Give It Up

Are you giving anything up for Lent? - Lapsed Catholic

A long time a go I whittled down my vices to beer and masturbation. Such small indulgences, it didn’t seem noteworthy to go without either for any extended period of time. 

Well that and it has been more than a few years since I have done anything more Catholic than a Mardi Gras bowl of gumbo. Yet, the slightly obsessive part of me, likes reading about hunger, fasting and what moves people to go without. Lent, or at least the idea of Lent, the 40 day period leading up to the Easter holiday commemorating Christ’s time in the wilderness; ideally, theoretically is devoted to fasting, abstinence and penitence is fascinating. 

What's off limits during a fast? And from a catholic perspective that has truly been a moveable feast. Enter our buddy Galen, he of the humoral theories. Despite the fact Galen was a Roman citizen (of Greek origin who lived in Turkey before the time of Christ - why shouldn’t his demonstratively wrong theories on food dictate modernish Christian practices). According to Galen, Fat was considered hot (that’s Galen hot; not Paris Hilton hot) and should be avoided. While fish, because it came from water was considered cold and okay. And depending on the era, waterfowl was either okay or not cool during Lent. 

Two staples of vegetarians - eggs and butter have been classified as meat or meat analogue for centuries, long before vegans took up the debate. What is Lenten fare is an issue that have kept Popes and theologians busy for lifetimes. I always suggest the Catholic Church is at its best when it extols the virtues of its faith and suffers when it decides to get all lawyerly on issues - heliocentrism, insurance coverage and inquisitions. Which is why giving up something for 40 days can be viewed as a truer expression of denial than abstaining form meat while indulging in eggs cooked in butter on a Friday morning and ordering Peking Duck later that evening. 

Without trying to work through the big questions of what is fat and lean, I have been thinking about forgoing white flour and refined sugar, but not because I am steeped in theology. Every winter I add a few pounds - yeah, not being skinny does make those cold damp days more bearable. I call this layer of built in insulation ‘my protective bratwurst layer’, in truth though it’s pure carbohydrate. And here is the problem, I add 15 pounds over the course of the cold months then each spring I drop 12-13 pounds. After 10 years the math is catching up. 

What if I could go 40 days without white bread and sugar, get started on my post-Easter slimming regiment. I love them both dearly, so going without would actually be in the spirit of lean days. Except I am not off to a great start - Such a good sandwich on Ash Wednesday and yesterday some pretty okay m & m’s (truth be told I wasn’t expecting too much out of them). Okay, so a month and some change with no bread pudding for sure, but what about pizza, white flour? Ice cream? Switching to multigrain buns is easy and probably a good idea, but how do I bind myself to a goal without religion or a meaningful oath to bind me? 

Lenten sacrifice? Eating less baguette for a month isn’t going to get me beatified but I still think I will try it. 

Not That Big of a Deal

Maybe, possibly this has come up before, but I like shopping for food. I love a trip to the grocery store as long as it isn't Safeway. My neighborhood supermarket, New Seasons, is so big and clean and full of abundance and friendly people, if I weren't such a homebody, I would go, grab a cart and push it around and enjoy the the heated space, the humanity and be amazed at how many bottled foods there are – have you ever noticed all the salad dressings there are, it's like a whole aisle? Farmer's Market in the morning before it gets overly crowded; also really cool and the Vietnamese grocery is great and an errand to Whole Foods, doesn't seem like an errand. I would go shopping for groceries once a day if I had the time and money.

The trouble with treating food shopping like a form of entertainment isn't that like a movie you are frequently disappointed and out 12 bucks. The problem is, especially if you live alone, is that you can quickly fill the pantry beyond use. The next thing you know, the freezer is full, there is more than enough food in the fridge and going to the store is merely an indulgence and/or a way to stave off loneliness.

