healthful eating - here's our energizing breakfast, courtesy of Mom. She's justifiably famous for these brownies amongst family friends. The only thing preventing me from whipping up a batch of these right now is that it's Ramadan. "Wait," you're thinking, "she's Methodist." Yup, but we don't keep sweets in the house so I'd have to bring them to work, and my assistant is Muslim and is fasting all day for the next month. Totally rude to bring snacky-treats into the office right now.

Marble Squares

1 6-ounce package of cream cheese

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup water

1 1/2 ounces squares of unsweetened chocolate

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 6-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips (or dark chocolate)

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Combine cream cheese and sugar in a small bowl. Add egg and mix well - set aside.

3. Combine butter, water, and chocolate in a small saucepan. Melt chocolate, stir well, and cool. Set aside.

4. Stir chocolate mixture into sugar and flour. Add eggs, sour cream, baking soda, and salt - mix well. Pour into greased 15 1/2" x 12 1/2" jelly roll pan. Spoon cream cheese mixture over chocolate batter.

5. Drag a butter knife through the batter several times to marble the brownies. Sprinkle with chocolate chips (were there ever more welcome words in a recipe than "sprinkle with chocolate chips"?).

6. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 - 30 mnutes, or until wooden toothpick inserted in the center (NOT through a chocolate chip) comes out clean.

The Local Color Tour - Gaffney, SC

I'm trying not to lose too much time on the road, so this will be quick. I'm en route from Atlanta to Cape May, NJ for a Girls Beach Weekend with my Mom and sister, then scooting over another 50 miles to visit my grandfather.

Part of the adventure, I've decided, is to do my best to eat at non-chain restaurants on the trip (please disregard the fact that I'm using the free wi-fi at Panera at the moment). Lunch was at Clocks Restaurant, in Gaffney, SC.

They did not take the obvious/Hitchcocky route with an all-clock decor, thank goodness. You know, when you look at a menu in the South and see fried pickles, pimiento cheese sandwiches, three different types of barbecue sandwich, and fried green tomatoes, you think "These folks take their Dixie cookin' seriously."

About the last thing I would've considered is "Man, they have GOT to have some terrific Greek food." No idea if it's terrific, but to my great amazement they had a lot of it listed on the next page.

When you eat a good barbecue sandwich there should be a little sweet (molasses), a little sour (vinegar and tomato), a little spicy and a little smoke. What this sandwich did - and I have no idea how - was smell like hot dogs. I tried it anyway (I LOATHE hot dogs) - it first tasted honey-sweet, then syrupy, then sourdough-ish, then a kind of chemical/liquid smoke kinda thing was going on.

A shame, because I wanted to like it. The fries were amazing and the service friendly. They even took the extra step of double-bunning the sandwich - there were two bottom-bun-pieces stacked one on the other, so that the sauce wouldn't soak through the bun. GENIUS.

Thoughts while traveling:

A radio station in South Carolina advertised "Rock Star Dentistry" and promised an unparalleled sensory experience. For real? Because would totally do the drive for a chocolate-pedicuregasm that left my teeth clean. Weekly.

Holy moly, I really am eating nuts and berries. My car snacks are strawberries and almonds.

I've been working on my genealogy for a while and have come across some people that I suspect are relatives who I've never heard of. I'm going to ask my grandfather about them while I'm there, and suspect it's (another) branch of the family that no one's talking to for reasons I'm not yet old enough to know (I'm 40).

My friend in Virginia said there are very few restaurants in the small town where he lives, so I'm glad I've embraced the adventure. Stay tuned.

Really, really local and seasonal produce

So far? Seventeen tomatoes in various stages of tomato-ness; anywhere from "it's defintely a little green orb" to "just cut out the bad parts, it'll be fine."

Mmmmm, LOVE the smell of tomato plants!

Squash blossoms too numerous to count, and five jalapenos. I'm hoping the blossoms will lead to actual squash (or cucumbers, or watermelon - I'm not picky. In fact, I'm still in shock that these little beings are the green I've always heard that these "plant" things should be).

See the black center in the blossom? That's a bumblebee.

