Fun with Food

In the kitchen with Dad (and the Coal Miner’s Daughter)

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‘Why it pays to taste while making gravy. Or baking pies.’

Anybody who knows me, either in person or through the Virtual Universe, knows by now that Thanksgiving is my all-time favorite holiday. You can read how and why in last year’s ‘Turkey Shoot’. But if you’d rather just keep reading this, I bet you can guess that Awesome Food is one of the reasons T’giving wins the Holiday Sweepstakes, at least for me:

I’m not going to bother posting a picture of what I consider the absolute best part of this best holiday meal: the gravy. Because, delicious though it might be, gravy just isn’t all that photogenic. Neither is stuffing, which I also adore. Go figure.

Anyway. This is a story about gravy and cherry pie and my Dad and the Coal Miner’s Daughter. Continue reading

Great Aunts and Glorified Rice

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‘Summer foods that did not come from a farm stand’

Some of you have read my Ode to Corn, and no doubt share my fondness for what can be enjoyed pretty much straight from the garden. (Or, in my case, the farm stand.) But there was a whole other category of deliciousness to be savored during summers where and when I grew up. And that was the food made by Great Aunts and dished out at Family Reunions.

My favorite of these was a dish called Glorified Rice. Here it is, in all its (sorry, I can’t help myself) glory:

I picked this photo because I have these dishes. Now I just need to fill them

I picked this photo because I have these dishes

Now, the Wikipedia entry for Glorified Rice is pretty hilarious, on a couple of levels. For one, the dish is described as a ‘dessert/salad’. For another, one of its sources was a website called lutheransonline.com, which I clicked (of course) and found is now defunct. Probably all the Lutherans grew up and moved to New York.

But more about these family reunions. They were always held in the summer, mainly so they could be outside. These were the days of Big Families, people. (No way these reunions would fit into a dining room or kitchen. Or a normal back yard, for that matter.) One of my earliest memories is of going to something called the P-A-L (Peterson/Anderson, and Lindstrom?) Reunion, held in Belvedere Park. (There was a swinging bridge that terrified me, but that’s another story.) Continue reading

General Foods, we salute you

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‘Drinking the Kool-Aid (and Country Time) in the 80s’

Those of us who worked on the General Foods account at Ogilvy used to kid around a lot (big surprise; see ‘Short Men and Flat-Chested Women’ for evidence). We used to say that nothing General Foods made was really a ‘food’. You know, something that could actually sustain life. If you were stranded on a desert island with only GF products to eat, you would, basically, starve.

That’s because everything made by General Foods (or GF as it was fondly known around the shop) was actually a powder. A powder that you stirred into water (Kool-Aid, Tang, Country Time Lemonade-Flavor Drink Mix), brewed with water (Maxwell House Coffee), shook up with meat (Shake ‘n Bake), or mixed with other assorted stuff (Good Seasons Salad Dressing Mix). I don’t mention Jello here, even though it was in fact made by GF, because it (and Bill Cosby) were Y&R’s problem, er product.

My first Ogilvy commercial was one for Shake ‘n Bake. This was in the early 80s, so it actually did not use the famous ‘and I helped’ line. Nope, I got to do commercials with this spokesperson called Pete the Butcher. The 80s were replete with spokespersons: Cora (Margaret Hamilton, who was the Bad Witch in the Wizard of Oz) for Maxwell House, Grandpa for Country Time. And those were just some of the Ogilvy GF spokespeople. (Don’t forget Bill Cosby for Jello; as if you could.)

Here’s a typical example of a Shake ‘n Bake Pete the Butcher spot that I found. I’m not sure if I did this one or not. That tells you something right there, I’m afraid. Continue reading

The Emperor has no peppers

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‘A Tale of Two Families (and an identity crisis)’

Okay. Let’s take a quick poll. What’s a brownie? Is it thick and cake-y? Or sort of gooey and dense? And what about oatmeal cookies? Fat, with raisins? Or thin and chewy, with chocolate chips?

And, not to make this all about sweets, what about potato salad? (that is, if anybody out there even eats potato salad anymore): is it sweet and sort of vinegary? Or made with mayo? And if it’s the mayo-y kind, would that be Hellmann’s, or Miracle Whip? Continue reading

Turkey Shoot

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‘At least it’s not Christmas’

Tuesday Night: Sipping a very large Manhattan to reward myself for having made the piecrust (yes, I make my own), I’m tipsily (If that’s not a real word, then it should be) writing my post while waiting for the Big Beef to do its braising thing. (More on Big Beef later.)

Today (if it is in fact Wednesday when you’re reading this) is Thanksgiving Eve. Before I get started raving about Thanksgiving, just take a look at two of the things I like best about this particular holiday:

Fingers crossed this year’s pies are as good as last year’s: Left, apple. On the right, cranberry-apple.

Anyway, I know I promised not to rant. Nor shall I. But allow me to expound instead on the virtues of Thanksgiving. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. But let’s compare the two festive occasions, shall we? Then, you decide.

