Dinner Time Blues

Morsels of food 

left to languish alone

on plates gone cold

remnants of salad limp

ravenous appetites sated

nourishment complete ~

until time for dessert

“There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner:

that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A Belated Cooking Lesson

Hash brown potatoes almost qualify for a comfort food. I did try to make hash brown potatoes one time long ago. First a caution:  the details are coming from 40 year old memories so they may be a little off. But this is what I have gleaned from them: On a trip to Billings, Montana - I believe it was a school baseball trip - the family ate at a local restaurant several times. The only part of the menu I recall is the hash brown potatoes. I’ve never eaten any as good since. They were crisp, light and perfectly browned. Don’t know how it happened, but I was able to speak with the cook who told me ‘It was easy.’ She may even have given me a bit of explanation. There’s a blank spot about that quite important piece. Once home, I decided to try my hand at this ‘easy’ dish. What I achieved was a gray, unpalatable slurry that in no way resembled those delectable hash brown potatoes. I’m certain they were full of nourishment, but that would have been all. I’ve never tried again. But tonight, for the sake of this blog post, I asked Professor Google for assistance. I was rewarded with a short video of Gordon Ramsay preparing potatoes for hash browns.  I immediately saw my mistake from all those years ago. After grating the potatoes they are to be drained. Not only drained, but the starchy potato water gently squeezed out and drained through a colander. So I’ve had my cooking lesson for today, from the comfort of my sofa with my feet up. 

I can bake quite nice cookies and pretty fair bread, make passable roast chicken and roast beef but something as ‘easy’ as hash browns, I’ve been afraid to try again. I’ve made many, many mistakes and missteps over the years but still enjoy cooking. This weekend, I’ll be trying hash brown potatoes again.

“When you have made as many mistakes as I have 

then you can be as good as me.”

~ Wolfgang Puck

An Un-Recipe

Scrambled eggs, for me, are a comfort food any day, any time, or any season. It can be a simple scramble with only salt and pepper with toast and marmalade along side. Or it can be just a bit more interesting - spiced up. On one of his TV shows, Chef Jamie Oliver demonstrated how to prepare spices before mixing them into anything. Melt a bit of butter in a frying pan, add the spices and heat until they are fragrant. I actually didn’t know that spices could be fragrant, but found the aroma of melted butter, red pepper flakes, curry and fennel to be quite delicious. For my more than simple, but easy, scramble, I add cooked rice, stirring around just to marry it with the spices. Before the rice gets browned, but when it’s heated through, I pour in the scrambled eggs. At medium heat, I cook the eggs until they are soft, but not browned.  

Comfort food nourishes body and soul. Preparing comfort food, or any food, often is part of that comfort and nourishment. Gathering accompaniments and creating a fairly decent presentation almost makes me feel like a chef. The aroma of cooking food, the anticipation of sitting down to the completed dish and finally the taste created for personal preference completes any good ‘Un-recipe’. 

“Recipes are overrated.”

~  Chef Jose Andres

Ingredients:

Eggs

Cooked rice

Spices (I use red pepper flakes, fennel and curry)

Salt and Pepper

(Optional - Mushrooms, or anything else)

Summer Sweetness

Ice cream was melting so the picture is not the best!  

The picture was taken well after the poem was written so there may be some discrepancies:  no chocolate dip but chocolate chips; hard ice cream not soft.............

            ~~~~~

Ice cream cones with 

soft, sweetness 

nestled deep in a waffle cone,

dipped and coated in luscious chocolate escaping down big or little hands on a summer’s day is unlike anything else. 

Such exotic deliciousness 

eases any worry 

with no thought of nourishing 

anything other than childhood innocence,

and decades long tender memories 

escaped but retrieved by that cold sweetness.

(Rumour has it that some

do not share the joy of ice cream.

No proof. Don’t believe it.)

“Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of 

having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.”

~ Jim Fiebig

Abundant Rations

Rations to me mean 

deprivation, poverty, wartime

stringent parsing of food and commodities

to spread a little to the many,

barely nourishing those that cry in need.

In our society of 

abundance and convenience

rations seem to belong 

somewhere else

to someone else.

The need to ration meets

low supply and great demand,

but why wait for need to arise

to begin judicious use and care

of our world’s precious resources, 

our foods, our commodities.

“…shiny trinkets and frivolous spending 

make people forget what world they’re living in.”

~ Beth Lewis, The Wolf Road

A Blessing

This is the best I could do after a long week's work!

Unique

we are

each of us

inside and out

from tastebuds

to our toes

from our feet

to our nose

a special ingredient

nourishing our loved ones

blessing the world with peace.

“The only one youer than you is you.”

~ Dr. Seuss