Black-eyed peas

It's a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cornbread on New Year's Day. The store sales flyers are full of ads for fresh (shelled), frozen, and canned black-eyed peas. We eat them rather frequently, so I have a fully black-eyed-pea-stocked pantry already.

The thing is, I don't really just love black eyed peas. I like 'em well enough, and I do eat 'em when they are served. I even serve 'em from time to time, especially when I have some with jalapenos.

What I really, really like is purple hull peas. These delicate little peas are small and green when fresh, turn a pale taupe color when cooked, and taste delicious with very little seasoning. Their shells are just what the name says: purple (and green).

Wasn't I just totally surprised when My Prince's Stepmother (AKA #2MIL) informed me that these were really young black-eyed peas? That would be why they are smaller than a regular black-eyed pea and why they have that tiny little eye. The purple and green hull is an immature stage of growth. #2MIL knew this, of course, because her #2Son is a truck farmer in New Mexico and raises, among other fine things, black-eyed peas. She brought me a nice bag full of purple hull peas a couple of seasons ago, and I sat on the couch in the den and shelled them all in one go. They made a perfect "mess o' peas" for dinner that night.

While we don't have any fresh purple hull peas at this time of the year, we sure do have some cans of Allen brand purple hull peas hauled in from Houston. I'm thinking that that will be close enough for the old tradition, and that's what I'll be serving on New Year's Day. With cornbread, ham, fresh tomatoes, and iced tea. Mmmm.

Kitchen Food Safety

The dishcloth has me worried right now. Looking for more information about "dishcloth safety," I ran across this list of no-no's for kitchen food safety from the University of Nebraska.

I pretty sure that I'm okay on most of this, but I'm still thinking about some of the others. F'rinstance:

• I don't use brown paper bags or garbage cans for cooking, although I have used a paper bag to coat fish with cornmeal. I think we tend to think of our own kitchens as clean places, but maybe saving that Sonic bag to use for coating some fish is not the best approach to food safety. Still, I hate to think that I would have to use a fresh ziplock bag to do the coating right when I'm trying to figure out how to recycle the ones that I am using already. On the good side, I haven't used film canisters or plastic garbage sacks for food storage. The latter, however, are great for storing Christmas pillows and some of my winter sweat suits. I'm just saying.
  
• I am so-so on re-using the one-time use items. I re-use the plastic utensils to serve cat food (and thereby avoid using people utensils for the cat food). I have also re-used drinking water bottles for water and tea mixes. I now wonder about washing and re-using chopsticks. I know that bamboo is a renewable resource, but some of my chopsticks are pretty (like the ones BKC gave me for my birthday). I want to keep them around AND use them for a long time. There are some issues with disposable food service items that need to be balanced with food safety, but it does involve risk. Risk for oneself is, to be sure, different from risk for others, so re-use should, at the very least, be limited to personal use and not presented to others.
• OK, I'm good on materials in the microwave and getting rid of old mercury thermometers. It only takes one or two microwave fires to learn those lessons, and My Prince is our family hazmat expert. He disposes of old batteries and other dangerous things in the appropriate manner. *proud look*
• "Mis-using hard to clean items" has some pitfalls. I rarely use a whisk, so I will have to go have a look at what is on hand and how it works for cleaning. The basting brush, however, has long been a challenge. I have never liked them. They just look like the perfect place to grow crud. For years, I just used a spoon to dip and spread, instead of basting. Then I found some silicone basters that look like one of those squiggly ball things that kids play with. I got a bunch at the dollar store, toss them in the dishwasher after using, and no longer worry about the crud. Vegetable brushes go in the dishwasher also. I avoid sponges like the plague they surely carry. The dishcloth, however, remains a worry.
• "Re-using items that should be laundered" might have addressed that dishcloth worry, but it doesn't really. I use a dishcloth and dishtowel several times before tossing it to the laundry. Yes, I do dry them out before hand. I even dry them between uses. My Prince has lately installed one of those old timey racks that my great grandmother had over her sink; it has three arms that swing back out of the way and allow you to hang three cloths for drying. Instead of spreading the dishcloth out over the sink divider to dry between uses, it now hangs there. This allows it to really dry out and inhibits the growth of mildew (when I use soap to give it a quick wash and then rinse before hanging). I'm not entirely sure that this is entirely safe, but it is safer than the way I had been handling the matter.
• Cutting boards, we've discussed. It all goes in the dishwasher.

What I'm wondering is, how dangerous am I in the kitchen when I reuse the dishcloth or the dishtowel? Do you change them out after one use or one meal or one day? I have a cousin who managed to get loose in my kitchen a couple of times. She used up every single dishtowel that I owned--in one meal prep. Those were the days when I used terry cloth towels, so there were fewer in the drawer than now, but still I was amazed at her ability to use them up so quickly. The same thing happened with all of my hand towels in the bathroom. There might have been a little OCD involved--or there could be something that I am missing. I'm still wondering.

