Bad Home Cooking

Worth the wait: Seven year oatmeal cookies

I will eventually get around to everything. I promise. Sometimes it might take me years, but I'll get to it.

I clipped this recipe for oatmeal cookies out of a May, 2003 issue of Parenting Magazine. That was back when I was a fully-employed freelance writer for this book, and others. Back when magazines still had a future. And hearty freelance budgets.

A lot of water under that bridge. And isn't it just like me to be a day late and a dollar short? I just last week found this clip and decided the time was right to try these cookies.

This recipe came from Cynthia Phillips, a mom in Salisbury, Maryland, who wrote that this cookie recipe had been in her family for 50 years, and was the one her grandmother used to wow the kinfolk with.

Since I come with no family recipes to speak of, I like to poach others' when I can.

Here's the recipe;

1 cup brown sugar (packed, of course. But if you're a bad home cook like me, you may not know this basic fact.)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup (two sticks) butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond extract
2 eggs
2 cups quick-cooking oatmeal (I used Trader Joe's old-fashioned oats, which I don't know are the quick-cooking kind or not. Worked out fine.)
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour

preheat oven to 350. Cream both sugars, butter, vanilla and almond extract in a bowl. Add each egg, one at a time. Set aside

Mix the oatmeal, baking soda and flour in a separate bowl. Mix into the butter and sugar mixture.

Drop the batter by the spoonful onto un-greased baking sheets.

Set aside your salmonella fears and dole out appropriate amounts of dough to the children. This is a summer baking experience after all...

bake about 12 minutes or until lightly brown around the edges. Cool slightly before transferring them onto a cookie rack.

There may or may not be any left by this time to transfer into Tupperware. But if you do have some remaining, they keep well for about a week.

And yumm? Chewy, buttery, not too sweet. And that almond extract gives it a little something special. 

Be better than me. Don't wait seven years. Make these cookies today and tell me what you think.

Only in New York -- Pop Tarts Shop

New York, New York! It's a wonderful town! The Bronx is up and the Battery's down. The people ride in a hole in the ground ...

...to Times Square, where the world's first Pop Tarts shop is opening in August. That's right. A store devoted to everyone's favorite childhood breakfast pastry.

You didn't read it here first, but pretend you did. And now, let us all join hands and hang our heads for a collective pout.

It's just not FAIR! How come WE don't get a Pop Tarts Shop? How come all the cool stuff always has to happen in New York City? (grumble, grumble).

Now stomp your feet ... good. Maybe we'll get our way. Because I think what the world really needs right now is a chain of clean, bright, fully-stocked Pop-Tarts shops, where adults can go and buy an old favorite or concoct a new flavor more suited to their grown-up taste buds.

I think Pop-Tarts could help us attain world peace. Really.

Well, I mean, it's worth a try, don't'cha think?

Sigh. Alas. for all of us who DON'T live in Manhattan, it's business as usual when the random Pop-Tarts urge hits: sneak to the grocery store under cover of night to sheepishly buy ourselves a box, then creep home to hide it from the kids.

My favorite is still brown sugar cinnamon. But I'm not going to toss a classic Strawberry frosted out of bed, either.

Sigh. See? It makes me smile just thinking about them. I'm sure you are too.

What's your favorite?

Rainbow chard and chickpea soup over rice

Take that, you Box.

Three boxes out of four, I've gotten rainbow chard and kale. Three boxes out of four, I've stared at my rainbow chard and kale and watched it go over.

The fourth box, I had a bitch-slap-upside-the-head of inspiration.

Rainbow chard and chickpea soup.

I found a recipe from the fabulous Jeanne Lemlin, author of my favorite, no-fail cookbook, Simple Vegetarian Pleasures. We like vegetarian. We like simple. And since everything I've ever made from this book turns out wonderfully, it is a pleasure.

Here it is, with my tweaks (thanks Heather, of Tales from a Veggie Kitchen blog!)

1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
8 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
8 cups vegetable stock (I used one box of Trader Joe's vegetarian broth - 4 cups - plus four cups water)
2 tablespoons of tomato paste mixed with 1/2 cup of water
4 cups freshly cooked or canned chickpeas (2 16 0z cans)
8 cups of finely shredded Swiss chard leaves
1 teaspoon salt

1. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes. Mix in the garlic and crushed red pepper flakes, and saute for five minutes or until onion is tender.
2. Add the stock, tomato paste mixture, and chickpeas and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a lively simmer, and cook for ten minutes. Stir in the Swiss chard and salt, and simmer ten minutes.
3. Remove 2 cups of the soup and puree it in a blender or food processor. Return it to the pot.