So I skipped going to the store last week. Since I had plenty of food and my embargo on restaurants and paying for meals is over (plus I had money and credit to spend on going out), there was little chance of going hungry. But not buying groceries for close to 2 weeks does leave a pantry strong in some areas and week in another leading to some odd combinations. A Quesadilla without cheese – I guess that makes it a dilla, Pepperless jambalaya, and a not horrible melange of Brussels Sprouts, potatoes, sausage and stone ground mustard.

Still, I was most proud when I was able to put together a meal of copa, arugula, sun dried tomatoes, truffle salt and pecorino tossed it with spaghetti. It was like leftovers without the Ur dish. And at the risk of sounding overly proud for having combined ingredients that were living 5 feet apart from one another, it was good, very good. Those items could have been a sandwich, if I had the bread. Or an omelet, but it's now something that I might try to make again by actually shopping for the ingredients, thus combining my loves of going to the store with eating well.

Here is the promised link to the beet article. More tales of food later in the week.

Of Words and Veg

I wrote about beets for the Oregonian's FOODday – I'm using past tense because the article was turned the article in last Tuesday, but it won't be published until next Tuesday. I love writing for the Oregonian, even with a shrinking readership, daily newspapers still matter and they cast a wide net – You have to come looking for my blog, with a newspaper, it's either on your doorstep or in a breakroom.

When I started this blog, I was clocking in at about 1200 words with each post. As I got better and understood the medium, I pretty much halved that and generally fall between 400 to 600 words for each topic. With the newspaper, I get 150-200 words. In a way, this forces me to be a better writer, choose my words carefully, focus on one aspect of a subject and avoid adverbs. It is the same argument people make about poetry and twitter.

Beets are fascinating; 200 words isn't enough. Yes, I know people say the that an economy of words same make poetry and to a lesser extent, twitter better, but this isn't true for beets, you just can't cram their complex botany and history into a the equivalent length of a Faulkneresque sentence (or a couple of paragraphs for the rest of us).

Er, BEET

Just for openers the veg is known as 'beetroot', yet the issue of what is a root is kind of tricky. Botanically speaking, beets are more of a swollen stem than a true root. Beets are also anomalous because of their sugar content - up to 5% of the root is raw sugar, compared to its starchy counterparts like potato, rutabagas or taro, the beet seems like freakin stevia by comparison.

Here are some random beet facts -

• Beets go back to Roman times, the red beet is actually called the roman beet.
• Beets in England, like the English themselves, tend to be paler.
• Beets were generally tapered until 1587, when the predecessor of the modern beet was discovered.
• The German language puns the name of beetroot (mangoldwurzel) with root in time of need (mangelwurzel) to reflect the fodder like status of the food.
• Chioggia beets, an Italian variety dating to 1840, are stripped
• Woody Guthrie sang B-E-E-T-S not B-E-A-T-S, or so sang John Doe
• The production of sugar beets is directly related to land wars in Europe.

Each of those could be a lengthy blog post or my blurb length newspaper clipping. So what aspect of beets did I right about? I wrote about how the hardest part about eating beets isn't finding or cooking them, it is getting past all the ways they have been served horribly: I wrote about myself.

I'll post the link Tuesday and be back with more posts next week.

ON BUFFETS

Last week, Friend of the Blog, Charlie Seluzicki opined on leftovers. This week it is everyone's favorite love-hate form of grazing, the buffet. Credit is due here, I would have gone with white foods and steam tables, whereas Charlie artfully avoids both. Happy reading and thanks as always to Charlie for his contribution.

Whenever I see the word “buffet,” I think of my Aunt Annie who pronounced it “buff-it,” like the singer’s name.  My aunt, like my mother, her sister, loved good quality but eschewed anything even suggesting pretense, as in favoring a French pronunciation.  This resonates with me as I write because I had lunch at Hometown Buffet today.  And I liked it.  So, I am not writing about fancy buffets in classy hotels and starred restaurants. I’m talking about the places where the regular folks go when they go out to eat. You can take the boy out of East Baltimore but...

