Scam Cookies

Surely I've told you Mensa Boy's theory about oatmeal cookies. I have, haven't I? Well, to recap, he says that oatmeal cookies are "scam cookies" because they look like chocolate chip from a distance.

MB is a man of simple tastes. Ice cream should be vanilla and cookies should be chocolate chip. That's it. Oh. Pies should be apple. 

Here is a conversation I had with him via email today:

ME: I ate a scam cookie this morning. 

It was actually good. 
I suspect the icing on it helped.

HE: I’m glad you were able to get through it. Most people don’t survive the shock.

(photo stolen from http://www.joyofbaking.com. (thanks folks!))

It's Hard to be Poor

When you just want one of these:

Hiding

Pearl
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

Do you ever feel like this?

Mistress of the Art of Death

Just finished this excellent book! I seem to be continuing down the path of historical fiction/medical-related! In this case, it's not a doctor, per se, but a coroner, whose skills I am reading about. This one takes place in 12th century England, where young children are being lured and then tortured and killed. Of course the Jews, who "murdered Jesus," are the only suspects. King Henry II, who is fond of the Jews because of how well they keep his coffers filled, has written to his friend William, King of Sicily, and asked him to send a "death master" to read the bodies of the murdered children in order to ascertain the true perpetrator.

Being 12th century England, the death master, who is a woman, for pete's sake,  is accompanied by her manservant and an investigator. The manservant acts as the true doctor and she as his assistant.

I'd say this is great murder mystery fiction a la Patricia Cornwell, but I think this one is actually better than Cornwell's novels. 

Fall Gardening

Here in the Southeast we get a second growing season for vegetables that lasts until nearly Thanksgiving. The fall garden goes in right about now and we are able to put in collards, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower and onion sets. I'll check for garlic locally. I haven't seen any yet, but if I can't find it, I'll order it online.

Yesterday we cleaned out the spent summer garden stuff...mostly tomato plants...they failed pretty miserably. I'm not sure why they did. But I do think we have to get over our loathing of the heat and take a walk through the garden every single day. I suspect that neglect may have been the culprit in some instances. Liz and I are gardening together and I think we each may have thought the other was doing things they weren't! At any rate, we learned a few things from our summer garden:

1. Lettuce was good but really we get perfectly good organic lettuce from the grocery store.
2. Cage and stake the tomato plants earlier.
3. Plant green beans. We missed them this year.
4. Weed control between the beds needs to have a higher priority. We lost plants in the weeds when they spilled out over the beds.
5. We can really get a great harvest of cucumbers, tomatillos and hot peppers! Also stevia turned out to be a GREAT GROWER!

But all in all, I suspect Liz and I are more cut out for fall gardening. We both are Vata doshas and tend to wear out quick in the heat.

We have some great bugs in the garden. I shot a photo of a writing spider there yesterday on a habanero plant. I used my cellphone camera.

The Last Jew

I finished the third of a bunch of books I've read by Noah Gordon now have ordered the only two others that our library has. If my love of this author continues I may have to (*gasp*) buy the rest!

My reading odyssey all began with "The Physician," which Nate gave me right before I left for Minnesota. I was turning the house upside-down for a paperback for the plane and he produced it. It was required reading for a class of his at Erskine. "The Physician" is about a little guy who loses his parents and is given to a traveling barber surgeon. Now, this is 11th century London, so he's a traveling "doctor," such as they were. The boy learns all about the business of helping people with minor ailments, as well as selling a potion they called "physick" and juggling and telling stories to bring in more income. After the barber dies, the boy decides he wants to be a real, learned medical doctor. But they are few and far between and the one he knows of and wants to apprentice with won't take him on because he's not a Jew. He travels to the school in Persia where the Jewish physician took his training and gains entrance to study under Persian physician Avicenna by pretending to be a Jew (there is a ban on Christian students).

It's a wonderful book that I hated to see end:


After finishing that one, I ordered "Shaman," which is about this same physician's descendant. It takes place on the Illinois frontier in the civil war era. I wrote about that one here, but didn't say much. It covers the advent of anesthesia and hygiene, as well as early American apothecaries and Indian medicine. "Shaman" is particularly interesting because this doctor is deaf as a result of contracting Scarlet Fever as a child.

