The lost art of leftovers

My Dear Husband is feverish with germs inherited from Little One, who is so tired he fell asleep on the sofa, and Number One Son has a school play tonight. I'm barely hanging on, too frazzled from quasi-single parenting to create anything resembling a culinary masterpiece tonight.

The 'normal' thing to do on a day like this is to send out for pizza or grab something from a supermarket deli, but the last thing I want to do is get in the car again. My mother, a child of the Depression, whispers in my ear (all the way from her home in California--how does she do that?), "waste not, want not!"

All right, then, leftovers it is. The fridge yields two-ish servings of salmon and rice, some spaghetti and red sauce, a container of Rotkohl (passes the smell test), a handful of raw curly kale, and one boiled red potato. The kale and potato are chopped and tossed into the frying pan, the rest line up for their turn in the microwave.

I reflect on how amazing it is that in one short generation we have gone from our parents' forced frugality: my parents lived--and starved--through the Depression, my husband's through World War II in Britain and Germany, to this time of so much food being wasted that municipalities are beginning to recognize it as a problem. Sampling resources online, anywhere from 10% to nearly 30% of the residential waste stream in this country is food. Our city has contracted with the garbage company to provide little food waste buckets for our kitchen counters. The contents are composted along with our yard waste.

It is especially appalling when I consider how much easier it is to reheat leftovers now than the few (short?) years ago, before microwaves. I recall one evening when my parents were going out, leaving me and my brother to fend for ourselves (this was considered normal, responsible parenting back then). Mom provided what she thought were simple instructions for reheating our dinner, leftover shrimp Newburg. The rice and shrimp went in a double-boiler: all we had to do was bring the water to a boil, set the timer for 20 minutes, and eat it. Sounds simple, but we were very literal, not understanding that we needed to turn the burner down once the water started boiling. Predictably, we got distracted, and didn't notice the the lower part of the pot had boiled dry until it had actually melted down, resulting in a Leaning Tower of double boiler and a horrid acrid smell. My brother bravely took the whole thing outside at arm's length and hosed it down. After the burner had cooled (approximately the time it took to make and eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches for supper), we peeled the aluminum pot bottom off like so much foil.

We had a good, if funky, menu last night. I know the food was good, for I made it myself, just not last night. There is still one portion of spaghetti leftover, which will make a very nice lunch for a little boy who is still young enough to love noodles more than girls.

Resourcefulness

One of the things a restaurateur must do is something they call sourcing. It corresponds roughly with what you and I would call deciding where to go shopping. When a new restaurant opens, they need to find sources for the ingredients needed for their menu, along with other sundries used in their kitchens and restaurants. It’s not unlike moving to a new town, and trying to find a new school, mechanic, doctor, etc. And it involves, predictably, making a myriad of choices.

Much has been written about the psychology of choice. Even though we’re told that choice is good, it can be absolutely paralyzing and does not necessarily lead to happiness. People tend to either overanalyze and be unhappy with their choice, or just make any choice and decide to be happy about it. Interestingly, we can choose behaviors that will lead us to feel better.

The average supermarket contains about 45,000 SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units, part of the data management system supermarket management uses to track inventory and billables). That huge number translates into a lot of choices for a hungry person pushing a cart, or the archetypal harried mother and her melting-down toddler.

Clearly, we can’t consider every item on every trip. Psychologists would call that maximizing: identifying and analyzing every possible to choice to insure the best possible outcome. It’s paralyzing—a person would starve to death in the amount of time it takes to consider and compare 45,000 items.

Our primary coping habit is to develop shopping habits. Food marketers call this brand loyalty, and spend a great deal of money and effort designing catchy slogans and attractive logos to make sure you identify their brand as the one you can trust.

I used to shop at a regionally owned chain carrying national brands (which has since been swallowed by a national conglomerate), but over the years, my shopping habits have changed: I grew tired of wading through countless new labels and resets (that’s when the store rearranges things to get you to notice new products with wider margins). I now do almost all of my shopping at the local, member-owned co-op, where the vast majority of the objectionable ingredients and corporate injustices have already been weeded out.

We’ll call it sourcing for the sustainable home kitchen.

Do you believe?

The latest headline in the food world is an outbreak of salmonella, apparently traceable to peanut butter. Having had salmonellosis before (from a delicious flan in a Mexican restaurant), I can vouch that it’s terribly unpleasant. But I’m scratching my head. Salmonella is usually associated with eggs, which commonly harbor the bacteria, that haven’t been exposed to heat high enough to kill off the pathogen. That’s the reason you can’t get a soft-boiled egg in a greasy spoon anymore and fresh mayonnaise is off the menu in fine restaurants. It seems odd that a product that essentially contains one ingredient—peanuts—could be tainted.

A glance at Peter’s ingredients list tells me it contains roasted peanuts, sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed) and salt. Hydrogenated oils are probably the most highly processed item on the list, made by adding hydrogen to liquid oils to make them solid. (At least that’s the common description; I can grasp making oil, but have no idea how you add a molecule of anything to a food.) Sugar is also highly processed, but neither of these ingredients are terribly prone to salmonella, which tends to prefer animal products. So, maybe it’s not the ingredients at all.