I should point out that one reason I wonder is that the recent energy crisis is not really going away. We have to think about how much paper we are willing to use to dry our hands or wipe up spills and such and then toss away. How do we balance the need to conserve against the need to protect ourselves from the risk of disease?

Food Politics

Something I want to look at when I have more time is the politics of food. Somewhere in my checkered past, I have some (OK, a lot) of experience with political activities of one sort or another. I've seen the system from the inside as well as the outside. Let that suffice as enough reason to read this post about Food Politics by David Spero and take it as a foretaste of things to come.

Safe water after flooding or power loss

Much travel back and forth, little time to blog, and now I'm home again and seeettttttlllling in. Still unpacking. Still getting my bearings in the house after too much absence. But already having fun in the kitchen. Now to get myself back into blogging mode . . .

One place to start is my ongoing concern for food safety. Ike left his mark on my psyche, for sure. I often find myself rethinking what we did to survive and what we can do to better prepare ourselves for the next storm. Since it looks like climate change (AKA global warming) is in full swing, I think we have to count on another storm hitting Houston sooner rather than later. If not Houston, then some other part of the Texas coast will be devastated. More than a day or two without power is serious hassle, even trouble, for a family; any level of flooding is a disaster.

I often turn to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration for food safety information. Although the agency has become more politicized over the years and has, I believe, let us down on more than one occasion, I do know that there are some fine Americans serving us there, people who are dedicated to protecting the public and helping consumers identify safe and effective products.

The FDA has produced a flyer on getting safe drinking water and protecting food supplies in the event of power failure or flooding. I think it's worth printing out and studying to see where our storm preparations can be improved. I can already see a couple of areas that I need to work on: adding refrigerator thermometers and elevating the water supply.

Rosemary Salt

Here's one of those homemade food gifts that ought to please just about anyone who eats: Kalyn's Rosemary Salt. I intend to make some for home use (it's good on tomatoes, grilled vegetables, and chicken), and I may as well bag some up for my foodie friends.

Finding this recipe will now spur me to invest in my first herb plant, a rosemary bush. Mmmm.

A good old-fashioned potlatch

I'm reading various articles about "how to green your Christmas," "living green," and coping with the declining economy this holiday season. Part of what I have been thinking about is the whole over-commercialization of Christmas that we have all been decrying, lo, these many years and the sense that now is the time to begin to dial back on some of the crazy consumerism that has been going on.

As it is, we over decorate, over eat, over spend at the end of every year and spend the next year trying to recover from it. Much of this excess is really that--unnecessary consumption of goods in order to impress others or feed our own need to feel "wealthy," "important," "with it."

After all, just how much do we need to decorate our homes--inside or out--to convey the spirit of the season?

Sometimes, when I think of Christmas in the USA, I think of potlatch. This a tradition among Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast. It varies among the various tribes and is nowadays depicted (and probably practiced) as a means of redistributing wealth while accumulating prestige. I first encountered the concept some years ago in a description of potlatch as practiced by the Kwakiutl. The Kwakiutl potlatch, thanks to the rich environment in which they lived, was a massive display of wealth which was then destroyed as a demonstration of, well, wealth.

The Peabody Museum has this to say about potlatch (among the Kwakiutl and others in the area):

It is commonly portrayed as extremely competitive, with hosts bankrupting themselves to outdo their rivals and aggressively destroying property.

That sounds about right for the situation in which many find themselves after any given Christmas in post-World War II America. Here's a bit more from one of the oldest (non-Native American) authorities on the Kwakiutl, Franz Boaz (from The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians ):

The rivalry between chiefs and clans finds its strongest expression in the destruction of property. A chief will burn blankets, a canoe, or break a copper, thus indicating his disregard of the amount of property destroyed and showing that his mind is stronger, his power greater, than that of his rival. If the latter is not able to destroy an equal amount of property without much delay his name is broken. He is vanquished by his rival and his influence with his tribe is lost, while the name of the other chief gains correspondingly in renown.

This, too, resonates in our contemporary practice of Christmas, if not, indeed, in our whole way of life in which we draw endlessly on the resources of our country and our planet to consume (almost literally) conspicuously and wastefully. If we are not competing directly with our neighbor or some other rival, we are competing against a goal set for us through advertising, movies, and other media that says we must (lavishly) decorate a tree, host (extravagant) parties, give (expensive) gifts, and otherwise display--and consume--our wealth--even if we have little wealth.

I'm still trying to come up with some better ideas for edible gifts this year, but, the more I think about it, the more I see a need to come up with those ideas--and act on them.

The lowly lentil

I hit the wrong button when I first started this post, and the darned thing published itself--without any content! I will continue trying to gather my thoughts and get this article written, but who knows how it's gonna post again. I sure don't.

What I intended to write about--The Lentil--was actually just a riff on a soup that I made a few weeks ago for Mama and The Girls (in this instance, Little Sister and Big Kid Cousin). I had tossed a few items together with a bunch of sausage and then added some lentils, which became the big focus of our discussion of what we were eating. For some of them, adding lentils was introducing a whole new food to their diet.

