Saturday, September 25, 2021

A Pot of Greens, Plus Cornbread from The Careless Cook



A Pot of Greens, Plus Cornbread from The Careless Cook

 

First off,  I have to put down my glass of wine, hold up my right hand and swear to tell the truth, something I don’t generally do because it complicates my already disordered life. 

 

This recipe is not all mine.  It’s my version of Eddie Hernandez’s recipe that he came up with decades ago, when one of his friends brought him a pile of fresh turnip greens.  Eddie is a happy, friendly restaurateur extraordinaire, who has owned several Mexican restaurants in the greater Atlanta area.  He’s really become acclimated to the southern style of cooking and his turnip greens are a good example, with Mexican flavors, but served in the southern fashion, the greens in their potlikker. 

 

Potlikker?  The broth you cooked the vegetables in.

 

But, you’re dying to know what The Careless Cook did differently.  The biggest difference is that I used cans of greens.  Now, Eddie runs a restaurant and when he cooks, he cooks massively and with great planning, so the time-to-cook (TTC) doesn’t matter.

 

I, on the other hand, had a significant other out for a 45 minute bike ride who would not show me a smile and be satisfied with a PBJ. (Pretty Bad Jumble)  Also, she’d mentioned cornbread on the way out the door.

 

First Cornbread Task:  Oven to 425ºF, oil an iron skillet and put it in the oven…..more to follow, but now let’s get back to the Greens.



In-Green-inents

 

3 cans of greens (refer to the photo to see what dusty cans I found in my pantry)

½ large tomato, seeded and diced

½ large onion, peeled and diced

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

1 jalapeño, seeded, the ribs cut out, and diced

½ stick of butter (about 4 ounces)

32 ounce carton of chicken broth

salt and red pepper flakes to taste


fresh herbs to sprinkle on top - I used cilantro

 

Puttin’ It Teegether

 

Dump all three cans of greens in a colander and drain.  Set aside.

 

Melt the butter in a large pot.  I let mine brown just a little.  Toss in all the vegetables except the greens, and cook until the onions are limp.

 

Add the greens, stir, then pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and let the greens simmer while you make the cornbread.

 

Cornbread

 

Lots of variations, as you know.  This is the simple version to use when your significant other is on a bike ride and has high expectations and hunger pangs when she returns.

 

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup corn meal

1 teaspoon salt

¼ cup sugar

4 tablespoons baking powder

1 egg

1 cup milk (I used oat milk because that’s what I had!)

¼ cup vegetable oil

 

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk to mix.  Make a well in the center and add the egg, milk, and oil.  Whisk only until the ingredients are mixed.

 

Pull the iron skillet out of the oven.  While others may know this, I will add a further instruction for my friend Daphne.  Don’t grab the skillet barehanded!

 

Put the batter in the skillet and return it to the oven.  My cornbread browned in 20 minutes.

 

I served the greens with some chopped herbs on top, plus a cut of cornbread and a glass of Pinot Gris.

 

Significant other expressed satisfaction bordering on happiness.


I raised a glass to Eddie Hernandez....who, by the way, has a fabulously interesting

cookbook that tells his story, from Mexico to now, along with a collection of recipes you're going to want to try!




 


Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Oh, Nonsense!

 



Oh, Nonsense!

 

 

Morning Blooms

 


Morning blooms in streaks so bright

 

Offspring of the fertile night

 

And soon they’ll dance beneath the moon

 

And with the morn again will bloom.

 

 

 

Look Both Ways

 


Never, never, said old Fred

 

Fail to look beneath the bed.

 

And never ride one point of view

 

And cling to it when there are two.

 

Just as when you ride a bike,

 

Or walk a mile, or ride a trike,

 

Always, always look around

 

Right side up and upside down.

 

You seldom see it with one glance,

 

Especially true with new romance.

 

 


Grasshoppers

 


When a grasshopper hops, is it always in the grass?

 

If they’re high up a tree do they come down really fast?

 

Do they lose their power of leaping if they’re higher off the turf?

 

Do they grasp the error they made before they splatter on the earth?