The product in question bears the label Peter Pan (of do you believe in peanut butter? fame), also sold under the name Great Value, and is manufactured by food giant ConAgra Foods—they apparently make all Peter Pan, but not all Great Value peanut butter. The affected jars all came from a single facility in Sylvester, Georgia (in “The Peanut Capital of the World”), The problem is national, affecting 228 people in 39 states, including states as far away as Alaska and Maine. It’s a fine example of how tangled the food supply web becomes at the food-as-a-commodity level.

My guess is that the FDA, now on site in Sylvester, will find bacteria at the plant: not associated with a type of food, but with the process as a whole. It’s unlikely that human hands touched any of the foodstuffs along the way, since harvesting and process are so completely automated. It may be something as simple as bird droppings contaminating part of a rapeseed field, entering the processing plant, which in turns distributes the bacteria among several thousands of jars destined for widespread distribution. The bacteria then propagate in jars of unrefrigerated peanut butter on stores’ and consumers’ shelves.

It is equally likely that results will be announced as inconclusive: between the time delays (the outbreak began in August of last year), and the political clout of large conglomerates, so vital to local economies in the South and elsewhere, the FDA will not be in a position to make any irrefutable statements, and the status quo will remain.

Homemade Valentines

When I was a little girl, I would spend a considerable amount of time searching the Hallmark rack at the drugstore for the one card that was both a Valentine and birthday card for my Big Brother. And every year, my mother made a sticky chocolate cake in a heart-shaped pan. Seems she knew better: homemade is closer to the heart.

I now have a friend who's a Valentine baby. Since she's a dear friend, she gets a showy cake from me (with three kids, I know she's not going to do it herself). Last year she got a Persian love cake, decorated with edible flowers. This year I set about baking while still under the influence of the Theo confections consumed Sunday. I figured the combination of chocolate, cardamom, caramel and salt would work equally well in a cake. I started with a nutty flourless cake, dipping into my stash of Theo chocolate (nothing but the best!). I delivered it yesterday evening, after her kids were in bed, and she was generous enough to share a slice. Seems my hunches were right.

Baby bear

When your kid is sick, the mama bear instinct kicks in. You know, the one where the mother bear rears up to protect her cub against perceived danger? Or in my case, makes me want to make them comfortable, so they have fond memories of getting to stay home with Mommy, even if they feel lousy.

Little One spiked a fever last night, like so many of his classmates this time of year. We had anticipated it, as he had been a bit grumpy (or whiny when my sugar level dropped) these past few days. Still, my Mama bear instinct revved up.

I am a firm believer in the wisdom of the fever: it is there for a purpose, the body's way of fighting the pathogen. I want to support the child, and let his body do the work intended. I work to make him more comfortable: Cuddling, reading, singing, rubbing his feet (he really likes that). Encouraging sleep. The box of only-when-you're-sick toys comes out, but he's too tired even for that. After one particularly good nap--punctuated by sitting up and asking a nonsense question, then flopping back to deep sleep again--he's actually hungry.

Every year, our venerable apple tree produces bushels of big, juicy Gravensteins. I use oodles to gel my jams, but the long September days are used to fill any remaining jars with applesauce. My mother used to call it "happysauce." This jar, labeled September 6, 2006, lives up to this moniker. Half a jar later, my little one is smiling and ready to play. For a bit, that is. A scant fifteen minutes later, he curls up to sleep some more.

The fever will break eventually, and I know he'll be fine, probably more grown-up afterwards. But for today, I give him the best a mama bear can: love and happysauce.

Blissful convergence

Sunday was a wide-open day with great plans, none of which actually were completed, but it managed to turn out to be a great day nonetheless. We did get the vacuuming done, but the other tasks were overshadowed as we took advantage of the mild weather (sorry, New York), and went for a long hike through an ancient forest overlooking the lake. Feeling virtuous, we had no problem curling up with books for the remainder of the afternoon. At least, that’s what I did, but my Dear Husband took the boys off, all hush-hush, something about the hardware store (quite suspect, since he’s not that kind of husband).

I skimmed an issue of Food & Wine magazine from this summer, where they compact pithy sound bites about eco-epicureanism into a six page spread—including pictures. All the names are there, Pollan, Lappé, McGee, Planck, and Chef Anthony Bourdain, who notes that though he supports the movement, “…my only real concern is ‘is it good?’” I also moved forward a few pages of Lappé’s Grub: it’s so rich that I can only consume a few pages in one sitting, needing time to digest things before nibbling more.

Anyhow, upon Dear Husband’s return, he laid out his cunning plan: He had wanted to surprise me with it Wednesday evening, Valentine’s Day, but I was slated to teach (thanks to snow days). Adaptable fellow that he was, he had confided with British Neighbor’s husband, who was in a similar bind, with in-laws arriving midweek. The men folk agreed that they would indulge their wives Sunday evening, with an after-the-kids-are-in-bed chocolate and wine tasting. However, the poor gent forgot he wasn’t twenty anymore, and a full day of skiing left him completely knackered. We were on our own, it seemed.