Why, in my humble opinion, Thanksgiving beats the tinsel out of Christmas: Continue reading

Dad Eggs and Ham

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‘Sunday-Night Supper at the Henry House’

As some of you may know from my ubiquitous FaceBook presence, I recently spent a most glorious Family Fall Weekend with my brother Roger and his lovely wife Nobody-Doesn’t-Like-Jenn. It was my favorite kind of weekend because, basically, we really didn’t do much. Looked at slides of my nephew’s wedding. Hung out on the Porch of Ill Repute with glasses of wine. Played with the across-the-street neighbor’s baby. (Hi, Olivia! Hi, Olivia’s Mom Amanda!)

Oh, and being Henrys, we also ate a lot of food. Like Roger’s chili, which he makes in large vats then freezes into chili-sicles for emergency guests-are-here use. (He also bestows these as gifts to neighbors. Move near him, if you can.)  Roger also continues to make the Peterson Christmas-Eve Oyster Stew, but I’ll have to wait to eat it. And you’ll have to wait to hear about it.

You do get to hear about Dad Eggs, though. Dad Eggs is a dish my Dad (in photo above) concocted to Give Mom a Break on Sunday Nights. See, Sundays were the days we went to (Lutheran) Church, then stuck around after the service to eat pastries and watch Pastor Kahre smoke, then went home to the main meal of the day, usually a large roast of some kind. (Remind me to tell you about ‘heart meat’; trust me, it’s in no way similar to ‘eye of round’).

So, since Mom had gone to a lot of trouble (gravy! remember gravy?), and we were all still kind of full when suppertime rolled around, Dad would go into his act. Continue reading

They needed the eggs

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‘Special Cozy and Delicious Weekend Edition‘

So. Those of you who follow my blog (thank you!) know that I’ve been trying to restrain myself. Limit my posts to twice a week. But I’m breaking my self-imposed rule today.

See, the Duchess of Devonshire died. Not that I knew her or anything, but I do think of her around this time of year because that’s when I dust off the le Creuset and make her boeuf bourguignon. Which is absolutely the best BB ever. (Recipe included at the end of this post. So, if you’re bored, feel free to skip ahead.)

But if you’d like to find out what the heck the Duchess of D has to do with Malcolm Forbes, read on.

Malcolm Forbes wasn’t a Duchess (or even a Duke), but he was probably pretty close to what passes for Royalty on our side of the Pond. He was powerful, he knew a lot of famous people. Besides, he had tons of money, certainly more than Debo (as she was known to her friends and fam, but not to commoners like me — or even Malcolm, I bet).

Well, Malcolm was one of the Dude’s Dad’s patients. (The Dude would kill me for mentioning this, Continue reading

Yup, Summer’s officially over

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Toasted cheese

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Farewell BLT. Welcome Toasted Cheese’

When I was a kid back in the Midwest the highlight of our summer was the Clinton County Fair. It was hot, it was dusty. It was noisy, it was crowded. But it had carnies and cotton candy and corn dogs. We loved getting sick on the rides and even sicker on the food. (We also used to have a blast arguing over which high school girl was going to be crowned Miss Clinton County Fair, but that’s another story.)

But the Fair always made my Mom sad. She said it was because Fair Time, even though it was right at the height of ‘calendar summer’ — July, for heavens’ sakes — meant, for her, that Summer Time was pretty much over. I never understood this until I got older and summer started lasting ten minutes.

Anyway. According to the calendar, today is the day Summer is officially over, the ‘end’ being September 21 (or is it 22 this year?) But I say ‘calendar schmalendar’. We all have our own, very personal, ways of deciding when Summer is over, or about to be. For some, it’s Labor Day. For others, it’s when Continue reading

To hell with kale

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‘An Ode to Corn’

Last night was the fourth night in a row that we did not have kale.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t like kale. Kale has its tasty uses (see yummy recipe at the end of this post for proof). It’s just that I love corn. Which is what we had last night–yes–for the fourth night in a row. I’m not talking Niblets here, people. I’m talking fresh-from-the-farm-stand corn-on-the-cob corn.

It would be hard for me not to love corn. After all, I grew up in the Midwest right in the heart of Corn Country. My Grampa Henry grew corn. My mother spent her summers detasseling corn. My dad spent his working in a plant that processed Green Giant MexiCorn.

Now I understand that there are a heck of a lot of kale-lovers out there. Enough that there are rumors of a Continue reading

Proof that Swedes are geniuses

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As if we needed any more evidence of superior Nordic brainpower, watch this:

Heh heh heh. The BookBook. I can just hear Grandpa Peterson chuckling over that one. Right after he finished his raspberry pie and very-weak-but-constantly-present coffee.

Speaking of food, I’m glad to see that my fellow Swedes are concentrating their brains on what they are good at (witty commercials, impossible-to-construct furniture) because they are certainly no great shakes in the culinary department.

My Grandma Peterson used to serve a traditional dish called lutefisk every year at Christmas. It’s made from a fish that’s been Continue reading