 

 

 

Money Trouble

 


A dollar bill is faster than anything I know.

 

I put it in my pocket, hoping it will stay,

 

But then I go to reach for it and it’s gone away.

 

Even fastest sprinters cannot move that fast.

 

Dollar bills are wicked fast, no wonder they don’t last.

 

 

 

Count Down to Midnight

 


I promised I’d go early and climb into my bed,

 

But promises are hard to keep, as has often been said

 

Make some food, read a book, turn on the TV

 

Time just races on and on, or it seems to me.

 

I never quite get settled, though trying as I might.

 

Time to pour just one more drink before it chimes midnight.

 


 

Packaging


 

I pulled a loaf of bread off the grocer’s shelf today

 

And read the label on the loaf, just to see what it would say.

 

Here is what I found today, as I went down the line,

 

I do care for my health, so I read them all the time.

 

No gluten and no soy and no dairy and no meat

 

No sugar and no chemicals to sweep me off my feet.

 

No butter or faux seasoning, no this and that, it said

 

No animals were harmed in the making of this bread.

 

The packaging quite colorless and quite light for bread.

 

When I opened up the loaf, I found another sign.

 

This bread loaf has no flavor, and no taste and you will find.

 

The label’s just for reading and for covering our behind.

 

Friday, September 17, 2021

Cream Cheese and Blueberry Biscuits From The Careless Cook

 



Cream Cheese and Blueberry Biscuits From The Careless Cook

 

Why does The Careless Cook stick with making biscuits?  Well, he doesn’t!  There are plenty of recipes on www.stroudallover.blogspot.com.  If you’ve subscribed, you’d know that, but if you haven’t yet taken the plunge, dive in!  The water is fine and calm and has no political waves.  The blog is FREE!

 

But, after all that blather, I have to admit I am fond of biscuits.  Biscuit recipes are like a book of short stories. And recently, I’ve been tasked with supplying food to the multitudes, otherwise known as the famished multitudes.  Sure, I could stand still and become a monogamous cook, but then the complaints would rain down, as if they had to read the same story over and over.  I prefer to turn the pages.

 

Today’s recipe has something in common with many of The Careless Cook’s recipes.  It’s mostly done with a food processor.  Total time:  30 minutes to make, and 12 minutes to bake.

 

So, crank your oven up to 425ºF, put down that second Breakfast Bloody Mary and let’s get started.

 

Cream Cheese and Blueberry Biscuits from The Careless Cook

Also Vanilla Butter

 

Ingredients

 

3 cups flour (I used unbleached bread flour, but all purpose flour works just as well)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/3 cup white sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 ¼ cups buttermilk, or use regular milk, or oat milk, or coconut milk, or cream (I used buttermilk because I had some in the frig)

4 oz cold cream cheese

1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter, chopped into small pieces

1 cup frozen blueberries (keep them frozen)

 

Puttin’ It Together

 

Put all the flour and other dry ingredients in the food processor and mix well.

 

Break the cream cheese into bits and add to the processor, along with the small bits of butter. Turn the processor back on and mix well.  The result should look a little crumbly.

 

Add the buttermilk and mix until a dough forms.  Too sticky?  Add flour  a little at a time.  You want the dough soft, not dry.

 

Flour your counter and turn the dough out.  Press or roll the dough until flat and about an inch thick.

 

Now it’s time to scatter the blueberries and press them into the dough. Fold the dough over on itself, again and again until the blueberries are well distributed.

 

Cut to your preference (I did rounds) and put the biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet.  When you bake, I suggest setting the timer for ten minutes for a quick check and add another two minutes if you need to.  You want the tops to be browned. Now, paint on the Vanilla Butter.  Voilà! 

 

Vanilla Butter

3 tablespoons of melted butter

splash of vanilla

1 or 2 teaspoons sugar

 

Now you can get back to that Bloody Mary and enjoy the smiles of the hungry, multitudinous masses who have already swarmed your kitchen. 