I was summoned to a candlelit spread of seven wine bottles and an obscene assortment of chocolate. I knew that even I couldn’t possibly manage that much, so we pared it down, opening two bottles, a 2004 Pine & Post Washington State Merlot and a 2004 Laforet Pinot Noir (from Burgundy, and near Beaune, one of the places we liked to stop for our breakfast on the road trips of our early years together. He is incurably romantic.) Then we got down to some serious chocolate tasting. The star of the evening was chocolate from Theo, a Fremont-based bean-to-bar operation that uses only organic and fair-trade cacao beans. I know their 3400 Phinney bars from the co-op, and have to admit, this is serious stuff.

I am reminded of Chef Bourdain above: not only was it local and organic, it was beyond good. The aftertaste of just one bite of the cardamom caramel with smoked almonds (they couldn’t fit the sprinkle of sea salt in the name) carried me through drafting the last two paragraphs.

Have you ever taken the leaf off a mint plant and put it in your mouth? That’s what their mint ganache was like. Intense, surprising, furtive, nothing like the cloying sweetness of a Campfire mint. The only downside was that it didn’t work well with the Merlot. The sweet Pinot Noir, however, fit the bill nicely. The fig, fennel and Merlot confection was complex, the Scotch smooth, the Earl Grey too subtle for our taste. The single-source bars reminded me of different bottles of wine, each reflecting the life of the vine, the weather, soil, and neighboring plant life. Venezuela’s 91% was almost powdery, its ingredient list the epitome of simplicity: cocoa beans (Venezuela) + sugar. We both agreed on the pleasing properties of the 75% from Ivory Coast.

When we first met, our courtship included many candlelit evenings that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I remember one evening when we watched a candle extinguish itself, as spent as we were. And late last night, as I slid the last bite of cardamom caramel into my mouth, the candle went out on its own.

I also recall how decadent I found my new European love, who treated this straight-laced American to chocolate for breakfast, in the form of a croissant slathered with Nutella. And now, twenty Valentine’s Day later, he continues to fill the corners of my life with chocolate.

Gung hoy

For as long as we can remember, we have made a date near Chinese New Year with old friends to eat Chinese food. Before kids, it meant going out to our current favorite restaurant, eating and catching up. Over the years, we have evolved through early parenthood (though they remain child-free, as they term it) through years of takeout. Now we've taken to cooking it ourselves together in our homes.

Last night was that night. We split up the menu: I chose to make Dear Husband's perennial favorite of cashew chicken, along with BBQ pork, which I could make ahead. I also wanted to try one of our friend's favorites, Mu Shu Pork, that yummy mix of slivers of cabbage and pork and bean sprouts, all wrapped up with hoisin sauce in a delicate pancake. I really didn't feel like spending hours making ultra-thin pancakes, and I didn't see them at the supermarket. I admit, I didn't try the Asian market, since I still wanted to avoid wheat. I was intrigued by a package of spring roll wrappers at the co-op, so I thought I'd give them a try. I recall spring rolls as having a tender outside, and the label told me they were made with tapioca flour. Sounded perfect.

I roasted the BBQ pork the night before, opting to omit the bright red food coloring. In the morning, I cut it up into thin slices and tucked those in the fridge. Then I spent some quality time with my knife turning a second pork loin into matchstick meat for the Mu Shu, plopping it in a Tupperware with the marinade. I packed two bags of groceries, and tucked in my favorite knife. Off to dirty someone else's kitchen!

They were already frying up some rice and gyoza when we got there, and there was a gigantic mound of vegetables (I adore baby bok choy) waiting its turn. My darling husband poured me a glass of cider, and I set to work, chopping up the celery, carrots and chicken. Once I got that going in the wok, I moved onto chopping up the chanterelles and cabbage for the Mu Shu. The veggies were nearing completion, so Music Man tackled the 'pancakes.' Getting the package open too two adults and a pair of scissors, and once open, we discovered the pancakes were as stiff as cardboard--they were even imprinted like the industrially-textured metal found in truck beds. We conferred, and agreed that maybe a quick jaunt in the microwave with a moist towel would soften it up. Thirty seconds later, our two test victims were even stiffer and curled under around the edges, exactly the opposite of the desired effect. Hmm. More water, perhaps? Music Man tried a quick dunk in water, at which point, they softened up, but became translucent and so sticky and limp as to be terribly unappetizing. We both tore off a bit and tasted it. As we were making faces at each other, Music Man's wife kept offering more upbeat suggestions, sure we could salvage the situation. We tore off a bit and popped it in her mouth. Silence, then, "well, it has no flavor, at least." "Yes, but the texture is like a rubber glove." More silence. And then, "Y'know, I think Mu Shu pork tastes great just on rice." Heads nodded all around, and we quickly moved ourselves to the table, where we lingered for several hours, only rising to fetch more stuff from the kitchen.

We always regret not doing it more often, but at least we do it once a year, and it's so much more personal than a Christmas card!