Some tweaks: I included half a teaspoon of turmeric, because it's so good for you and they say it helps fight Alzheimer's which is waiting for me just up the road, courtesy of both my grandmothers. Anyway, it also adds only a little flavor but a big wallop of color. Also, I think I added half a teaspoon of cumin, which made the whole thing a little more Indian tasting.

I didn't have eight cups of shredded chard - I only had one bunch, which maybe was three cups with a wind at its back. But it didn't seem to matter.

This is one soup that improves vastly with a rest overnight in the fridge. The next day, I thought to dump it over some leftover sticky rice ... to incredible results. At least I loved it.

There are no leftovers. This is always a good sign.

So this week,The Box did not defeat me. Except for the kale. Neighbor Robin promises to show me the secrets of Kale chips, but mine goes over before I can get it down to her. 

Caramelized onion and goat cheese tart -- another do-over? Naw.

 I can be taught. All evidence thus far supports this theory. I learned how to tie my shoes. I learned how to drive a stick shift. I got into (and finished) graduate school. I haven't killed my kids, (two different ones!) with gross ineptitude. Yet.

But this cooking thing. I dunno.

Because although Kitchen Goddess Julia came up with a great way to use my big ass onion -- making a caramelized onion and goat cheese tart that everyone, even the kids, loved -- I've realized that I could never recreate such a dish myself without adult supervision.

True, I made a pate brise for the crust by myself. Well, two, because the first time I forgot to use ice water, which made my pastry too warm and mushy, which altered the outcome and blah blah blah does any of this surprise you? The second attempt came out a little better. So the adequate tart crust, I made myself. And one day, when I have the space to roll out pastry dough and working rolling pin, my crusts might actually be decent. 

I let Julia deal with making the actual tart. She adapted the basic cheese quiche from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything:

Basic Cheese Quiche

6 eggs at room temperature.

2 cups grated cheese (we just dropped in goat cheese from a log)

2 cups cream, half and half or milk, gently heated until warm

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp cayenne

preheat oven to 435. Prick the crust all over with a fork. line pie tin with pate brise and prick all over with a fork. Line this with tinfoil and weigh it down with pie weights (I use little rocks, myself, because that's what I found in my junk drawers (thanks kids). Bake 12 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully remove the weights and foil. Turn oven down to 325.

Combine eggs, cheese, liquid and seasonings and beat until well blended. Remember to add your onions.

Place the baked crust on a baking sheet. Pour the egg mixture into the crust, right to the top.

Julia remembered her tart having toasted poppy seeds on top. We didn't have any poppy seeds, so we tried sesame seeds. The effect wasn't as crunchy, but it did.

Carefully transfer to oven (on a baking sheet so you won't have to clean cheese goop out of your oven later). Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until the mixture is set but still moist. (it should jiggle a bit in the middle) Cool on a rack and serve warm or at room temperature.

Even though Julia took a page from my playbook and went upstairs to check her email, thus burning the onions ("Julie! Didn''t you smell them?" Me: I didn't know you weren't supposed to burn them....") the effects were most pleasing, and, as mentioned above, even the kids ate their slices, which constitutes great success in my book.

Could I do this myself? Probably not. 

And in any case, I can't imagine I'm gonna have a big-ass onion to work with a second time. Which is too bad, because practice makes perfect. Or in my case, maybe not.

Julie and Julia and the big-ass onion

Saved by the bell. Or rather, saved by the Kitchen Goddess.

In a case of perfect timing, Julia and her beautiful daughter Lulu have swung into town from Australia, visiting an array of friends stateside. The first thing she said upon entering my kitchen for the first time in nearly four years: "Wow. That's a hell of an onion."

Yes, well. And what are we going to do about it then? French onion soup, as one commentator suggested? Julia shook her head. "You don't really want that in the summer." Onion tart then? I had a recipe stashed away somewhere, but I'd always been too intimidated to try it.

Lulu looked up just then. "Caramelized onion and goat cheese tart! I love it! It's so delicious!"

Out of the mouths of babes. Slap my forehead. Yes. YES!

And even as I watch my big-ass onion slowly start to turn, Julia pulls out the immortal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child and starts to research our dinner tonight.

Will it work? I'm not worried. Julia's here.

Stay tuned.

The onion that ate Pittsburgh ...

Seriously?

I mean, I bumped up to the big box, but had no idea about this sort of thing.

The neighbor girl thought it was a candle.

My 10-year-old said, "Is this natural?"

Neighbor down the street shrugs. "I've seen bigger," she says.

Yeah, but what am I gonna do with this? Any ideas?

Also in the box: Rainbow chard, kale, carrots, eggplants, corn, green beans, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes proper and strawberry. Oh, and Romaine lettuce.

