Homely surprise

I love a good surprise. Cobbler is a good surprise, all homely on top, but yummy luscious melting fruit inside with crunchy on top, still warm enough to melt the ice cream on top. Now, cobbler is traditionally a summer dish, accommodating berries of all persuasions, but winter also offers up some possibilities. Lynne Vea, a chef who regularly does demos at our co-op, offered up a recipe a few years back for a winter fruit cobbler: pink lady apples, bosc pears, with a nutty streusel on the top. She served it with a rich vanilla ice cream.

Last night, I was in need of a dish to take to a board meeting, and decided this dessert would fit the bill nicely. Besides, I had excess apples and pears that had to go--soon. I was peeling and chopping apples when Number One Son sensed food. "Cobbler? Oh, yum!" "Sorry, not for us." "Oh." I started in on the pears. Little One, who is A Reindeer all Shaggy and Grey these days, scampers by (I need to buy knee patches), and sniffs with his invisibly red nose. "Pears?" Big Brother chimes in, "It's cobbler." "Oh, goody!" replies Shaggy. "But it's not for us." "Oh."

In spite of their puppy eyes, I open the cupboard to get out some pecans, and a big bag of chocolate chips falls out on the counter in front of me. The boys laugh, but they know what I'm thinking. I sprinkle some chocolate on top of those pears (pears + chocolate = Belle Helene), before I sprinkle on a thick coating of streusel.

My colleagues and I enjoy the surprise of digging into crust, ladling out still warm fruit with a little something extra, and I manage to bring home enough for dessert tonight. Good thing too, because when Reindeer and his brother climbed into bed this morning, their first question was, "Did you bring any cobbler back home?"

How do you wrap soup?

British Neighbor's husband had his birthday yesterday, and here I was, sweating not having got a present for the man who raved about my lentil soup. "That's it," I cried, "lentil soup!" "But you can't give soup, Mommy, that's weird!" I think there's nothing weird about it. It's homemade, and I know he'll like it.

I made up a pot, left it to simmer while I ran afternoon errands, and finished it off in time to take it over for their tea (that's what they eat in the evening). Youngest Son produced a bow from the bag of gift wrap, so we poured a large portion into a container, stuck a gold bow on top, and carted it next door.

There was a series in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer a few weeks back: their food editor had just returned from her maternity leave, and did a whole spread on how to cook and deliver dinner. At first glance, I thought it odd that people had to be told to do this--of course, you bring food when people are born, die or are sick (I have family ties to Minnesota). It was clear the author was deeply touched by the efforts made by others; it is likely the first time in her adult life that she has had to be dependent on someone else for so much. It is when we are at our most vulnerable that we need help most, yet we are least able or likely to ask for it.

When we give of food, we feed a person's body, but we also give the gift of ourselves. But it's not all altruistic: if you cook twice as much, you get to eat the rest for your own supper, sharing the meal.

No thank you

When you move to a new city, it's a huge task to settle into normal routines: buying food, getting the car's oil changed, getting your teeth cleaned. In each case, you need to identify your source: supermarket, mechanic, dentist, etc. It can be overwhelming.

With two sets of new neighbors, I've been watching them make this transition. Doubly difficult, because coming from a land of 220V power, they're having to replace all their electric appliances. Both have said the same thing: they're sick of buying stuff.

They're also having to deal with cultural differences (remember the stick of butter story?). And the realm of food is riddled with cultural differences. British Neighbor isn't too terribly worried about food, they have no real restrictions on their diet--they're terribly normal people. But she was shocked to hear that if she bought conventional products containing corn or soy, she was likely consuming GMOs. Irish Neighbor, has very young children, and needed to find a source for good milk, since the her oldest (still very small) hasn't taken to the taste of infant formula in this country. She was absolutely floored when I told her that the only way to absolutely avoid rBST in the milk is to buy organic.

These are normal, intelligent, educated people who would like to know what they are eating, yet a huge corporation (Montsano is heavily into manufacturing genetically modified seed and bovine hormones) has put their considerable bottom line ahead of people. Compounding the problem, politicians of every persuasion bend to the power of money talking.

Margaret Mead reminds us that change does not come from above: it comes from below. So, when corporations start listening (hear that, Senators?) you can bet the peanut gallery is getting pretty loud. Yesterday brought two news stories that warmed my heart: Safeway milk free of bovine hormone and Big Business Pushes Bush On Carbon Caps. That's right, pressure from the masses is prompting changes that benefit consumers. No, wait, people are voting with their dollars, and these corporations don't want to harm their bottom line. Can legislators be far behind?

Warning: flown food

The Quillisascut Farm School's website has a great Sustainable Kitchen Handbook that outlines prioritizing considerations when sourcing foods. Number one is local & organic, followed by local, and only then organic. While geared to restaurateurs, it has implications for us as "everyday" consumers. Our co-op puts a label on every fresh item in the store, telling us where it comes from. So if there are two kinds of red potato, I can choose the one that didn't travel as far, even if it costs a few cents more. It's things like that that make me like to shop there.

I also love that they not only tell me the location of the farm that grew my food, but often the name of the farm, and even take the time to publish profiles of their different suppliers in our monthly member publication. (imagine Safeway doing this!) One of our favorites is the "Rent's Due Ranch." It's a great name, and their produce is consistently excellent-fresh, bursting with flavor and really local--about a 45 minute drive from where we live. I also love that they offer vegetable and flower starts in the spring, so I can grow the same things in my garden, while still supporting them.

