Fix-It and Forget-It

We just finished a cooking class today titled “Healthy Start Lunch.” It’s easy to be sedentary in winter, so we’re trying to trim fat whatever way we can.
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Rebecca is my daughter. She’s a very good cook. While I couldn’t get her to chop an onion when she was growing up, she’s become a cook who tries everything now—successfully. She also is the Manager of The Good Cooking Store in our little Lancaster County town of Intercourse, PA. She taught Language Arts to middle-schoolers for 7 years. Now we benefit from all of her energy and good ideas. Don’t miss what she has to say!
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Pennsylvania puts on a massive, jaw-dropping Farm Show every January. Half the fun is getting there. It notoriously snows tons during the week, adding drama outdoors to all the spectacular goings-on indoors within the nine or so buildings.
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In case you’re worn out by trying to feed your household one decent meal a day, consider what these two women have bitten off!

First, a little background. Mennonite Disaster Service shows up to clean up after tornados, floods, hurricanes, and other unhandy acts of nature. And they keep on cleaning up long after the TV cameras have moved on.

These people don’t get paid. They just bring their skills and their good hearts to help where trouble has struck.

Along the way, the MDS organizers learned that these workers are a whole lot happier at the end of a long day of mucking out basements and clearing debris and putting on roofs if they’ve got the promise of a great supper.

That’s where 71-year-old Anne and 68-year-old Tina enter the story. Thanks to Emily Will who’s written this story, and to MDS who sent it to me:
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I had never cooked with leeks, until we decided to make a dish for a recent cooking class that called for them. I’ve skirted them on market, having read about how sandy they are and how they require soaking to make them edible. Who has time? Who wants to risk grit in the teeth?

But I had this gorgeous-sounding recipe for Brussels sprouts that I wanted to make for the class—and it needed a leek. It was time. I bought my innocent-looking leek, tucked it into the fridge with a wary look, and went searching for information about how to make it behave.

I found this: Kitchen Tip: How To Clean Leeks

And this: How to Clean & Chop Leeks

And, guys, these directions work—and easily.

Now here’s the recipe that makes that little extra effort really pay off. If you want perfectly done Brussels sprouts (not mushy, not bitter, not cooked-to-death-yellow), follow these minute-by-minute instructions.
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I get all sad when corn season and peach season end here in the Northeast. Deep into September, I kept pestering the standholders at market about whether or not they’d have sweet corn for at least another week. Finally they stopped promising.

I drive by a fruit orchard every day on my way to work, and one day the “Fresh Peaches” sign was down—and so was I. I was grumpy for a week, and then I saw the bins of fresh apples spilling into their parking lot. I stopped for Macintoshes—and I was cured.

Here’s a feast for your eyes, just to remind you how sturdily lovely fresh apples are:

Mom's "Tupp" Apple Cardamom Cake

And then there’s this zipped-up apple crisp recipe (which is really more of a cobbler) with a surprise ingredient that only makes the dish sing. I made the recipe earlier this week for a cooking class of experienced cooks, and they were amazed by the zesty brightness that the dish holds. We had a baking pan of the crisp left over after the class—and our staff quickly divided it up for their lunches!
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In our recent “Fall Seasonal Treats” classes at The Good Cooking Store, we featured a squash recipe as the main course. It is a delicious dish and tastes like fall.

Acorn squash is mildly flavored, so it’s great in combination with other foods. Don’t be bashful with the spices in this dish. Use them freely! This is a feast even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy. Both of our sold-out classes loved this dish.
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Remember the Staub Dutch oven that we talked about on Tuesday? Well, all that talk about slow-cooked stews made us hungry for one!

Here is a stew that you can make in either a Dutch oven or your slow cooker. Choose whichever method fits your life. Either way, the meat comes out wonderfully tender and juicy. And look at all the vegetables you’ll be offering the people at your table.

The smell of this great dish cooking will surely make you happy that the weather is cooler and that stew season has come.
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It has been a nutso week. I could feel it coming last weekend.

On Monday we’d be launching work on a new cookbook, including bringing in some new staff.

On Tuesday, several of us on the editorial team were driving to meet with publishing staff for the American Diabetes Association. (Watch for some great new books which we’ll collaborate on again in the future!)

Wednesday and Thursday we would have back-to-back, face-to-face meetings in our office with our key designer who lives 10 hours away.

Not much cooking time in the days ahead. But I really like to eat at home when I’ve had a pressured non-stop day.

So I started early Sunday morning, making a batch of spaghetti sauce before we headed off to church. Our older daughter was coming over at noon to watch football with Merle. (If you’re interested, more about the truce we reached on football-watching when the kids were little, at the asterisk below.*) A couple of weeks ago she told me how hungry she was for the spaghetti sauce I made when she was a little kid. Well, that’s a veiled request that’s pretty hard to resist.

I started to see a solution developing here about to how to cook this week when I would really have no time. If I made a good-sized batch of my Long-Ago Spaghetti Sauce, I’d have enough left to make a Spaghetti Pie. So I cranked up the amount of pasta I cooked for Sunday lunch to be sure I’d have enough of it for the Pie, too. I would absolutely not have time or interest in cooking as the week went along. So Sunday was the day.
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It’s hard for me to trash some stuff. Not because I think I’ll miss it, but because I imagine the landfill rounding up several inches. I get this vision whenever I hold an empty plastic box in my hands. I’m talking about those eternally sturdy containers with a “4” or “5” molded into the raised triangle on their bottoms.

So I’ve got a cupboard stuffed with those round plastic boxes—in all sizes—each of them waiting for a new assignment. About half the time the cupboard door doesn’t close tightly, it’s so full. When I start to nick up my knuckles getting a stack in or out, I finally take a bunch of boxes out and retire them to the back room of the basement—where teetering piles are gathering, mostly out-of-sight.

I’m a partly converted locavore, but one of the dark, dirty secrets of eating locally for me is this accumulation of untold numbers of plastic boxes. I shop regularly at our downtown farmers market, where the vendors hand me their produce either in plastic boxes or plastic bags (yeah, it’s almost as hard for me to toss bags as it is boxes).

I do carry my grandma’s wicker market basket (it’s at least 50 years old and still doing its job), and I do return empty egg cartons to the woman who sells me eggs. I’ve thought of coming equipped with part of my army of empty plastic boxes and bags and asking that the standholders put the chicken breasts and the fresh pumpkin in them while I wait. . . and while a restless crowd grows behind me as this whole operation consumes precious minutes.

Sometimes when I’ve cooked a big meal and have lots of leftovers, I pull out a raft of plastic boxes and fill them for my mother and daughters and son-in-law. I love getting those boxes out of our house almost as much as I like giving the food away.

Then my mother gives the boxes back. I tell her I don’t want them. She says she doesn’t either.
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