As much as I want to pull and use veggies from my own yard, I'm OK with not getting a big haul. It has been really cool to watch these babies grow.

But if I do get to cook my very, very own food, then - even though I don't have an Alaskan river teeming with salmon running through my Georgia garden - I'm making this yummy and SO easy dinner with my peppers and tomatoes. It's fantastic with corn on the cob.

Salsa-Roasted Salmon

Eating Well Serves Two - cookbook

1 medium plum tomato, roughly chopped

1/2 small onion, roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, peeled and quartered

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and roughly chopped

1 teaspoon cider vinegar (plain white vinegar will work just as well)

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon salt (a few shakes of the shaker - it doesn't have to be exact)

2 - 3 dashes hot sauce (like Tabasco or Texas Pete)

8 ounces center-cut salmon fillet, skinned and cut into two portions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Place tomato, onion, garlic, jalapeno, vinegar, chili powder, cumin, salt and hot sauce to taste in a food processor. Process until finely chopped and uniform [Note - you can make the salsa the day before and store it, covered, in the refrigerator]

3. Place salmon in a medium roasting pan; spoon the salsa on top. Roast until the salmon is just cooked through, 12 to 15 minutes.

So You Think You Can't Cook

Now that "So You Think You Can Dance" and "The Biggest Loser" exist in my world, I'm going to have to drop my whole snotty "I don't watch television" thing. Because I do. Pathetically, I try to be home to wave the rabbit ears and that stupid digital TV converter on my 19-inch TV (color, thankyouverymuch) for either of those shows.

I always tune in to SYTYCD around Episode 4, after all the annoying audition footage - you know, where the white Rasta guy calls his dance genre "classical jazz with a touch of hackysack" and then alternates between stylized hopscotch and snow angels (sans snow).

If you haven't seen it - young dancers are randomly paired and assigned a dance genre and choreographer. This is about as "random" as being tapped for a Presidential cabinet post. The dancers practice cute while they're being filmed, then they perform for the judges and America and the voting begins. To the best of my knowledge felons and immigrants are permitted to dial-in for their favorite.

So in honor of showbiz, a ham sandwich with a fancy French accent.

Croque Monsieur
Cooking Light

4 1 1/2-ounce slices French bread
4 teaspoons honey mustard
6 ounces reduced-fat deli ham, thinly sliced
4 1-ounce slices reduced-fat Swiss, cheddar, or fresh Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup fat-free milk
3 large egg whites
Cooking spray

1. Cut a slit in each bread slice to form a pocket. Spread 1 teaspoon honey mustard into each bread pocket. Divide ham and cheese evenly among bread pockets.

2. Combine milk and egg whites in a shallow bowl, stirring with a whisk or fork. Dip sandwiches, 1 at a time, in a milk mixture, turning to coat.

3. Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add 2 sandwiches, cook 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Repeat procedure with remaining sandwiches.

25 Random Food Things

Yup, stealing this from Facebook...

1. I have never used tarragon because of a recipe my mother made - only once - that dredged Cornish hens in a small garden's worth.

2. Nor have I ever had a 7&7 since one fateful night in college. A similar story, but, you know, way different.

3. Chef Nancy made our wedding cake (red velvet) as her gift to us. She walked into the reception site with an actual bucket full of cream cheese icing and instantly attracted admirers and new friends.

Had I known how effective that was, I would've brought a giant frosting-bucket to high school on occasion. What could it hurt?

4. Just to keep it real in my first-ever garden, the oregano and thyme are already a distant, dusty memory. My tomato, squash, pepper, and okra plants are still (God willing) thriving despite my Touch Of Plant Death.

5. I was surprised to read that in Italy people generally don't eat fish and dairy together. I can't stand to have them on the same plate and thought that was yet another quirk of mine (OK, it is) but apparently there's a cultural angle to it also.

6. From the moment College Roomie told me that as a child she once turned the beaters on and lowered them into the full mixing bowl, requiring ceiling replacement in two rooms, I knew we'd be forever friends.

7. It's the seaweed. I've tried and tried and tried to like sushi and I just can't get there.

8. My latest food-crush is coffee ice cream. I don't care who knows it, we're not sneaking around. We're out and we're proud.

