Molly Wizenberg @ Cascadia Community College
Hi everyone, it has been awhile since I posted. How have you all been?
First of all, let me give you some advice. If you ever blog, please write all your entries in word or some other doc format. I had over half of this entry done and usually blog spot auto saves every so often. However, something went batty and nothing was saved. Redundancy, it's never a bad idea.
Food, the one thing that I can truly say is important in everybody’s life. You only live once; you deserve to eat good food. A life well lived is filled with amazing foods right?
But what I recently discovered is that when I prepare meals just for myself, the food is usually just meet my nutrition standards (and those fluctuate from time to time). I never really go out of my way to prepare great meals for myself. But when I cook for friends, look out.
Why? Well, Michael Hebb (this article) and Molly Wizenberg’s (public speaking at Cascadia Community College) pointed out some very interesting things to me.
Cooking food, for me, has never been all about the food, but about bringing people together around good food. For me, it is about taking care of other people and surrounding myself with good fun happy people. For exqample when I make myself breakfast (when it is not just buttered toast and our the door!), I will fry up some eggs, heat up some refried beans, dollop some cottage cheese on top, sprinkle some hot sauce on it and call it done.
But when I cook for others, it’s all eggs Benedict with hollandaise from scratch and free range chicken eggs. Or fresh picked berries from the alley to put in the pancake batter and in the warmed syrup.
Soup and Trees, what they mean to me is everything.
Which brings me to this: I love soup. My grandfather, Morris, has always been a mastermind when it came to making soup and being able to identify trees of all sorts. He makes the best soup out of leftovers: raid the fridge, scraps of pasta, maybe some canned tomatoes from the garden, and bang, the best ham slop you ever did taste.
I made some cabbage soup recently, andI made a huge batch of really good spicy cabbage soup. While the soup was good, the best part was the fresh cracked pepper. I loved savoring the half cracked bits of pepper in my mouth. I relished the experiencing of getting to know the spice and did not grab for a glass of water to wash it out. How else am I supposed to get acquainted with it? Spices make the world go round.
The cabbage soup recipe was a snap. Water, cabbage (both red and green), spices (I used a handful of dried green ones like basil, oregano, etc), salt, pepper, a dash of hot sauce, onions and garlic. I first sautéed the onions and garlic in the bottom of the soup pot with some spices in a little butter and olive oil. Then the water, cabbage and fennel went in. Simmer it all until warm and ladle it out. Easy peasy.
Steak, the other white meat
I also have to plug Bill the Butcher in Woodinville WA. His steaks and raw goats milk are local, hormone and antibiotic free. Plus he dry ages his steaks. They are more than amazing. His butcher's choice ground meat for burgers and chili is concocted of the scraps of meat he has lying around (pork, lamb, steak, etc) and let me tell you, that stuff makes the best burgers (or anything for that matter) in town. Some of that, and his local bacon, were used to make this:
Possibly the best baked beans, ever.
And now a preview, the star of an upcoming event, real Russian vodka. I have no idea what the label says, so if any of you speak Russian komrad, please tell me what this says.
Russian Star