Family influences are critical in how we look at food and, equally importantly, the social contexts in which food exists.  I was blessed with a heritage of ethnic traditions- Polish, German-, a mother who cooked some things very well and a father who loved trying an ever expanding range of new things to eat.  My Dad never talked about buffets; he used the word “smorgasbord” for venues that offered a big array of foods and he would wrap mouth around that word as if it was a ripe piece of melon.  However, practical considerations- read, “how much does it cost”?- ultimately touched everything. And this is recognizing that my Dad, the man who pronounced that “it only cost a little more to go first class,” had his limits. Life is deliciously complex.

Lunch is, like, $7.50. Seniors pay $6.79. Drinks are more. I start out at the salad bar and the soup (there are three kinds) and taco station.  It is all terribly interesting.  I can put a pile of Mexican rice on one half of my plate, cap it with taco ground beef whose taste is familiar and welcome, a little of the raw onion chopped with cilantro and two kinds of fresh salsa.  

On the other half I can lay down baby spinach leaves, top them with grated carrot, thawed peas, red onion, sunflower seeds, canned beets, dried cranberries and a dollop of Thousand Island dressing. I forgo the prepared salads mostly: Caesar, potato, macaroni, ...

You eat. You people watch. Their families- Anglo, Latino, Asian- almost equal in number. Groups of seniors who come together on buses talk about someone who is not getting along with everyone else. And then there are the “types.” The hefty gals who wear peddle-pushers, tops with sequins legends like “Sexy Grandma”  and have butterfly tattoos artfully positioned above their ankles. The guys who construct pyramids of fried chicken on their plates like there are no second visits to the buffet.  There are curious creatures who do things like pour gravy over their Parker house rolls and teenagers who think it is funny to put Cool Whip on their mashed potatoes.

Sundays are amazing. Is everyone there coming after church? They bow their heads and pray before eating. They have such animated conversations about onion rings, brownies and how they like their soft serve ice cream. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Once the preliminary trip has been made, the clear glass salad bar plates yield to solid colors- green, yellow, red- for the main course.  I select a piece of fried chicken, a small scoop of (canned) green beans, corn bread, a tiny portion of baked fish and a carefully extracted piece of meatloaf. Now I like meatloaf finished with a final thin glaze of ketchup. It gets carmelised, shiny, golden brown. But even I was horrified when the young woman tending the tables poured a pot full of warm ketchup over the otherwise good, everyday fare.

You could find spaghetti on that island and fettucine alfredo style noodles along with cross sections of something like calzones filled with those strange little pellets of sausage and pizza. There are three flavored butters next to the rolls.  You will find hot dogs with or without a bun, two fish offerings, a selection of Chinese dishes, potatoes four ways and perhaps a half dozen different vegetables.  I am struck with the knowledge that the beef offerings are all made from ground beef.  There are no breasts or wings that I saw with the chicken.  Actual cuts of meat are reserved for dinner where the price jumps more than three dollars person.  

The dessert display is the back of the room makes me dizzy.  I counted no fewer than 25 different offerings plus soft serve ice cream with a half dozen toppings.  Cakes, brownies, pies, puddings, cookies and fruit crumbles of every sort are offered.  Do people come to gorge on desserts only? Is that what ultimately lures the families with three little kids, Grandma and Aunt Helen? You do not have to work at eavesdropping in this big open rooms. Many people seem aficionados of the buffets around town and get in lively discussions comparing one with the other.

I go to these places two or three times a year.  They intrigue me. I do not think I recognize most of the kinds of people that I see there.  But I remember them the summers that I worked in factories.  I remember them from the old neighborhood.  Long ago I learned that as a form of restaurant, buffets are enormously economical to operate in comparison to the model where individual meals are prepared to order.  The model is egalitarian yet they appeal to a wide range of idiosyncratic eating habits and behaviors.  They are inclusive in a way that will not allow pretense.  Scoff at the Jello, the chiffon pie or the overcooked vegetables if you must. As long as they produce a reasonable variety of decently made dishes that speak to the middle American palate, they cannot help but please for the dollar.  


