leigh ahmad

February has arrived. I had dreaded the month’s arrival, certain that I would be sick and tired of eating "winter" foods by this point in the journey. My end of summer self told my future winter self that there was only so much joy to be had in eating my homemade canned goods, frozen vegetables, and the root vegetables and squash squirreled away in the garage. I had resolved that my taste buds would suffer and I had prepared myself for the worst. Turns out root vegetables proved me wrong.

Having burned and scraped my way through various pots and pans and spent a pretty penny for new issues every five years or so, I have a few reasons for reverting to old ways and adopting cast iron into my cookware family.

Formed by a pouring molten pig iron into casts, the technology behind the creation of this age-tested cookware is very simple. The earliest references to civilization’s use of cast iron can be traced back to fourth century BC and it’s debut into the kitchen scene was around the 17th century. Though the cast iron skillet was chucked aside by most and Teflon coated pans became commonplace, there are many worthy qualities to be examined and preserved.

Cooking healthy doesn't always just mean the ingredients

My natural inclination was to rest on Fridays and order pizza. As mentioned in my latest piece, Too Clean? Dealing With Our New Dietary Diseases, due to a chronic disease that has occupied my body, I usually fall ill every time I consume pizza brought to my door. The Friday night menu has been re-worked and become homemade pizza night. Despite a tiring long week, it’s become a family tradition that each of us now looks forward to. Making homemade pizza takes time, but we have discovered that this “slow food” meal beholds a lot of virtuous gems for myself and the whole family alike. 

Over the last few years, my family’s pantry has transformed from looking like the cereal and dinner-in-a-box aisle to looking more like the lentils, grains and nuts in-a-bin aisle. While we have scraped the high-fructose syrup residue from our tongue and weaned ourselves from most highly processed foods, we admit to an occasional craving for comfort foods from our past. Pizza is on the top of the, “I know I really shouldn’t have it, but I really want it!” cravings list.
 

My other half visited the River Market Co-op of Stillwater and brought home yummy delights, both familiar and some not so. The foreigner to our kitchen were chestnuts, from Iowa. He was excited, and I curious. “‘Tis the season to have a chestnut," he declared.

Cold air creeping in through the cracks raged it’s battle with the warm air wafting from the fireplace. Dinner was consumed, the kids were in bed, and all was quiet except for the rockin’ tunes played by none other than 89.3 The Current. Nat King Cole’s version of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”’ cycled through our heads. Admittedly, our fireplace is the fool-proof version that turns fire on and off with a simple flip-of-the-wrist switch. So, roasting chestnuts on an “open fire” would not be an option.

Leaves had fallen and forecasters told ghastly stories of a fast-approaching cold front with resulting snow. While the neighbors switched out their wardrobes, strung their Christmas lights and tapped in their snow-markers, we were busy packing our bags full of t-shirts and summer pajamas. My family was heading out of town, we were going down south for two weeks. Houston, Texas was the get-away destination.

Hippocrates once said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. Conduct a search for “food as preventative medicine” and you won’t yield much of a discussion, nor enlightenment. This is surprising given the harrowing facts about Americans’ addiction to bad foods and the resulting astronomical bill we have been so duly served by our health care system. One would think that discussions centered around the use of food to prevent and/or cure disease and ailments suffered by so many would be plentiful, but unfortunately this is not the case. 

The departure of summer is much easier to cope with when you have the knowledge that fall brings beautiful gifts of crisp air, celestial blue skies and apples. Ah apple, you are the perfect fruit. On the inside, you are a lover’s tango of both tart and sweet tenderness nicely protected by a crunchy thick skin on the out. We Minnesotans are lucky to have such a plethora of locally-sourced apples to choose from. Even better, the growers love selling apples so much that many share their orchard yards with us, thus creating an ultimate feel good opportunity for folks to be in touch with the fruits of our land.

Marrnita’s Table uses the dinner table as a means for bringing people together and solving some of the community’s toughest issues and food is definitely the common denominator for all Marnita’s Table events. Founded five years ago by husband and wife team Marnita Schroedl and Carl Goldstein, Marnita’s Table’s (MT) mission is to bridge cultural, generational, and socio-economic differences by the use of “intentional social interaction”.

The way it works: a community or an organization brings to MT a topic of concern such as race, isolation of refugees, or high school graduation rates and then staff and volunteers “set up table”. MT creates an intimate dinner setting at either Marnita and Carl’s home, or one of the Table’s many volunteers will host the dinner and conversation.

A typical pre-dinner conversation in our household might go something like this:

  Me: What do cows eat?

Four year old: Grass!

Me: Are you sure it’s not corn?  

Four year old: No!  Cows eat grass!

  Father: Where does this meat come from?

Four year old son: It was a cow

Father: Where did we get it?

Four year old son: The farmer grew it and then the butcher killed it