9. We don't have cable so I've never seen the Food Network or any of these "celebrity" chefs.

10. That's not true - I was babysitting Cutie and, after her bedtime, clicked through channels and came upon some very cool cake decorating show that required fine arts degrees, architects, engineers, etc. Utterly captivating.

During a break a breathy voice said, "Food Network... after dark." Reflexively I turned the volume down - Cutie is only 8 - then I was all, "Is this food porn? I swear that cake looks like a castle. I'm pretty sure it's a castle...."

11. That's not true #2 - at the gym one time I saw 5 minutes of some "Half-Assed Homemade" show with a kitchen fembot. Apparently picking up a rotisserie chicken & salad at the supermarket, and adding your very own salt & pepper touch to the meat, qualifies for a cooking show.

We're not getting cable.

12. Courtesy of my aunt I own a cookbook autographed "Happy Cooking!" by Jacques Pepin himself.

13. Every summer - and that fateful day is just around the corner - I put up homemade bread & butter pickles. You have NO idea how much I hate this task (I'm sure I'll elaborate on it soon). What's to love about your house smelling like boiled vinegar? For years my mother talked about how good Grandma's pickles were, and I figured I'd go ahead and learn since Grandma's standing-for-hours-in-the-kitchen days were over. It is a testament to how much I love and owe my mother that I do this every year.

14. At a business lunch I tried to fork a crouton and it went flying off my plate and landed on the salad plate next to me. I turned to its owner and asked if he'd like a crouton - he declined. Well fine, I said, but I won't offer again. Great way to start a meeting.

15. My biggest leap of culinary faith was making Black Bean Soup (recipe onsite) despite having never had black beans before. Apparently I'm just that susceptible to online yummy-noises from cooking communities.

16. If you make sugar cookies and forget to add the sugar they take on a flat biscuit/cracker quality. Not that I recommend it.

17. Sweetie and I, who love a good gourmet restaurant, will happily dine at Cracker Barrel every time we get the chance.

18. It took me years to learn how to make decent scrambled eggs. I could make homemade doughnuts, homemade bread, brie-en-croute, etc. and everyone was on their own for eggs or they weren't gettin' any.

19. I've tried Vosges and Scharffenberger and other insanely-expensive chocolates, and I still say Ghirardelli beats them all. [Note that I haven't tried John & Kira's myself yet, but have heard wondrous and amazing things...] I highly encourage anyone else to take this experiment on in the name of "science."

20. Sweetie doesn't care much for chocolate desserts, which is really the only reason I ever explored fruit-based desserts, which I have come to love. I did raise an eyebrow, though, about the "meh on chocolate" thing - seemed suspect.

21. Sweetie also took me for my first and only fishing experience. Fortunately it was a heavily-stocked trout pond, so after only 3 short hours of fish flinging themselves toward my hook ("Over here! Swimmy-swimmy! I'm swimming slooooowly just for yooooou!") I managed to catch something. Even better, they did all the messy stuff so that we could just come home, dust it with cornmeal and toss it on the skillet.

He hasn't wanted to go back.

22. For a Yankee native I've developed quite a taste for fried green tomatoes, barbecue, biscuits, and - under certain conditions - black-eyed peas.

23. I'm trying to avoid painting my guest room. Isn't this list supposed to be 30 or 50 items long?

24. My mother-in-law had the only brunch wedding reception I've ever been to for her second wedding, and it was fabulous. Why don't more people do fancy brunches?

25. Back in my business travel , pre-Katrina, pre-9/11 days, I used to go to New Orleans every so often. I always had to pack a jar of peanut butter in my suitcase because I'm allergic to shellfish and I swear even the restaurant bread baskets had lobster paste or something in them. Legendary restaurants all around and my foodie self with a jar of Jif.

Feel free to add your own list!

How are you keeping it? Good-good?

I never could master the Liberian handshake. Granted, I don't really have anyone to practice with who knows what it is - it's kind of a slide/snap maneuver, your hands have to be really dry, and you should've been practicing since shortly after birth in order to master it by adulthood. So my chances, I'm guessing, are pretty slim.