Europe is, of course, well ahead of us on this. Amidst a big dust up about the irony of the Prince of Wales canceling a ski trip to reduce his carbon footprint, and then jetting to New York for two days to accept an award for work on environmental issues, Marks & Spencer, home of designer clothes and food, is introducing a scheme they call "Plan A," the implication being that there is no plan B. It affects everything the store sells, from vetting dyes suppliers use in clothing to reducing packaging with an eye to making all packaging fully degradable. Their stores will even test composters to produce biogas from past-date food and other waste.

Being island nations, cut off from the continent, Britain and Ireland have to fly in a lot of their fresh produce, or so goes the conventional wisdom. And here's the part I really like: M&S has committed to buy as much food from the UK and Ireland as possible, decreasing the amount of food flown in. In addition, they will label imported food as "flown" (rival Tesco will call it "air-freighted"). You can bet that when I'm in Ireland this spring, I'll be looking for that little airplane sticker.

French home ec

The year I met my husband is a year rich with memories. We were both serving as foreign language assistants for the French Ministry of Education, there to both help teachers and improve our French. Bourges was and is a small town at heart, and many families opened their doors to us as a group and individually. One family in particular delighted us with multiple invitations, to dinner, to a road rally, archery competition, and just to hang out. They had a son who was being forced to take the French version of Home Economics. In this country, there's one day in the life of the high schooler that stands out for the inviting odor. It's the day when Home Ec students make brownies. I'm pretty sure the teacher did this to ingratiate themself with the students--and it worked. (True confession here: I didn't take Home Ec, but managed to convince my counselor that wood shop was for me. I already knew how to make brownies, I wanted to learn about power tools.)

At any rate, this French teenager by came home with a recipe for the French equivalent of brownies, mousse au chocolat. My dear husband (well, just boyfriend at the time) just couldn't believe you could make it with just three ingredients: sugar, eggs and chocolate. So, he snagged the boy, and they hunkered down in the kitchen to make it together. We were treated to a yummy mousse for supper.

A few years later, living in a tiny student apartment in Freiburg, the light of my life pulled out that recipe and made it for me again. This was probably the moment I realized he was a keeper, so I kept him. That old ragged recipe has pulled him out of many a tight spot since then, making him shine in both my eyes and those of my mother and my girlfriends.

Alas, he found himself in such a position earlier this year, but stopped short: I wasn't eating eggs. How could he make mousse without eggs? Not for him those pseudo-mousses, relying on gelatin or whipped cream for their light fluffy texture. He is a purist.

Well, we think we've found a suitable ersatz, in the unlikely guise of tofu. Yup, tofu. Inspired by the little tub in the deli case at the co-op, I whizzed up some tofu and chocolate last night. A dash of vanilla extract helped, though I'm pretty sure some Grand Marnier would have really helped. All told, I probably need to experiment a bit with brands of both tofu and chocolate (the flavor of the chocolate seems to some through more strongly without the interference of sugar), but we were quite satisfied, after exhaustive research, including highly scientific double blind testing.

Tired? Try fish sticks!

The kids are back in school, paying work is coming, which means I'm just not thinking about food in the same way. The list of things to do on Thursday was just too long for the day, so I found myself cruising the aisles of the co-op after supper. As I pushed my cart past the freezer case on my way to the dairy case (or soy, as the case may be), a row of yellow boxes called out to me. Over here! We're wheat-free fish sticks!

Now, I appreciate a lovely poached sole or grilled salmon as much as anyone else, but sometimes a fish stick is just the thing, if only as a vehicle for tartar sauce. And fish sticks, well, I admit to a soft spot for them. My mother adamantly refused to buy them (we lived in the Bay Area, c'mon!), but my future husband had never met a fish that wasn't square and breaded. Southern Germany is landlocked, you see, so the only fish that makes it down there has been pretty heavily processed. So, if I wanted fish in Freiburg, it was fish sticks. Indeed, the first romantic dinner in our apartment, I fell in love--with the convection oven. It did a terrific job on fish sticks and oven fries.

Now, the food at the co-op was particularly vocal this evening, and before I could get to the checkout, a little tub of chocolate mousse jumped into my cart. It was nearly as good as the stuff I married my husband for, and get this, it was made with tofu instead of eggs. I'm happy to report it went quite well with the bit of champagne left in the fridge.

Which might explain why I was so tired that I made fish sticks for dinner.

Clay pot

Rice night, and I'm not going anywhere near Asia for inspiration for dinner. It's just too close to the curry rut. Instead, I dug out my Römertopf and put it to work.

With slow cookers all the rage, these relics of the sixties are poised for a comeback. Indeed, any recipe that works in a slow cooker will work in a Römertopf equally well: soak it, put the ingredients in, put it in a cold oven. Set the start/stop time (you do remember how, don't you?), and the oven does the rest.

The premise is simple: Romans used to "wrap" their meat in clay before they threw it in the fire, then break it open when done. The meat inside was tender, juicy and flavorful, as the clay both insulates against extreme temperatures and keeps all the moisture in. This modern take is a two-part shell that you soak in water and put in the oven--a slow cooker without the cord.

When I was a girl, my mother bought one of these odd clay bakers, with its poorly translated recipe book. We thought she was nuts (hey, we were teenagers). But after one meal, we were sold. Mom used it a lot, especially when she had some activity that would keep her from being home in time to cook dinner. I bought my own when I was a student in Germany, and used it extensively: it was perfect for days when I was writing and didn't want to stop to fix dinner. I could throw stuff together and leave it in the oven until we felt like eating.

So, last night, I filled my Römertopf with water, rice, garlic, dill, lamb and tomatoes and baked it for an hour and a half. Our dinner of Umqua Valley lamb and tomato dill risotto was quite tasty.