 

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Caramel Scones from The Careless Cook


 

Caramel Scones from The Careless Cook

 

I was still on the edge of sleep at 0800, but someone had a meeting to attend and it suddenly became my job to furnish coffee compatible knick-knacks for twenty-five hopeful ladies.  Most mere mortals would balk, or lack the confidence of The Careless Cook.  But, The CC never backs or bakes away from a challenge. 

 

I’m certain you assume he had a splendid recipe at hand; something that would flutter the hearts of the hopeful.

 

Sadly, he did not.  And, a search of Chef Google’s recipes revealed a tangle of either special ingredients, or lengthy and boring procedures that might cause The Careless Cook to begin drinking early, or race to the local grocer for cellophane packaged pastries created in a chemistry lab.  Could he inflict such culinary insults on the helpless?  No, he could not.  By helpless, he meant ladies who had outlived two or more husbands and raised a flock of children mostly single-handedly.

 

But wait a minute, thought this King of the Kitchen, What if I know a shortcut through the woods to grandmother's gullet?   Perhaps he’s found a way to avoid grating the butter, and not letting the dough rest until Santa knocks on the door, and eliminating hand mixing until the fingers lose their purpose?  Of course he has! 

 

Lesson number one:  A food processor beats the tactile massaging of, well, whatever.   I may have to rethink that, but I know for sure it’s handier than kneading by hand.  Close call.

 

So sifting through Chef Google’s repertoire, here’s what I came up with.

 

Caramel Scones from The Careless Cook

 

Heat oven to 400ºF or 200ºC

 

2 cups all purpose or bread flour (more for dusting)

2 ½ tablespoons of baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 stick of butter, cut into small chunks

½ cup brown sugar

white sugar for dusting

1 ½ apples (about 1 ½ cups) peeled and diced

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

½ cup buttermilk (or use regular milk or cream or coconut milk)

 

Make your own caramel sauce for drizzling, or use the commercial version.

 

Toss everything, except the white sugar and the diced apple, into the food processor.  Turn it on and leave it on until a dough is formed. If the dough is too sticky, add a bit more flour. 

 

Dust the counter with flour and roll out the dough to about half an inch thick.  Scatter the diced apple evenly over the dough.

 

Fold the dough onto itself until the apple bits are evenly distributed.

 

Roll the dough out again.

 

Cut to your own specifications. Wedge shape is the norm, but I cut the dough in small rounds, using what used to be a tomato-paste can. Matter of fact, all my round cutters used to be vegetable cans of one size or another.

 

Put the scones on a baking sheet, dust them with white sugar, and slide them in the pre-heated oven.

 

Bake for 12-15 minutes.  As I keep reminding everyone, all ovens are different.  In my case, it took the full 15 minutes.

 

When the scones come out, drizzle caramel sauce over each.

 

Hint:  If you use commercial caramel sauce, pour some in a bowl and use a spoon to drizzle.

 

I prepared enough scones for the feisty twenty-five.  No complaints and no scones came back!  Best of all, I was soon back in bed for an early nap, followed by a short trip to a delightful coffee shop.  Just for coffee, you understand.  The Careless Cook doesn’t consume their chemical concoctions. 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Marginal Tower Football

 


Marginal Tower

 

Marginal Tower was a small town…make that a tiny town on the outskirts of nowhere.  Even so, it had a football team that hadn’t won a game in years.

 

No one remembers how Marginal Tower got its name.  

 

The same with the town’s school.  Some say it was a French schoolteacher who named it, but he wrote the name in French and a poor translation, combined with spelling errors came out:  School for Witless Flesh Eaters.  

 

Time moved on and the name of the school changed from here to there, like the roving arrow on a Weegie Board.  At present it was called Marginal Tower High School. 