Charles Seluzicki

Hangover, Sans Bradley Cooper

I woke yesterday morning with what felt like a world class hangover. I can't remember the last time I was drunk, but I can pinpoint the last 5 or 6 times I had a hangover. You know what's worse than a hangover? A hangover without having drank to excess.

Renowned drinker Kingsley Amis divided the hangover into the the Physical Hangover and the Metaphysical Hangover. The meta hangover is when, “that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear of the future begins to steal over you.”. I did not suffer from a metaphysical hangover, I only suffered from the physical side effects, specifically, I couldn't stop touching my forehead above my left eye, despite how I felt, every time I checked, there actually wasn't an icepick sticking out of my temple.

Two beers over the course of five hours with snacks and a meal, only to end up incapacitated the next morning - This is offensive, an outrage, an attack on everything that is right and true. Unfortunately this isn't the first time the results of alcohol have been disproportionate to the input. About a dozen years ago I started getting a tickle in my throat and welts on my arms after drinking red wine. One night after a glass of Chilean red, I don't know was the actual cause of what transpired, but I'm going to posit that a $4 bottle of wine from a part of the world where one can still purchase DDT in the hardware store is not maybe the best way to tempt the good health gods - I broke out in hives, my throat constricted to the point it required a trip to the emergency room.

It was many years before I sipped red wine again, trips to the ER will do that. Eventually I eased myself back into the occasional glass of red wine, always from a notable wine producing area – Napa, Oregon, France instead of the Croatian-Icelandic mix they sell at Trader Joe's (but it's so cheap). Even if caution and responsible drinking kept the hives away, the morning after one stinkin' glass of wine, I noticed I couldn't do my usual run at the gym, my lungs hurt so much. Was this a histamine reaction to allergies? Food allergies are extremely difficult to diagnose despite what your cousin's coworker's naturopath says. Possibly this is/was a reaction to sulfites, which can trigger an asthmatic response? Reasonable guess, except white wine contains more sulfites than red and it's never an issue with white. So rather than trying to CSI this mystery, I avoid red wine, something I enjoy, but don't love. It isn't a sacrifice to go without.

But beer, giving up beer that hurts. About 3 years ago, I would get blinding headaches within 12 hours of drinking a, single beer. White pain. I eventually cut out beers on tap, unfiltered beers, beers with wheat in them, beers that use rice as an adjunct, beers from Utah, beers from Laos and most so called microbrews - I was down to cans of Miller, sipped cautiously. While uncomplicated lagers have a place in the hot sun, they just aren't worth drinking in the middle of winter.

Technically a hangover is equal parts mild withdrawal from alcohol ( your body gets used to its presence, then its gone - fever, sensitivity to light: This is where the theory of hair of the dog comes into play). That and dehydration combined with the physiological fact alcohol enlarges the cranial blood vessels (caffeine constricts them). So maybe what I am suffering from is something that isn't a hangover but just feels like one.

For the time being, Black Butte Porter out of bottles is my safety net and right now with my head still not back to normal, it might a while before I am ready to sip one of those – I got sick from mayonnaise when I was 5, still can't stand the stuff 40 years later, why does it only take 2 days to forget what alcohol does. Greyhounds for the time to come.

Leftovers

Post by Charles Seluzicki

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. Calvin Trillin

It strikes me that the first day of February is a good day to write about leftovers.  Not because I have leftovers in the fridge at the moment.  But because my memories of Christmas leftovers are still so fresh.  Only now am I able to talk about them.

The day after our Christmas evening feast, the fridge, the cooler and every available bit of counter space is crowded with pies, rolls, jars of nuts and bowls of fruit, fresh and dried.  Mind you, folks were sent home with platters if they did not complain that they too were bulging at capacity.  