The "Last Jew." Now this one was hard to get into at first. I actually started it and then put it down for 2 weeks. It's very dry at the beginning, but I picked it up again because I remembered that the other two were a tiny bit slow grabbing my attention. So I stuck it out a few more pages and then was hooked. It takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, and the "last Jew" left in Spain, who survived by keeping his Jewishness, (and his circumcised penis,) under wraps. Our hero, Yonah Helkiah, wanders around Spain after surviving the decimation of his family (he'd hidden in a cave). He takes on several odd-ranging jobs and names as he wanders, ultimately apprenticing to a metal master and then later, that master's brother, who is a physician.
Another book I hated to see end!

An Abridged History of American-Centric Warfare. Using Food.

Ghee

Ghee. Clarified butter, essentially. But cooked a little longer to really get the oil purified and separated from the milk solids. I've been reading quite a bit lately about Ayurvedic medicine and cookery and ghee is much-touted for it's healthy properties. So I decided to make some myself. I used salted butter because that's all I had, but it does turn out very very salty. I compensate for that by being doubly careful not to oversalt food that I've cooked in ghee.

Yesterday I had a hankering for french fries at lunch time but we didn't have any in the freezer. So I peeled a potato, cooked it in a sandwich bag in the microwave, and then sliced it. I fried the slices in ghee. I got some wonderfully golden brown and delicious home-fried potatoes! Ghee, since it does not have the milk solids, has a much higher smoke point than butter. In fact, I've read that you can deep fry in it.

I'll be experimenting a lot more with my ghee. I think the next thing I'll make is chapati. I've made chapati quite a bit, but have not cooked them with ghee.

Shaman by Noah Gordon

Get this book.

I read "The Physician" while in Minneapolis and had to get the next book, "Shaman." The main characters are the descendants of the main character in other book. But not hideously over-worked. There's a connection, but just blood. The stories don't dovetail or anything. GREAT BOOK! It takes place during the Civil War.

End of Week One, Day Five

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief today at school when the bell rang at 3:30. We managed to complete our first week of school!

Yes, there were a few kids that were mis-directed. Placed in the wrong classes. A couple of disciplinary incidents already. Still no receptionist. A few classes filled to overflowing. Much paperwork done and data entry completed. More to do in the coming weeks. But 3:30 came and we all bid our students goodbye and considered the weekend.

I grocery-shopped with Taylor. We parked in a "Customer with Child" spot. Just to be rebellious. He drove the car in the store. We discussed food. He chose tacos for supper and so I made those...bean ones for me.

I also made my first batch of ghee. A pound of butter, simmered for a couple of hours. Skimmed the milk solids off the top and used a bit to fry my beans. SALTY!!! I guess that's where all the salt in salted butter goes! I'll have to make the next batch with unsalted butter. I'm looking forward to playing with the ghee. I think I'll make fry bread tomorrow with it.

Somewhat Wordless, Unlike Someone Else!

I haven't written much, and I blame it on Facebook. It's easy enough to write a 140 character observation about something. Harder to write a missive for a blog.

That said, I observed something today on our school fax machine that gave me pause. You know those stupid scamming emails about the dude from Nigeria that wants to send you a bucket of money because he has no other place to put it? He'll give you some percentage of it if you pay him to ship it to you? Something like that?

Today on our fax machine was a newer version of that scam. One I consider to be a new kind of low in the area of scamming. This one was a letter from "Robert Barnes," a US Marine serving in Afghanistan. It uses a whole bunch of jarhead jargon to tell you that things are really bad there but they found this stash of abandoned cash. Here's the kicker paragraph that sort of got me hot:

"I don't want you to judge me by what you just read. I am a Devil Dog with a lot pride and honour. No amount of money can make up for the pain and sacrifice we all got through here in the hell hole in service for our country. But I have to also secure my future and have something to bank on after my active service."


ugh.

Another Perk

So when we were in Minnesota week before last (has it been that long already?), we were staying at my parent's house. Each morning my mom would begin the day the by saying, "We need to plan supper."

Usually this conversation happened right after I stumbled into the house from the camper and poured my first cup of coffee.

Why did she need to know this so early each day? BECAUSE CARNIVORES HAVE TO TAKE STUFF OUT OF THE FREEZER TO THAW! We vegetarians? Not so much. The only advance planning I do anymore is to soak beans overnight or start them in a crockpot during the day. My freezer is full of bread flour and frozen blueberries.