It was July 18, 1989 when I returned from six months in West Africa. For my 20th birthday two of my friends took a treacherous cab ride to the American Embassy compound to buy me a bag of frozen strawberries at one of the few supermarkets in the country. Perhaps you know they're not native to the tropical rainforest, but in case you didn't - they're sooo not. Pineapple? Mango? Coconut and banana? All you want. No strawberries. Also not easy to find - ice cream, but they did it. Ann and Denise, I'm still grateful and amazed that you went to all that trouble!

There's coffee, though, and coffee trees smell nothing like coffee. They have the most gorgeous blossoms and a heavy, sweet but not cloying smell. Whenever we went by them all I could do was close my eyes, breathe deeply, and hope and pray to remember the moment.

Why did I stop eating red meat in Liberia? Two words - no cows.

What we did have was chicken, rice, dried fish, palm butter, scorching-hot peppers, rice, chicken bouillon cubes, rice, rice, various types of bread, rice, fresh fish (if by the sea), shortening (instead of butter/margarine for the bread), "bush meat" (whatever unlucky critter ended up in the stew pot), rice, palm wine, plantains, Spam, rice, greens, and rice.

All served on a bed of rice.

School - I was at a university - could not open without electricity, which ran for 3 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening. However, when the generator conked out again after having spent 5 days raised from the dead to open school, life and the semester went on undisturbed. And dark at night.

When coming back from Cote d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), our intent was to walk the 8 miles from the military checkpoint at the border to the next town. But a car came along and picked up the four of us. What would they have done without us sticking our flashlights out the windows to light the way in the absence of headlights?

During the school year I lived on campus and not at the missionary compound. The cafeteria served bread - like a thick shortbread, or sometimes cornbread - for breakfast and dinner. There would be a thick pool of heavy margarine, or a smear of Crisco, on the plate as a spread. The Americans would often bring peanut butter into the cafeteria.

At lunch we stood in line to get a bowl of rice. Then we stood in another line for soup, which in the US we would call a stew. There were several different colors of stew, each with a hint of red from the palm oil. I'm sure they tasted different, but I could never taste anything except the AAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH of peppers.

Did I mention I looked terrifically thin when I got back to the States? Suck it, Atkins Diet.

The American professors had apartments on/near campus. When one of the professors went back to the States for a few weeks she allowed us to use her home - and at that point I cooked an entire four-course meal for seven on a hibachi with no refrigeration and one knife, thankyouverymuch. YES. Do I feel any conflict now with my nifty collection of multi-functional kitchen accoutrements? Well no, not until this minute... hmmm..... well, I'll say this - standards are higher in the US as an adult than they were in Liberia (or anywhere) as a college student.

Sweetie mentioned recently that if we're going on a trip there's sure to be a Stephanie-developed checklist of Stuff To Bring. And I can't tell you how difficult it was to get used to a much more laid-back way of traveling. Specifically, when do we leave? When the bus is full. If a big group comes by tomorrow and buys tickets, we leave tomorrow. Otherwise, no. How long is the trip? Depends on if it's rainy season or not. Depends on if the military checkpoints lets us pass. There's no way to know. Now put your head back on your canteen and go to sleep.

And throwing ourselves on the mercy of strangers to take us in whither we landed just blew my mind. But you know, what a wonderful thing - to fling one's self on the wings of adventure and be confident of a warm welcome. It never, ever failed to materialize - a safe, dry place to sleep.

Fufu is boiled, pounded cassava root. Women young and old sit outside with their pot of fufu-in-process and the pounding stick and they pound all day. ALL DAY.

Tastes like wax.

Cassava fries, though, aren't bad.

Liberia is a tribal country. You can draw all the lines you want to around a map, but patriotism is tribe, not country. Every tribe has its specialty industry, and the Mandingo tribe made incredible bread. Like French bread - crisp outside, fluffy inside, perfect with (I'm not kidding) Laughing Cow cheese, which you could buy one wedge at a time on the street in the capitol.

Going to Liberia when I was 19 made it really weird to say "I'll just have a beer." In college - where I had been a mere 60 days previously - there's so much faux-drama and secrecy and posturing about alcohol that it was other-worldly for it to be a non-event to have a Club beer. Which, by the way, I've never liked, but sterilizing your water gets old pretty fast and makes bottled beverages much more appealing. I've never cared for soda, either, but orange Fanta was my best friend for a while.