Idea gals? hit me!

Crackers: You can make them yourself! (If you're not me, I mean)

The first day I flipped through Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything I noticed it. Crackers. As in, make your own. I've been meaning to try since, oh, 2002?

And I did it tonight. To OK results.

What did you expect? Success on the first try? Remember who you're reading here, people.

Now, I know home bakers everywhere are having a good chortle at my expense. All this fuss because she mixed flour and butter and milk and made her own crackers? I might as well be patting myself on the back for successfully making ice cubes.

But once again I have to point with exasperation to from whence I came. I didn't know there was any kind of cheese apart from American Kraft singles until I was 16. I ate rice out of a box. and made PB&J's out of Wonder Bread, Peter Pan peanut butter and diet Smucker's jam.

Diet jam.

Nobody made a damn thing from scratch at my house. Not unless you count Toll House cookies.

So it's not so much the cracker itself as it is the notion of making your own. It's like rediscovering the wheel. My God, you can make that stuff in your own kitchen? Think of the possibilities!

Bittman says it's easy, and dog gonnit if he ain't right. Here's the recipe. It took all of 10 minutes to mix and 10 minutes to bake.

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter.

1/4 cup water, or milk if you want to make cream crackers (which I did.)

Of course, being the Bad Home Cook, I didn't read all the instructions before starting, and so when I substituted milk for water, I didn't notice that I was supposed to up the butter to four tablespoons, but whatever. The result was still fresh, crackers, ready for avacado spread and what not. At least I had the foresight to season expertly with sea salt.

Anyway, this was a lot of fun, and really so simple I can try it again and again and again until I master the finer points. That and pilfer some kitchen herbs to try and incorporate. Wonder what lemon zest would do in a cracker? 

Note to self, though: Next time, remove the turquoise ring first. Hard to pick cracker dough out with a tootpick.

Falafel Fail

For someone who was undoubtedly Middle Eastern in a previous life, my first attempt at making falafel really blew chunks.

I had thought that using a falafel mix would significantly up my chances of a successful first attempt. Alas. Add water and mix is apparently still beyond my skill set. Maybe I was a bad home cook in all my previous lives as well.

Falafel! We go way back, even before the kibbutz, where I quickly learned to hate the stuff.

Yeah, see. In Israel it was All Falafel All the Time. Every time we'd go into town, falafel! It's the Middle-eastern equivalent of fast food. There's no escaping it. And after a while, it all starts tasting the same - fried, beany, cuminy ...I can't really stand the stuff anymore, although the stuff I bought from a family store in Jerusalem, fresh off the grill, stands out in my memory. (maybe it was more the danger of being in that part of town on a Shabbat).

But I can see the larger picture. Even though I don't particularly like it anymore, falafel has great potential in my household, where both nits profess to love it. They like pita bread. And tomatoes. And maybe that creamy stuff that goes in there (what is that? Can I make it? Do I dare?).They will tolerate a small bit of lettuce. If I could figure out how to make passable falafel, I would have another rare addition to my dinner rotation. The idea of making my own falafel from scratch is intriguing and daunting at the same time. You know how I feel about chickpeas, after all. But you also know what happens when I get uppity about my basic cooking skills.

Hence, a simple mix.

Alas, the road to hell, yadda yadda yadda. Back to the mix. I suppose if I had written down the very simple instructions instead of thinking I could memorize them I might have made edible falafel. But when you second-guess your ability to memorize one single measurement of water you're in pretty grim shape. All it took was one cup of falafel mix to some portion of water. I mean, I can remember my kids' birthdays. I can recall all the words to Bowie's "Life on Mars." Why couldn't I remember whether you mix one cup of falafel mix with three-fourths cup of water or one-half cup of water?

I mixed it with one-half cup water, and fried the patties up in olive oil.The results were not pretty.Why go into detail? Look at the photo and judge for yourself.

Even if I had gotten the mix proportion right, my falafel patties wouldn't have worked out right. Just tonight I was relating my disaster to my neighbor down the street, who asked me how long I had let the batter sit.

"Sit?"

"Well you can't just mix it and fry them up just then," she said, blinking, apparently surprised that I did not know this. "You have to let it sit and absorb the mix a bit."

That I did not know this greatly disheartens me.

And also pisses me off. What the hell is wrong with me. Just for that, I'm gonna try to make falafels from scratch next time. It's gonna be a real hoot.

Stay tuned.

How bad could it be? Not your soccer mom's strawberry pie

I have many Stay-At-Home, PTA-type mom friends, each and every one of them a bad-ass who saves the world every day. 

I am not fit to join their ranks, but since they like me, they let me play along sometimes. This year, the amazing Lynn asked if I wanted to contribute something to the PTA's end-of-the-year bake sale.