I'm just sayin'

The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barries

Mom encouraged me to read this book. I believe it was an Oprah book club selection at one time. I loved it. The book was the first written by this author, who is in his 90s. 

It takes place in a small English town right around the beginning of WWI. It's about a street where the Christians and Jews live across from each other and the barriers of religious beliefs that are evident. Autobiographical, the book is about the author's own family and their struggles to survive poverty. To complicate matters, Harry's sister falls in love with a Jewish boy across the street. It's sort of Romeo and Juliet and Angela's Ashes all rolled into one. Happier endings, though.

There are more books written by this author. I'll be looking for them.

My Summer is Coming to a Close

My summer break ends Sunday night and I will remember this one fondly. It did not involve raves or speedboats, but I had a great little party of my own all summer. I took a lot of naps, I read a lot of books. I played with my food and did a lot of yoga. I got a new car and a new phone, both of which have stretched me technologically. I played with my friends and family. We took a nice trip to Minnesota, where we saw all our family...both sides. Even the ones in Saskatchewan! We saw one niece play her senior recital and another get engaged. We met our one of our new grand-nieces, too.

And the other day we said hello and goodbye to our second son, Riley, who graduated from Army Basic Training. We had a graduation dinner at Yesterday's in Columbia, where he experienced for the first time the gratitude of our country for his service as the owner thanked him and paid for his lunch.

Any regrets at all about this summer? I don't think so. The only thing I didn't get to do that I wanted to was see a Twins game at Target field. But I figure that will be around  for many years to come.

And so on Monday I'll go back to work rested and happy, peaceful and calm. Maybe it will be Endless Summer in my mind.

Back into the Oven!

We have had the most unseasonable weather here this past week. The temps have only been in the low-to-mid 80s and we've gotten up to high 50s in the mornings. But that will end now, as we start to climb back up to the high 90s.

I'm grateful for the new car. Mensa Boy bought a 2010 Prius for me when the van decided to retire. Big Green had 182,000 miles on her, and she was going to need a couple thousand dollars of the work in the coming months. The most pressing of which was the air conditioning. Again. The new car cools off in minutes and this week I will be thinking about that whenever I get into it.

I have to confess I'm a little sheepish about the car. People exclaim and congratulate me, and my best pal has been teasing me unmercifully about it. But it seems so extravagant right now. I loved my van and could have happily driven it for many more years (if they'd ever been able to stop that creaking noise it made when I turned the steering wheel). With a kid in college and new carpet needing to be bought for the house, my salary and days being cut this coming year, and Bob's salary still the same as two years ago, I really feel dumb taking on a car payment. But at least this will be a known car expense and not something that bolts you out of the blue like car repairs do.

So when people exclaim over the vehicle and talk about it, I find myself wanting to just say "let's talk about something else."

This year's Independence Day was probably one of the most fun we've ever had. Mensa Boy organized the "First Ever Henry Nesbitt Grand Day Parade," which was a whopping 1/10th of a mile long. Henry Nesbitt is the end of our Shelley Mullis Rd as it crosses into North Carolina. Apparently you can't just let a SC road name cross the state line, so that last 1/10th of a mile is named for someone else. We still aren't sure who Henry was, but he was probably a war hero of some sort. Could be Revolutionary War, could be "The War of Northern Aggression," who knows?

So after the 10 of us marched down to the end of the road and then marched back, we repaired to our home for supper. We grilled portabello mushrooms and corn and had sliced tomatoes and watermelon. After supper we progressed to Kriz's house, where we lit a bonfire, shot off fireworks and had blueberry cobbler and homemade ice cream. A great time was had by all, particularly Taylor and Ken, who tended the pyrotechnics. Mensa Boy was too tired to stress about the explosives, so Taylor just went to town with them...I think maybe he'd never done that before.

All in all a very nice 4th and a wonderful weekend. Now it's back to the hard work of...oh wait! I still have a month of summer left!

Oh...the Tour! If anyone thinks watching a bike race is boring, they should have watched yesterday's stage 2. Crashes, underdogs, demonstrations...it was all there.

Roast Okra

RoastOkra
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

I know I've written about this before. But I truly think that roasted okra is one of the really good things about living in the south.

Not slimy.

At all.

Drying Stevia

DryingStevia
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

YogiLiz picked up two Stevia plants this spring when she was wandering through the garden centers. They are extremely easy to grow and taste wonderful! Just picking off a leaf and chewing on it gives a wonderful blast of pure sweet.