It's also how I knew I had malaria - I was at the market and spit out my Fanta saying it had "gone bad." It can't. The soda was fine, it was me that wasn't doing so great. And that's really all I remember until about 5 days later when my fever broke.

Palaver is a highly civilized concept. To palaver is to peaceably discuss an issue, for as long as necessary, until a workable solution can be reached. In small villages issues are not put to a majority vote - because if 51% support an idea, then you have 49% of your village unhappy with it. One imagines a leader doesn't sleep well that way, and probably not much of the citizenry, either.

There is also a wonderful dish known as palaver sauce; I'd be happy to share the recipe but I can't find kpon leaves or plato greens anywhere and doubt they're much available. Sadly, due to the absence of worlor seed, I won't be sharing the worlor sauce recipe, either.

The bananas I've had in the states have, frankly, fallen short of what I've learned a banana can be. Head out of the gutter, please. In West Africa they were small, creamy, and intensely flavorful. If you have the opportunity to pick up some red bananas they most closely approximate what I had available (really available, like "dropping off the tree").

One of my favorite dishes was Groundnut Stew. Groundnuts are known as the States as peanuts. This wonderful dish is cleverly served atop rice.

From the Phebe Cookbook, written by the folks at the Phebe Hospital compound - and by all means, take advantage of the supermarket and its selection of natural peanut butter!

Groundnut Stew
1 pint (2 cups) roasted peanuts
2 lbs. chicken or beef
1 bouillon cube (chicken or beef) - check the label to see if it's gluten-free, if that's a concern
Tomato paste
1 medium onion
1 TBSP butter (optional)

Season meat with salt and pepper. Let stand for a while.

Cook meat on medium heat until partly tender. Pound peanuts in mortar until like butter. Add 2 cups sterilized water to peanuts. Strain through a sieve. Pour the liquid into a pot with meat. Add a little tomato paste to give color. Cook until as tender as desired (approximately two hours).

Now? Not Yet?

[Note: This is a Michael Jackson-free post. Who cares what a food blogger thinks about Michael Jackson?]

Despite my resistance and disbelief and foot-dragging refusal, time marched on and I turned 40. So here's my question - am I old enough to be crotchety? I would LOVE to tell these young'uns to pull their damn pants up, that flip-flops are not appropriate office attire, and a faux-hawk looks completely ridiculous. Real mohawks look only slightly less ridiculous, but at least the person committed to it.

Once I've had some time out of the sun and a refreshing iced tea I still know that droopy pants and flip-flops and bad hair are UGH, but I'm a lot less likely to say so.

The same heat that is bringing my brown-eyed Susans to bloom and (hopefully) makes my vegetables grow is also driving me away from the kitchen and out to the grill. Last night I had the thrill of making a bruschetta with tomato, basil, and oregano from my own garden, and using it to top grilled chicken and zucchini. YUM. I'm really hoping these vegetable plants decide to help me out by, like, producing something edible. I've got 3 kinds of tomatoes, okra, yellow squash, jalapenos, and herbs going - we shall see.

The grill is a godsend in the heat, not in the least because Sweetie likes to tend the grill while I sit inside in the air conditioning and sip iced tea or a nice Pinot Grigio.

Grilled Herbed Pork Tenderloin
Cooking Light, 2006

1/4 cup fresh oregano leaves - yes, fresh
1/4 cup fresh sage leaves - yes, fresh
1/4 cup fresh orange juice - bottled is fine
2 tbsp honey (the recipe calls for 1/4 cup, which I found much too sweet. Your mileage may vary)
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil - I'm not really sure what it is besides something that would take up even more space in my cabinet. Regular vegetable oil is fine.
6 garlic cloves, peeled
2 (1-pound) pork tenderloins
1/4 teaspoon salt
Cooking spray

1. Combine first 9 ingredients - oregano through garlic - in a blender or food processor. Process until almost smooth. Pour mixture into a large heavy-duty zip-top plastic bag. Add pork to bag and seal. Marinate in refrigerator 2 hours, turning bag occasionally.