 

The football team was first called The Warriors, but a one eighth member of a long forgotten Native American tribe was upset.  Fourteen law firms vied to be the savor of this vile transgression and the name was changed to The Fighting Cats, until PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, went to court with the argument that when football teams lost, the phrase was: they had been beaten.  Fighting Cats who were beaten just didn’t fit well with the PETA advocates.  To no avail, the town sought support of another PETA group: People Eating Tasty Animals.  In the end, the county couldn’t afford a court battle.  The name was changed to the Rickshaws, which lasted until a young female Chinese student at Uptown Tech University, who was studying the ancient Egyptian use of chalk, with a minor in Egyptian worship of sand dollars, decided Rickshaws was a misappropriation of Chinese culture.

 

This time the county voted on a name change.  The biggest vote getter, Dead Fucking Rats, was overruled by the school board.  The second in line, Mouseketeers, was vetoed by the Disney Company.  TV stations balked at The Walking Dead, even if the football team fit the description.

 

But, America was changing.  The team now had a black quarterback and an Asian tight end.  Yes, even with squawks from the homosexual community, the team still used that description.  The center position was filled by a native American of the Arapahoe tribe.

 

The name changed to the Horse Loving Chopstick Tomahawks and in deference to others in the community, the school colors were changed to black and pink, with the school song sung with a lisp.

 

The football coach was dismissed for uttering, “Thank god they didn’t beat us by more!”  This was considered prayer on school property. 

 

The position was soon filled by a rather large woman, Matilda Blattsworthy, who had once played Parcheesi.  She lost her position after a domestic argument with her wife that led to an hour-long discharge of munitions, including flamethrowers and grenades and the governor calling out the National Guard.  Charges were soon dismissed when Matilda agree to attend anger management classes at the Army’s artillery range, and with the judge’s decree, “Let’s just let bygones be bygones.”

 

However complains from her neighbors led to anonymous threats of death by liposuction.  

 

Matilda sued the school board on grounds that all events happened off school property and after school hours.  She was awarded $250,000 and given the position of guidance counselor.  As a result of the cash award, the football team had no money for helmets, which meant they played much more carefully, but still lost.

 

The Marginals became the team’s unofficial name, which angered some psychologists, who preferred, Logicians Without Portfolio.

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Generational Progress And the Way of the World

 



Generational Progress

 

Sometimes I sit and wonder about how the world has changed, especially through the lives of the last few generations of my family, although this is in no way a history of my family, only quick glances at the world when my grandparents were born, my mother and father, and I were born.  Wondering is par for writers and idiots, but as Mark Twain said of idiots and politicians, I repeat myself.

 

My thoughts on the changing face of America begins with my maternal grandmother, born in 1882.  Let’s take a snapshot of her world.  No electric lights (Edison and Tesla were still fighting it out), no telephones, no radio, or TV, or airplanes.  Indoor plumbing for running water and indoor toilets were only for the rich.  Even in the city, cold water in homes and apartments was the norm, and central heat was only for the wealthy. 

 

Only the elite went to college and the vast majority were men.  There were few female doctors and lawyers.  The first female doctor in America was an English woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, who earned her medical degree in 1849 at Geneva Medical College (NY) Later it became a part of Syracuse University.

 

In my grandmother’s time, the south was totally segregated and not much better in the north. When we think of segregation, we immediately think of black Americans, but segregation was a lot broader than that and included a large variety of Caucasians, such as Italians, Jews, and Irish.  Race riots were all over the land, and one of the biggest was in New York City, as well as New Orleans, and more sprinkled across the south.  Prominent blacks, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, berated another prominent black, Booker T. Washington, in a way we could now refer to as “being too white.”  Help wanted signs frequently included “Irish Need Not Apply.” Jews were banned from joining many private clubs, and anti-Semitism was rampant.  One of the biggest anti-Semites was Henry Ford.

 

Chester A. Arthur was President, after the 1881 assassination of President Garfield, shot by a disappointed office seeker.

 

What did America’s map look like?  Montana, New Mexico, The Dakotas, Arizona, Wyoming, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii were all territories. The last two states, Alaska and Hawaii didn’t achieve statehood until 1959.  Hawaii was the last.

 

The Wild West was still wild. Sioux and Apache wars did not end until around 1890.  The Battle of Little Big Horn was fought in 1876.  The famous outlaw, Jesse James, was shot and killed on April 3, 1882.