They stopped allowing baked goods in classrooms of California public schools a while back. Nobody is quite sure why. Peer pressure? Liability? Peanut allergies? At any rate, that sort of put the kaibosh on the proverbial PTA bake sale too, until someone figured out a work-around. Last year's bake sale -- the first the school had sponsored in years -- brought in more than $700 -- all gravy for the school with no middleman taking a percentage cut. Everyone was so impressed at the huge haul this most cliched of cliched events brought in that everyone discreetly looked the other way when pressed about its legality. Ill-gotten gains? Bake Sale? We don't know what you're talking about...

All this goes to say, Don't F*** with the PTA ladies. Naturally I couldn't say no to such a subversive plan.

For my contribution, I decided to make a strawberry pie. And while I was at it, I reasoned, I could make good on my promise to make Jack his strawberry pie. 

A strawberry pie? Lynne cocked a dubious eyebrow. Why not? I said. It's strawberry season. And it's just strawberries and crust. How bad could it be?

Turns out my strawberry pie wasn't bad at all, it just wasn't that spectacular. Nor was it at the bake sale.

I made this easy basic pie crust. Yes. I made my own pie crust. Because again, I have to do everything from scratch to redeem my miserable, Wonder Bread and Pilsbury-rolls-in-a-tube childhood. Actually went and bought a tub of shortening. I had to cut it into the flour using two knives, since I remain the sole person in America without a food processor. But getting my hands in there is a good lesson. I could see how the fat plays a role in the flakiness. Fascinating. Pastry is intriguing me more and more.

For the pie itself -

  *   1 (9 inch) pie crust, baked
    * 1 quart fresh strawberries
    * 1 cup white sugar
    * 3 tablespoons cornstarch
    * 3/4 cup water
    * 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1. Wash and cut your strawberries in quarters lengthwise. Arrange half of them in the baked pastry shell. Mash the rest of them and combine them with sugar in a medium saucepan. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, stirring frequently. 

2. In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water. Gradually stir cornstarch mixture into boiling strawberry mixture. Reduce heat and simmer mixture until thickened, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour mixture over berries in pastry shell. 

CHILL for several hours before serving. Did you read that? Start this damn pie at least four hours before you need it, so you have time to CHILL.

And in the end, it was this stupid detail that foiled my bake sale plan.

You knew it was gonna be something, didn't you? Lynn didn't seem too surprised when no pie materialized. And no matter. The table groaned with myriad other goodies. And in the end, our school raised more than $1,000 for its coffers.

Without our bad-ass PTA bitches, the public schools in this state would crumble completely. We're the last line of defense (of course I'm a member, too. It's important. You just won't ever see me at a meeting.)

So who ate my strawberry pie? The nits -- both of whom were in shock and awe when I served it to them on a plate with whipped cream. And various neighbors', all of whom professed middling enjoyment.

So it wasn't the most incredible strawberry pie. It was strawberry pie. How bad could it have been?

Maybe I'll give the blackberry cobbler another whack this year. Stay tuned...

The Box and me

THE BOX arrived, after much anticipation. And it was ...not intimidating. I did not run howling from it when I opened the lid. I did not twitch, nor grimace at the mysteries within. Truth be told, when I finally opened THE BOX on my front porch on Monday, I was a bit underwhelmed.

Two heads of broccoli, four small potatoes, eight oranges, two grapefruits (or pomelo's, not sure) one bundle of carrots, a clamshell of green beans and one of strawberries. And one big-ass head of lettuce. Not sure what kind. 

I could do this no problem.

Indeed, by Monday evening, the carrots were gone. By Tuesday evening, the strawberries and half the oranges were gone. Plus one head of broccoli.  I didn't even have to call anyone for a recipe, although my incredible urban mama colleague Sarah Gilbert offered up a hell of an idea for broccoli that I'll tell you about in a minute.

I was a little put out that I didn't get any avocados. Or any beets. I snooped through my neighbor Robin's box the other day and oohed and ahhed at her beets and onions and avocados...none of which were in mine. Feh. But she gets the big box and I started small.

This may have to change. 

OK: Here's what Sarah wrote on my Facebook Page:

    ...but if you want a fancy recipe, cook the broccoli in a little water with some of the tangerine peel, salt, and a little ...garlic if you have it, just until it's almost tender. you can cut out the hearts of the stems and use them too (peel the outside with a paring knife like an artichoke). cool quickly (ice bath or trip to the fridge), then serve that on top of the lettuce with some of the tangerine pulp and olive oil and salt. crunchy good salt!

Jeez! With friends like these...who can remain a Bad Home Cook?

Stay tuned...