2. Prepare grill.

3. Remove pork from marinade. Discard marinade.

4. Place pork on grill rack coated with cooking spray. Cover and grill 25 minutes or until a thermometer registers 160 degrees, turning pork after 15 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Be Zucchiniful and Multiply... A Little

Funny thing about gardening – it’s a problem to do it poorly (our usual dried flower arrangement out front in the flower eternal-rest bed), and a problem to do it prolifically (zucchini). I love Mary’s “Darwin Garden” term – it's a tough world, and the only survivors are the ones who fight for it.

After last year’s stunning success with a basil plant – it produced basil! – I confidently aimed higher this year. Yup, I bought another basil plant. Plus two tomato plants, an jalapeno (bush? shrub? It doesn’t look vine-ish… should it? Have I messed up already?), and actual living thyme and oregano.

Lessons learned thus far:
a) It’s probably much easier to get a pre-made tomato cage around the plant when it’s small, and not when it’s 3 feet tall and bearing fruit. And hopefully not pointless.

b) Plants need water. Not that I didn’t already know that, but a trip out of town with no rain reinforced the lesson.

c) One thyme plant doesn’t produce a heck of a lot of thyme. I probably need several.

d)You can spin yourself into a tizzy with this organic thing. I was trying to buy organic seeds, but then I realized I’d plant them into soil I know nothing about and they’d be watered with rain in one of America’s worst air-quality cities. Then I stopped thinking about it altogether, hummed a happy tune, and focused on sending cheerful, leaf-affirming thoughts to my fledgling tomaters.

e)Tossing the grill cover on the basil plant – and leaving it there – makes for an unhappy plant.

f) In fact, it may not be a great idea to keep a super-hot grill near the plants at all. Hmmmm…..

One thing I stayed away from was the afore-mentioned zucchini, which produce like the rabbits of the vegetable kingdom. Two reasons – first, there are just two people in the household and we can only eat so much of any one vegetable.

More poignantly, what if it died? Could my self-esteem handle not being able to grow zucchini? It’s like not being able to grow dandelions in the middle of the lawn. I think it would have unpleasant emotional consequences.

For those of you blessed with an abundance of zucchini, a) call me, we’d be happy to take some off your hands! and b) two unusual recipes to use it up are below. I’m not a huge pineapple fan, but I like this bread.

Zucchini-Pineapple Quick Bread
Cooking Light

Yield 2 loaves
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini (about 1 1/2 medium zucchini)
2/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup egg substitute
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 (8-ounce) cans crushed pineapple in juice, drained
Baking spray with flour

1. Preheat oven to 325°.
2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flour, salt, and next 3 ingredients (through ground cinnamon) in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk.
3. Beat eggs with a mixer at medium speed until foamy. Add sugar, zucchini, oil, egg substitute, and vanilla, beating until well blended. Add zucchini mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Fold in pineapple. Spoon batter into 2 (9 x 5–inch) loaf pans coated with baking spray. Bake at 325° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on a wire rack; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.


Zucchini-Chocolate Cake
Cooking Light

I've never made the glaze, so I'm not vouching for it. Also, if you think this is a great way to sneak veggies into kids and they just won't notice something green in their chocolate cake, well, good luck with that. At age 4 it didn't escape Cutie's notice that there was something going on with this cake that she wasn't used to seeing. She ate it and she liked it, but she has always been a good eater (particularly of dessert).

CAKE:
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (4 ounces) block-style fat-free cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup fat-free buttermilk
2 cups shredded zucchini
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

GLAZE:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
8 teaspoons fat-free milk
2 tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°.

To prepare cake, coat a 12-cup Bundt pan with cooking spray; dust pan with 1 tablespoon flour.

Place sugars, cream cheese, and vegetable oil in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs and egg whites, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Lightly spoon 2 1/2 cups flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine 2 1/2 cups flour and next 5 ingredients (2 1/2 cups flour through cinnamon) in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk.

Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Stir in zucchini, 2/3 cup chocolate chips, and nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

To prepare glaze, combine 3/4 cup powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons cocoa in a small bowl; stir with a whisk. Combine milk, 2 tablespoons chocolate chips, coffee, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract in a 1-cup glass measure. Microwave at medium 45 seconds or until chocolate melts, stirring after 20 seconds. Combine powdered sugar mixture with chocolate mixture, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle glaze over cake.

Not THAT Kind of Blood Orange

My brand-new salad craving is heightening my fear that turning 40 will make me a Responsible Adult. Or, at the very least, cement my Old Enough To Know Better status. I'm filing for an extension since I'm clearly not ready.

Or perhaps it's just a continuation of the "sashaying to the beat of my own accordion" that I've pretty much always done. At least my newfound obsession, the dark chocolate covered pretzels at Trader Joe's - is keeping a sense of normalcy.

Over the weekend I threw some fish on the grill and made this tasty salad. Two things to work around - a) oranges and asparagus are generally not in season at the same time - sliced apples would work much better than the dry, styrofoam-y oranges I was able to get, and b) how the hell do you "shave" asparagus? They're skinny spears. You have to hold onto them somewhere. They're floppy. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to pull that off without also pulling off a layer of skin.

Our chopped asparagus salad turned out just fine. The dressing is terrific. Thyme, which grows in my herb garden, substitutes just fine for tarragon, which I didn't plant.

Shaved/Chopped Asparagus Salad with Orange-Tarragon Vinaigrette
Vegetarian Times

1/3 cup raw hazelnuts or almonds
1 large shallot, peeled and minced (3 TBSP)
3 TBSP white wine vinegar (or regular white vinegar)
1 TBSP chopped fresh tarragon leaves (or thyme)
2 tsp. orange zest - about 1 orange
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
7 TBSP olive oil (I used 5)
1/2 pound fresh asparagus (8 to 10 medium-size spears)
6 cups mixed spring greens
2 navel oranges

[If using hazelnuts - preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place hazelnuts on baking sheet and toast 15 minutes, or until skins darken and split. Rub nuts between two towels until skins come off. Cool, then coarsely chop]

1. Whisk together shallot, vinegar, tarragon/thyme, orange zest, and mustard in bowl. Whisk in oil. Season with salt and pepper. I didn't whisk, I just combined everything in a cruet and shook it.

2. Peel asparagus into long, thin strands with a peeler. Then e-mail me a video about how you did it.

3. Toss with greens in bowl.

4. Peel oranges with knife, removing white pith. Slice between membranes, and cut orange segments directly into salad, letting juice drip into bowl. Toss salad with nuts and 3 TBSP dressing. Serve remaining dressing on the side.

Easy-Peasy (Hold The Peas)

Y'all, we went to the most amazing wedding over the weekend - it was like having a walk-on part in a fairy tale.

Besides "Steph and her Sweetie had a terrific time at the beach wedding", that statement also means "she hasn't cooked much." Seriously, I came home Sunday night - after Sweetie surprised me with a trip to the spot where we got engaged and later married - to no food in the house and not much time to cook, anyway.

Everyone flies on a wing and a prayer at some point. I'm still trying to eat really healthfully, and this has been "throw it in a skillet and hope for the best" week.

Substitute "baking dish" for "skillet", and we have last night's super-easy, quite yummy dinner. Knowing full well there was nothing in the fridge, I stopped by the supermarket on the way home and got one tilapia filet ($1.50) and a small head of broccoli. I may have to do that again...

Baked Tilapia and Broccoli
4 Tilapia filets (to serve 4 - I just did one since Sweetie wasn't home for dinner)
2 cups broccoli, carrots, and chopped shallots (again, adjust according to how many people are eating)
1 lemon
Cooking spray or 1 TBSP butter
Old Bay seasoning

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Spray baking dish large enough for fish and vegetables. For easier, though not environmentally-friendly, clean-up line the baking dish with foil and then spray with cooking spray.

Place filet(s) and vegetables in baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice and seasoning. Dot with butter if using; if not, mist with cooking spray/olive oil.

Bake at 375 degrees for between 12 and 20 minutes. Fish will be opaque and will flake easily with a fork when done.

This could not have been easier and was way tasty.