 

About this time, one of my friend’s grandmothers was sitting on a fence at her home in north Georgia, when Indians rode up on horses and chatted with her.

 

Speaking of horses, during this time, New York City had a big public heath problem with the thousands of horses used for every mode of transportation.  The streets often clogged with horse manure.  Dead horses often lay for days where they fell, because it was easier to dismember them and haul them away after they were stiff.  Imagine the smell and the problem of keeping shoes and clothes clean!

 

Other personalities who shared my grandmother’s birth year:  Franklin D Roosevelt, Virginia Wolf (writer), Robert H. Goddard (Rocket Designer)

 

And if you think Covid was a sweeping, global terror, just glance at the Spanish Flu of 1917-1918, which swept the globe, causing 25 to 50 MILLION deaths.

 

It’s worth mentioning that World War I changed the face of the globe.  The Austrian-Hungarian Empire disappeared.  The Russian Empire collapsed and was replaced by the Soviet Union. Europe was rearranged with different boundaries, as was the Middle East and Africa.  The world still suffers from European politicians redrawing the world’s maps.

 

Speaking of the Spanish flu, yes, I get my flu shot every year, and have been vaccinated against Covid, and will gladly take any vaccination that prevents death and disease.  Maybe you don’t.  If not, I congratulation you for one who faces death head on!  Fight on, brave warrior!

 

My mother’s father was a doctor and died treating a huge number of flu patients.  She was not yet three years old when he passed away.   But, before you trace my mother’s steps, let’s look very briefly at my fraternal grandparents’ world.  They lived in various places, including Georgia and Florida, where my father was born in 1918.  His parents, my grandparents, rode a mule from Georgia to a small town in South Carolina, where my grandfather started a laundry business. A decade later the Great Depression fell out of the sky, sweeping up my mother’s and my father’s families in a starving, pinch penny world.

 

But the Great Depression was not all bad news.  It sometimes brought out the best in people.  A man walked into my grandfather’s laundry and asked if he would wash his shirt and dry clean his suit.  He said he was going for a job interview and would come back to pay the bill.  A few months later, the same man pulled up in a car, came in, thanked my grandfather and paid the bill.

 

My mother was born in 1916 and my father 16 months later.  The First World War had just concluded when a second disaster stuck, this one economic.  They grew up in the heart of the Great Depression.

 

Yes, the Great Depression was deep and wide and became the first of many life lessons for my parents’ generation. My folks were some of the lucky ones who always had food on the table. My paternal grandfather had a spacious backyard garden, which he plowed with a plow pulled by a mule.  My paternal grandmother, like many other wives of the period, seldom shopped for canned foods at a grocer’s, but instead she canned everything that came from my grandfather’s garden. As a child, I remember her pantry still stocked with row after row of glass jars of red tomatoes and green beans. 

 

Of course, from my parents’ time and into mine, glass jars of milk were delivered door to door, at first by horse drawn wagon, and in my time by a milk truck.

 

Known as Black Tuesday, the world’s stock markets crashed on October 29, 1929.  For those who think the stock market is only for the rich, know this:  with the stock market crash, international trade soon dropped by more than 50% and unemployment in the United States rose to 23%!  Just picture your neighborhood of a hundred homes, with 25 of them suddenly driven to poverty.  By 1933, the nadir of the worst economic dip in the history of the industrialized world, 25 million Americans were out of work and about half the country’s banks had failed.  Hard earned savings?  Gone and forever forgotten.  A good lesson here:  When industry fails, people starve.

 

Yet several companies were born and thrived in the same period.  Just to name an array:  Hewlett Packard, KFC, Publix, Disney.

 

In my parents’ years, they faced not only the Great Depression, but another World War, and this time it truly did span the globe.  World War I, the war to end all wars, was mostly fought in Europe, with some in the Middle East and African colonies.   In World War II, the Japanese controlled much of Asia and Germany controlled Europe.

