Family & Home

Alas, Pete Wells’ “Cooking with Dexter” series in the New York Times is going the way of Mark Bittman’s “The Minimalist.” (For the record, NYT, I still miss the “Eat, Memory” series, too.) I always enjoyed Wells’ tales of cooking with and for his sons -- a glimpse into another family’s food life that was inspiring, fascinating, and amusing. Like Wells, I enjoy cooking with and for my daughter, exploring various ways to work together in the kitchen.

A long time ago, I had a friend who seriously thought carrot cake was good for you because it had, as one of its ingredients, carrots.

 

And by “a long time ago,” I mean 2002. And by “a friend,” I mean myself.

 

Food writer and Simple, Good, and Tasty favorite Mark Bittman recently wrote his last Minimalist column for The New York Times, followed by what sounds to be the first of many pieces for the Opinionator section instead, "A Food Manifesto for the Future." In it, he offers nine ideas to improve modern growth, sale, preparation, and consumption of food, including this one, related to the home:

Imagine, for a moment, that you're five years old. After a busy morning in Kindergarten, you notice that your stomach is growling. It's time for lunch. Unless you brought food from home, you'll be eating what's served in your school's cafeteria. You get in line and grab a tray. You're barely tall enough to see the food behind the counter, and your teacher isn't there to help because she's having her lunch elsewhere. So when the lady wearing the plastic gloves asks you what you want to eat, you're not sure what to say. Then you might notice something familiar -- maybe a hot dog, spaghetti, or some chicken nuggets -- so you point to it and watch as it's placed on your tray.

 

The things I do for you people! I have made beef jerky FOUR times in the last couple weeks in an attempt to get it right! Now I know why people were giving me the goggle-eyed I’m impressed look when I told them what I was up to. Who knew jerky was so ... jerky? And taking a decent picture of beef jerky – the ugliest food ever – is an impossibility, I assure you.

One of my favorite rules to live by comes from Michael Pollan: Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Pollan’s advice is especially apt for me when I think about my own great-grandmother. Hilda Liljequist was born to immigrant Swedish parents in Boston in 1889. She attended the Boston Cooking School as a teenager, and took her first job as chef at a hotel in New Orleans. A few years later she made her way, by ship through the Panama Canal and by train, to a new job in Oakland, California, where she met and married my great-grandfather, a Scotch-Irish blacksmith from a Michigan farm who had actually run away and joined the circus as a youth. Later they moved to Los Angeles, when it was still possible to drive around the back roads of Hollywood, stopping to gather wild elderberries and pick oranges from a roadside grove.

Winter in general -- and this cold, extra-snowy one in particular -- calls for warm, filling food. Slow-cooked, warm food is ideal, but most people I know don't have the time or energy for it on a busy weeknight. Many of us agree that any fresh food is better than packaged food, yet faced with a blank slate for supper and kids crying, "I'm hungry!" it's no wonder we throw up our hands and reach for a box of mac and cheese. (My kids like the Back to Nature kind, from Madison, Wisconsin.)

I’ve learned that when you have to go around a room and introduce yourself by name and an interesting fact about yourself, it helps to be able to say, very casually, “I make paneer.” If you go on to explain that paneer is an Indian cheese, and you make it to use in some of your favorite curries, you will quickly see the room divide into two camps. One camp thinks you are crazy. The other wants to come to dinner.

In summer of 2008, at our neighborhood farmers' market, a man was beginning a cooking demonstration to promote his new cookbook, and the scent of sautéing garlic, ginger, and onion filled the air. My daughter, Cora, then two-years-old, was done with the market, having exhausted the thrill of buying her own carrot and tasting the cabbage leaves. We left, but I noted the book’s title.

One of the most striking things about the people who work at the Minneapolis Public Schools Food Service Department is how upbeat they seem. Just look at their picture above. From left to right, they are:

Larry Jones (Operations Manager - School Sites)Ricardo Abbott (Operations Manager - Nutrition Center)Joe Hollenback (Culinary Supervisor)Nicole Barron (Accounting & Business Systems Manager)Irfan Chaudhry (Assistant Director)

Do you notice something strange? They're all smiling.

"There are a lot of people in every business who are happy with the status quo," Nicole tells me, "you're not going to find it here."

"Summers used to be so easy," Irfan says, "but we don't take any vacation anymore. We want to make sure we give our kids the best food we possibly can."

What's your holiday protein of choice? More often than not, turkey is what's for holiday dinner. Even for vegetarians, there's Tofurkey. Don't get me wrong. Turkey is great. It's a lean white meat, easily available locally from sources that raise the birds humanely. One turkey can feed a lot of people. Leftovers are easy to package up and send home, and can be used in many ways beyond the obvious turkey/mashed potato/cranberry sauce sandwich: turkey noodle soup, shredded turkey mango wraps, turkey pot pies, turkey noodle casserole, etc.

Chances are, though, most of you had turkey on Thanksgiving. And for several days after Thanksgiving. So I thought you might be interested in a not-so-traditional, non-turkey holiday feast for a gathering in December. Ham is an easy way to feed a crowd. Pork or beef roasts are nice, too. But when I was growing up, the main dish we were happiest to see on the table was a well-prepared beef tenderloin.