I've used it here and there for garnishes, but this last weekend I cut a big bunch of it to dry. When I'm satisfied that the leaves are sufficiently dry then I'll crumble them up and put them in a couple of empty spice jars. I think they will be excellent added to tea.

Surya Namaskar A X 108

It's the summer equinox and one traditional yogi way to celebrate it is by doing 108 sun salutations. And so I thought, "why not? I've got all day..."

I gathered 27 coins and put them on the upper right corner of my mat. As I get to to pose 10 pictured there on the right, I flick a coin off the mat onto the floor.

I am not doing 4 and 9. Instead I am going back to plank after 3 and then straight to uttanasana after 8.

I did the first 54 to a sanskrit chant. After doing shoelace to rest and stretch the hips, I switched to African drums. Now I'll start the next 27 to Gregorian chants and then finish off with Donna Delory.

Happy solstice! The longest day of the year. Make the most of it!

I found this picture of the sequence on Google Images. Here.

Blackberries

Blackberries
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

The first of the summer. I got about 1 1/2 cups. I was not dressed for blackberry foraging (long pants, long sleeves, boots, gloves), so I did didn't get very aggressive in my picking.

In my defense, this photo looked a lot less washed-out on my computer before I uploaded it.

Oh. That's a sprig of stevia on top. We are growing some in our yogagarden.

Tostada Night

Tostadas
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

When you decide to go vegetarian, and you are the only one in a family of carnivores, you really have to step it up in terms of "interestingness" when it comes to supper.

Sure, we've had tacos. Lots and lots of tacos. Using store-bought taco mix and hamburger and then all those tortilla chips or taco shells you buy in the bags and boxes. But this. Now THIS...it is the BEST WAY to eat that kind of food. The old-fashioned, fried-in-oil way.

Here's what I wrote about tostada night. And I should tell you, I had to kind of hunt for yellow corn tortillas. White corn rules the market. I think it's semi-tasteless.

Tostada Night

You know how you end up with days and days of leftover pinto beans whenever you cook up a pot? I mean … I like them. Don’t get me wrong. But I can only eat them so many days in a row before I’m ready to swear off them forever.  Of course that wears off after a month or so and then I’m ready to cook up another batch.

                One way I’ve discovered to use those up is to make homemade refried beans with them. Most of us are used to just opening cans of refritos (refried beans) and using those for our tacos or whatever.  But those canned varieties really miss the boat in flavor when compared to the homemade variety. They always seem a little watery to me. And bland. I’m giving you a recipe that I’ve adapted from “The New Moosewood Cookbook,” by Mollie Katzen. I think the cumin really makes or breaks these beans. See what you think.

                Tostada night is a great weeknight dinner event, and a fantastic way to get the family together to hang out and eat. I draw them into the kitchen when I start frying corn tortillas. It works every time. When I was a kid there were no bags of tortilla chips, or prepared taco shells. My mom cooked corn tortillas in oil on the stovetop. Nothing beats that flavor. I think we gave up that practice because we started shying away from frying due to its’ status as an unhealthy way to prepare food, and it was a messy and left oil clouds hanging in the room for a few hours. I keep the mess down by putting my frying screen over the top of the fry pan. I can’t do anything about the oil clouds, but my 10-foot ceilings sure make it easier to ignore!

                Lay out some lettuce, salsa, onions, tomatoes and grated cheese (or go really authentic and use queso) and start frying tortillas. Let the family build theirs as they come out of the skillet. They will stay there and eat them, waiting for the next one to come out of the skillet. And as they stand there, you will hear a lot more about their lives. Just be careful not to fry your tortillas too long. They really only take about half a minute or less on each side. 

Refritos (refried beans)

By Karen Paulson

Adapted from “The New Moosewood Cookbook,” by Mollie Katzen

 Leftover pinto beans, drained (maybe 2 cups)

1 1/2 C minced onion

5 or 6 (or more) medium cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp ground cumin, or to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat a small amount of oil in a large skillet. Be sure it’s an old skillet that you don’t care about scratching. Add the onions, garlic and cumin. Heat, stirring, until the onions and garlic are starting to get soft. Add the beans. Heat and smash the beans to the consistency you prefer.

If you really want to add flavor, cook your pinto beans with a couple of halved, seeded jalapeno peppers. You can also consider adding a small bell pepper to the bean mixture when you make it in the skillet.