Lentils were certainly not something that I had while growing up. I don't recall anyone in our greater family circle mentioning cooking them. I don't think I had one until maybe 10 years ago, unless, of course, I ate them while in Africa (which was so long ago I have probably forgotten).

Indeed my acquaintance with lentils seems to derive from the search for new tastes and healthier eating, not from any family foodways. While I had heard of lentils most of my life, they were in the context of Bible stories and some vague idea that this was food for "poor people" or "foreigners."

Imagine my surprise to discover a high protein, low carb vegetable that can be cooked into a variety of dishes. Imagine how happy I am that it's a legume that doesn't take as long as most dried beans to cook. Lentils are also fairly inexpensive to buy and easy to store, so they make a good addition to the basic staples that should be stocked in the pantry.

Happily, my lentil stew was a hit with Mama and The Girls, so much so that instead of sending some of the leftovers home with Little Sister, I ended up freezing a container of the stew. I pulled it out yesterday and served it with some cornbread for Mama's lunch. Sometimes, Mama is a tad reluctant to eat leftovers. She saves them, of course, but she often doesn't want a "do over" on yesterday's lunch or dinner. That was one reason for freezing part of the leftovers--so there would be some time between the meals when the stew was served. It worked--the stew was a hit once more. Too bad it was Mystery Lentil Stew, cuz I have no idea how to make it again. *sigh*

Healthy treat: Frozen berries

The day's "healthy eating tip" is a gadget that I have on my home page. Every day, I get some "word to the wise" about healthier ways to eat. "Smaller portions" seems to crop up a lot (thanks, Mayo Clinic, I had no clue). Here's today's tip:

Fresh berries are kind to the waistline; they are naturally high in water and low in calories. Dried berries also provide excellent nutrition, but since most of the water is missing, their calories are more concentrated and you'll usually wind up eating more of them.

Aside from the annoying italics, which were in the tip when I cut and pasted and which seem to spread like a virus, the tip seems useful. Berries generally the lowest carb counts among fruits, but I keep seeing high counts for the dried versions. While the dried fruit is easier to keep and, sometimes, to eat, I keep going back to the fresh (or frozen) version to help my blood sugar.

Here's one of my favorite treats:

• One half cup or so of frozen mixed berries
• One fourth cup or so of heavy whipping cream

The cream freezes around the berries when you pour it over them. I used to have frozen blueberries and cream for breakfast. Now I like mixed berries as a treat. As an added bonus to the low carb goodness, you are forced to eat the dish slowly because the berries are frozen. Let them melt in your mouth so you can enjoy both taste and feel.

Mystery Stir-Fry

I've taken to calling my various stir-fried (and sorta steamed) concoctions "Mystery Stir-Fry." For years, I've been cooking Mystery Casserole. In the last year or two, we've been eating Mystery Meat.* Now my stir-fry has taken on the characteristics of these mystery dishes.

In this case, I'm simply thinking of how I end up preparing one of the dishes--a little this, a little that, whatever is on hand and might go together more or less well. I plan the dish by going to the freezer to find a meat that will thaw in the time I have available and then, later, to the vegetable bin to see what I (a) have and (b) feel like messing with. Then, once the saute pan (no wok available) is ready and the veggies ready to be covered (a little steaming helps things cook faster when I'm tired of standing in the kitchen), I drag out the spices and herbs and start seasoning. Sometimes I want a curry flavor, sometime soy sauce, sometimes Italian, sometimes it's just a mystery.

Once the dish is done, I can eat it as is or add it to rice. Usually, I am quite satisfied when the "mystery" resolves itself to a delicious dinner.

A recent "Mystery Stir-Fry" came about thusly"

• I had a small package of frozen scallops thawing out. I've never actually cooked scallops at home, so this was sure to be an adventure.
• I tossed the scallops in the pan with a little vegetable oil, added a few stalks of fresh asparagus (which I am only just now learning to cook), and some slices of fresh button mushrooms.
• A little water, sea salt, coarse ground pepper, garlic powder (my irritation with fresh garlic is something for a later post).
• I covered the pan, waited a few minutes for the asparagus to get tender and the scallops to turn opaque.
• Served over brown rice, I spooned on some of the pan juices for the flavor.
  
• Usually I make a mystery dish and then never remember how it is done. I hope I remember this one. It was delicious--and very simple.
  

*This, I should point out, is not a reference to the unknown protein that appears in school cafeterias but to odd--and largely unknown--cuts of meat that we sometimes get at an especially good price. My Prince has occasionally come home with 10 or 20 pounds of excellent pork (sometimes beef) that could have been intended for chops or roasts or who knows what. Either the trainee butcher got to it or the master butcher was hung over. Seriously weird cuts. Seriously challenging to figure out how to prepare it. And more fun that way, to be honest.