The first order of business is always to strip the turkey carcass clean, roast the bones and make stock for the turkey vegetable soup.  The situation with the ham is less urgent.  Bean soup will beckon in five or six days. Still I know the drill. My adversity to waste confronts the spectre of multiple incarnations of the turkey: hot turkey sandwiches with mashed potatoes employ the precious last of the gravy, turkey salad makes a dent in the extra celery and pickles, turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches nobly heed the call to waste not.  And there is the matter of the turkey soup. But not unlike that haunting 70’s refrain “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” echoing through episodes of “The Brady Bunch,” I start hearing the words, “Turkey, turkey, turkey.” I grapple with the deeper implications of it all.  Alfred North Whitehead famously said that the greatest philosophical problem was that we lived 80% of our lives in repetition. Surely there would be an entire chapter on leftovers if that book is ever written.  

Some of the leftovers simply get away from me.  A perfectly good dish is silently discarded. There was just too much of it and it has been around too long.  Half of the smoked ham has been frozen. I’m not certain when I will be able to look at it again.  The other half is demanding my attention.  Bean soup is made before all of the turkey vegetable is gone.  I simply want and need a change.

The memory of the ancestral dinner, the first cause of all leftovers, begins to fade as the leftovers take on a life of their own and spawn new variations. I forget my resolve.  More and more my house is silent at lunch time.  I am out and about, my nose stuck in menus far and wide: Indian, Ethiopian, Thai...


Charles Seluzicki

Wax, Paper, Scissors

Most of the time this blog serves as a before the fact forum, people ask questions, I try to provide as much info and cooking wisdom, so readers can achieve success in the kitchen. Occasionally though, I get asked to CSI a problem after the fact. Because it happens less often, I enjoy it more - the reconstructing of the moment it all went terribly wrong. Along the way, I usually get to share a story of how I did something very similar/equally dumb. If you do anything enough, especially an activity with open flames, sharp knives and occasional drinking, mistakes will happen, shortcuts will be exposed and trips to the emergency room will be had. 

A few weeks ago a friend was telling a story about baking in a visiting kitchen, where do to the non-familiar set up, time constraints and being somewhere between a dilettante and avocational baker, he most likely used wax paper instead of parchment paper. He doesn't quite remember and it wasn't his kitchen so he can't go back in check, but as our conversation went on, it became pretty likely the error was in the lining choice. He asked the difference between wax and parchment paper, when I explained, he then wondered why do we even have wax paper. Answer - because it wraps up a sandwich. 

According to the Reynolds website "wax Paper should not be used for lining cookie sheets for baking cookies. Wax paper cannot take the heat of the oven and will smoke."  and more specifically, it's anything over 250, or in non-numerical terms, anything you want to bake as opposed to keep warm. Although wax paper is fine in the microwave or it can be used in an oven if it's completely covered, like at the bottom of a cake pan.  On the upside the wax used in wax paper is food grade wax, much like the thin application of wax sprayed on fruit, eating it will do no harm, but breathing it as it smokes will not be pleasant. 

Why does treated paper smoke? Think of a wax candle - it smokes as it burns, and candles and flame burn at a much higher temp - about 1000+ depending on what type of wax - that is more than an oven is hopefully going to generate. The cleaner the burn, the less smoke, 350 or so will leave plenty of room to smoke and most cookies or eclairs don't need that rustic smoky flavor. 

Parchment paper, on the other hand can go right into the oven and is safe up to the Bradburyesque temperature of Fahrenheit 451 or so. Parchment is traditional paper, one that has been made by being pulped and milled, but then it gets washed in a chemical batch, cleaned and dried. While technically not non-stick, the process does reduce stickiness. It is also about three to four times as expensive as wax paper, so it's not the type of thing you want to be wrapping PB & J's in. 

What would I do if I needed parchment and was out? Foil is the next best thing, but it need's to be oiled or there will be problems with stickiness and if there was no foil, parchment and only wax paper, I would use an old paper grocery bag. Still, I admire the willingness to dive in and use what's on hand, that's what smoke detectors are for.