Summer BBQ

Nothing says summer more than catching a nose full of your neighbors cooking burgers on the grill.  The power of someone else's dinner can completely change your own plans.  Often this summer when I smelled a sizzling steak, Johnsonville brats, or BBQ chicken, I entered a dreamy trance of desire.  Hopefully my efforts tonight caused my neighbors to wish they had the secret handshake that would allow them into my BBQ world.

The day started when my sister Mary and I decided to go to the local farmer's market.  There we bought colorful, tempting, and organic produce grown right here in Western Michigan.  As we walked towards my van, we marveled at the number of bags and volume of vegetables and fruit that we bought for only twenty dollars.  We both have lived in Grand Rapids for over twenty-five years, yet neither of us had ever shopped at the farmer's market.  How could this wonderful place of inexpensive vitamin enriched foods be passed up for so many years?  We determined that we would make the corner of Fuller and Fulton a seasonal habit.

After unloading all the bags of food from my van I walked over to my son Ted's house to grab the grill he had “borrowed” a month earlier. Walking home pushing the grill, my mind turned to my refrigerator and all the possibilities for our dinner.  Today we bought some beautiful sweet red peppers, I used ricotta cheese, salt, pepper marjoram , shallot, and garlic filling.  I sliced each pepper in half, filling them and place them on the grill until the some of the bottom was caramelized from the flames, about thirty minutes.  Next, I thinly sliced zucchini, dipped them in olive oil, added Italian seasoning and placed them to grill for about twenty minutes.  Lastly, I put five homemade brats from a local butcher on the grill with the peppers.  The idea was to let the seasoned juices add to the flavor of my peppers.  At dinner time the idea about the farmers market was confirmed.  Where veggies are concerned, there really is nothing better.

Good old Leftovers

It's the first Friday night of the new school year.  Normally, by the time I hit the fifth day of the fall semester my brain is aching from the lack of use during the long three month summer break. Often my head feels like I drank one too many glasses of white wine the night before.  My eyes are burning, head hurting and my body exhausted from lack of daily nap.  School interferes with the most sacred hour of the day, nap time.  Now it is late afternoon on Friday.  I know that my husband's inner dinner bell will be calling for me to serve him something to eat.  In our home, I don't let him cook; I don't like his cooking.  I mostly don't let him hang around in the kitchen; I don't like his interference.  The trade-off is that I serve him food.  After twenty-five years, he might have become incapable of making his own.  Today while gazing into the refrigerator I am thankful for all the leftover containers.  Whenever I join the small portions of previous meals together an innovative and tasty dinner is born.  Tonight I find oil fried falafel we can eat with yogurt and cilantro, four pieces of corn on the cob, a cucumber salad, red onions, green peppers and a vinegar sour cream sauce.  In the refrigerator door Brian finds a small ziplock full of chicken from the night before.  Ten minutes later, Brian and I are sitting around the kitchen table relaxing and enjoying the leftovers of the week.  Three leftover pieces of potato in a bowl are not garbage; they are a starchy base for a quick meal the day after.  On this particular day after, I am happy to simply sit in a chair and relax with my amber friend named Guinness.

Chicken and veggies.

Deep in the back of almost every kitchen cupboard of America is one of the most practical and unused items, the crock-pot.  This cooking wonder can magically transform your world into a tasty kitchen where new and exciting meals await your arrival each evening.  Often people ruin their health with fast food just because they are too tired to cook dinner after a long day at work.  Not only is this bad for your diet, it is bad for your food budget.  My goal, in our home, is to not waste money on unhealthy foods.

Today when Brian and I arrived home from school an awesome aroma wafted out of the open windows.  My dogs greeted us with the usual, "Please let us out!" After they relieved themselves they proceed to beg, chasing us around the house for a while before parking at the entrance to the kitchen, hoping for a bit of the thing they had been smelling all day.  They sadly watched me portion out the evening meal.  Lucky for them, a few pieces were diverted in their direction.  My family was as anxious as my dogs.  In the morning I had placed a package of chicken legs on the bottom of my crock-pot, after that I added water, a package of dried onion soup, 2 bay leaves, thyme, chicken bullion, marjoram, carrots, celery, squash, three potatoes, salt and pepper together.   I turned the pot on med and left for school.  After eight hours of cooking, it was ready.  Today it was dinner for five, as Ted came over and also Candace with her friend Dan.  As for the chicken legs, there were no survivors.
 

Egg Salad

The purpose of food is not merely to strengthen the body.  There are other aspects of food:  romantic mood, comfort, diversion (e.g. from smoking), a walk down memory lane... 

Lori Patterson was my best childhood friend.  We shared everything together, especially birthdays.  One year our moms took us to Farrow's Ice Cream Parlor.  This was a magical place where any kid could ask for his or her favorite treat, and get it!  Excitement began the moment we arrived.  The large red and white circus-like building emitted loud big top music into the parking lot, drawing in any passers-by.  My mother pulled up in her orange Buick Regal; as soon  as our feet hit the blacktop we were racing into our birthday world.  I remember us dancing around the restaurant waiting to be seated as the Wurlitzer played its happy tunes.  Lori told me that she remembers her childhood by my memories, because she has forgotten so much.  I remember Lori ordered a grilled cheese sandwich while I ordered an egg salad sandwich.  To this day, when I sink my teeth into an egg salad sandwich I think of that happy day and my best friend Lori.  Just one bite transports be back to my eighth birthday, balloons surrounding our table and excitement filling every corner of the room.  A man holding a huge drum banged on it as the other employees sang their Farrow's birthday song.  On the way out our mothers bought us huge jaw breakers, one last token of our special day.

Today I started to hunger for my favorite egg salad sandwich, or was it that I wanted to go back to the exciting days when life was easy and a big celebration was eating an egg salad sandwich with my best friend?

Feed for Pigs or Food for the Heart

The most intelligent animal in the barnyard is the pig. This genius often has a very unhealthy diet consisting of old meal leftovers, human waste and an occasional unhealthy piglet. Yet at the same time, this four legged garbage disposal enjoys a miracle food that is a life changing meal for human beings:  oatmeal. 

My husband sat in our doctor's office for his cholesterol test results. "Brian, you need to make a lifestyle change with your diet."  I attended this meeting to catch any important details; no hiding numbers from me.  "Brian, your cholesterol is dangerously high.  The days of eating Whoppers, deep fried chicken, and french fries is over.  And no organ meat.  I added "Such as liver."  My husband looked at our family doctor and said, "Does that mean chicken gizzards and hearts are out?"  Dr. Switzer took off his glasses and said, "Are you kidding me?   You'll die!  No, never, not even a bite."

Walking out of the doctor's office I looked at my husband and said to him, "You are mine!  I'm not going to train another man!"  From that day on Brian was to look forward to "pig food" every day for breakfast.

Normally, we ate a solid American breakfast consisting of eggs and bacon, or sausage and pancakes.  Now, the stroke and heart attack meal has become a tasty bowl of oatmeal.  The biggest challenge I have to face is, "How to make this swine delicacy into a palatable breakfast?"  Here are some of the ingredients I found work best:  Fresh fruit in season, coconut oil (one tbsp per bowl), walnuts or pecans, coconut flakes, jelly, brown sugar, a small amount of molasses... the list goes on. 

"Hey Brian, how do you like your bowl of heart cleansing health?"

"Prison food."