 

So, what was the source of my parents’ generational success?  Home. Family. Love.  All of which taught responsibility and determination. In my opinion, if you take away those three, failure is almost assured.  There was one other factor:  faith.  I’m speaking of faith in the broad sense.  It could be founded in religion, but perhaps not; perhaps it was faith in each other, with parents teaching their children and children having faith that their parents would always be there.  And parents had faith their children would do the right thing and remain a vibrant part of the family.

 

In my mother’s case, although her father died before she knew anything of the wide world, she had older siblings and an extended family to lead her and nurture her.

 

But, let’s go back to the broad brush strokes.

 

There were plenty of tech advances, and many are those things my grandparents never would have even conceived of.  In 1903, the Wright Brothers would begin the trek from an Ohio bicycle shop, to the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a first tentative step into the jet age. 

 

With the onset of the age of the automobile, there were few rules.  As a third grader, my father drove his father’s laundry truck, after my grandfather strapped blocks of wood on the clutch and brake and gas pedal so my Dad’s feet could reach them.

 

As a teenager, my father got his first airplane ride in a biplane, flown by a barnstormer, a former World War I pilot.  Later on, Dad, along with thousands of others, would fly heavy bombers and drops millions of bombs around the world against our World War II adversaries.  After the war, he would fly jets.

 

Air transportation blossomed and little by little took over for passenger travel.  Still, it was a familiar world.  As a youngster, my parents had no worries sending me alone by commercial air to visit a friend.

 

All of you are familiar with modern tech conveniences, so I won’t belabor those, but will add a few lines about other common items that crossed the line between my parents’ generation and mine.   For brevity, I’ll use a list, most of which involve transportation:

 

The rise and decline of long bus trips.

 

The rise of jets, especially for international travel and the rise of international travel itself.

 

The rise of general (private and corporate) aviation.

 

The near abandonment of lengthy train travel.

 

The decline of the family, with fewer and fewer solid marriages and more and more children being raised in single parent homes.

 

More and more large American cities with serious crime rates.

 

Rise of the anti-gun culture, not always without reason, I quickly add.  When I was a child, in rural areas, teenagers might walk to high school with a rifle, shoot a few rabbits on the way, and park it in the principal’s office until school was out.  No one can imagine it now.  Does that mean good people are suddenly bad, or are there more bad people on the streets in cities and towns?  I have no definitive answers, but I do have some theories I prefer to keep to myself.

 

Fewer and fewer meals are eaten at home.  That also means there are fewer and fewer discussions at the supper table.

 

The rise of the TV dinner and the resultant lack of familial conversation.

 

Obesity has risen to such astounding levels, that in America, it’s almost the norm.

 

More people seem to hate the rich, especially the people who want to be rich and with it, the rise of the consumer class to staggering levels.

 

But, let’s mention some good things:

 

A university education is available to almost everyone, including men and women of every race and creed.

 

Jobs are plentiful and opportunities are wide open.  Just look at the huge companies that have risen in the past 25 years. And in this age of Covid, check out the multitudinous Help Wanted signs.

 

Competition has allowed unknown companies to beat the big guys.  The Kresge Company morphed into KMart and was then eclipsed by Walmart and Target, which have been battered by Amazon.  The American automobile industry has been given a bloody nose by the Japanese and German and Korean car companies.

 

Polaroid and Eastman Kodak have fallen and in fact, the photographic film industry has nearly disappeared with the rise of the digital camera and its spring-off, the smartphone camera.

 

TV came on the scene….pardon the pun,  in the early 1950s.  Radio drama disappeared.  I still remember the Lone Ranger and the call of Hi Ho Silver!  Away!  And the question:  Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  THE SHADOW KNOWS!

 

For the most part, American middle class income has kept up with inflation.  Lower incomes have decreased slightly.  But, as I always say, income is not the main thing.  The main thing is how much you can buy with it.   With that in mind, our income has pretty much kept pace with the rise of food prices. Cost of cars also tracks well.

 

In my opinion, if we look to rugged lives my grandparents had, including the ever-present foils of nature, life has gotten less and less harsh over the last three generations. But, are our lives better?  My answer is:  Yes and No and the No part worries me.