Food Philosophy

1. Shop at Farmer's Markets
2. Walk to your groceries if you can.
3. Buy local and buy fresh.
4. Dance or contemplate dancing when you plan your meals.

The Farmer's Market
On Tuesdays a parking lot in my neighborhood becomes a Farmer's Market. Every week I walk to the market with my black tote bag and bring home as much as I can carry. As you can see from this photo, I couldn't resist the red chili peppers for only $1. I have them hanging in my kitchen to dry.

The vendors in this market are required to be local farmers, unlike some open air markets where the produce looks good but the box labels are from Mexico and Chile. The layout of the market is a visual display of the growing seasons. In summer the peaches, berries, Blenheim apricots, and pluots expand the market into the adjacent street. The fall stands are piled with grapes, dark purple, plump red, and tiny white champagne clusters. In winter the market shrinks back into the boundaries of the parking lot. The colors change from reds and yellows to the dark greens and browns of kale, chard, turnips, onions, potatoes and yams. The textures change from soft to hard. The fruits are gone until spring, the day of the first red strawberries.

Last week I arrived as the vendors were packing up their produce precisely at 1 PM. I had come for grapes and rushed to one of the stands where I saw grapes still out on the tables. Focused on my goal, it was only when I got under the canopy that I realized why this stand was lagging behind. The produce man was dancing with a customer in the middle of the space formed by the L-shaped tables. They continued for a few minutes, then finished the dance. He told her, "You are an excellent dancer," and went back behind the table. I thought I heard the word "Samba." She said in broken Spanish, "I will return for my second dance lesson --- la semana próxima?? --- next week??" He nodded yes.

I handed him two clusters of grapes, one red and one green. "Do you want to dance too?" he asked as he gave me my change.

"No thanks," I said. "Not today." The thought of the dance was a pleasure in itself.

He smiled and turned to the other produce man. They packed the rest of the grapes into their truck, folded the canopy and the tables. Soon cars would pull up to the parking meters, driving over wisps of cornsilk and lettuce.

His 'n Hers

<-----The chicken breasts

The highest my husband eats on the food chain is chicken. We were vegetarians for about 10 years. We added a little fish and chicken and that's the way it stayed...until...I was 6 months pregnant and found myself at McDonalds gobbling down two hamburgers. From then on meat became part of my diet.

The outdoor grill is a solution for cooking a dual diet meal. We have a Weber grill on the deck outside the kitchen.

Dual Diet Meal: Chicken Breasts and Lamb Chops (for 3 people or 2 people with left-overs for tomorrow's lunch)

For the chicken breasts:
3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Bottled Marinade - Soy Vey if you can get it

For the lamb chops:
3 thick loin lamb chops
salt
olive oil
fresh rosemary

Pour the marinade over the chicken breasts in a bowl. Sprinkle the lamb chops with about 1 teaspoon of olive oil, salt and rosemary.

Heat the grill to high.

Decide which will be the chicken side of the grill and which will be the meat side.

Put the chicken breasts on the chicken side. Put the lambchops on the meat side. Grill for 5 minutes. Turn everything over. Grill for 5 minutes more. Check for done-ness. If they need more cooking, turn grill down to medium until done.

Easy sauce for the chicken breasts: 2 TBLS mayonnaise, 2 tsp prepared mustard. Stir.

<------ The lamb chops 

Welcome Every Guest with Hunter's Chicken

I just returned from dinner at my daughter's new house. She moved in about a month ago with her fiance in the same week that they announced their engagement. My husband and I brought lunch over on moving day (sliced turkey, cheese, sourdough bread, lettuce, mayo, tortilla chips, guacamole, chocolate chip cookies, cokes and beer.) This was the first time we've been back to visit.

She made one of my recipes for dinner, Hunter's Chicken. It was the sweetest experience being in their home. Tbey both lived alone for many years. They decided that they would not revert to either of their own styles. They are careful about what comes in the door and want to allow the space to develop as a third way. This is a lesson I'm just beginning to learn. For the longest time, I've believed in Rumi's idea that "this being human is a guest house - every morning a new arrivial" and our job in life is to welcome every guest, even if they are a passle of sorrows. Everything brings with it a lesson from that place beyond our knowing.

Welcoming every guest is true on most occasions except for material things that sneak through the door in boxes, envelopes and shopping bags. I've spent the last months rooting out those things that nested in my closets and under the bed. It's like losing weight, it's much better not to let it accumulate in the first place. When it does, getting rid of it is hard, hard, hard. Right now I have 4 garbage bags in the trunk of my car and two in the back seat ready to go to Goodwill. Goodbye lace tablecloth, red and gold highball glasses, and beaded linen placemats.

When it comes to people, welcome your guests. Homecooked meals add to that magic. Our welcome into our daughter's home fills me with an emotion that I can't yet explain. So instead, I'll explain how to make Chicken Cacciatore, hunter's chicken that I adapted from a favorite Italian cookbook, Romanoli's Table. It's not a five-minute recipe, but it's not complicated either. It has a favorable ratio of effort/delicious in the preparation/benefit analysis. I served this often to our family and to guests with rotini, those spiral spaghetti that our children called boingers.

Hunter's Chicken
1 chicken cut up
Cut chicken breasts in half cross-wise to make smaller pieces
Olive oil (about 2 tablespoons)
2 cloves garlic
3 stems fresh rosemary cut into sections or 1 tablespoon dried)
1/2 cup white or red wine
1/4 cup wine vinegar
1 tsp salt

Pre-heat over to 350
Heat oil in a heavy dutch oven or frying pan with salt and most of the rosemary. Add chicken pieces in two or three batches and brown on all sides. Add more oil if needed as you are browing the chicken pieces. As they brown, take them out of the pan and put them into an oblong oven proof baking dish.

After the chicken pieces are browned, add the wine to the pan and bring to a boil, then add the wine vinegar to the pan and bring to a boil. Stir in the golden juices and browned bits that were left in the pan. Pour it over the chicken. Garnish with more rosemary. Cook in the oven for about 45 minutes or until done.

You can find the poem, The Guest House, translated by Coleman Barks http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Rumipoetry2.html#anchor_13250
I wrote a piece about this poem and recovery from illness that is still on Beliefnet <http://www.beliefnet.com/story/20/story_2008_1.html>

Shrimp Remoulade
I discovered that I can press a button in Picasa and send a photo to my blog. Picasa is free software from Google to manage digital photos on your computer http://picasa.google.com/
This is a photo I took of shrimp remoulade. The cooked baby shrimp were on sale. That's what got this meal started. I tossed the shrimp in lemon juice and put them on a platter with lettuce and tomato. The remoulade sauce:
Mayonnaise
Ketchup
Horseradish
Tabasco
Lemon Juice
Paprika
Worcestshire Sauce
Garlic
Chopped celery
Not sure of the proportions but it should be pink and spicy. If you want to follow a recipe, search for Shrimp Remoulade at www.epicurious.com

The orzo salad:
Cook 1/2 lb orzo al dente in salted water and drain. Let cool for a few minutes.

Add:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 TBLS wine vinegar
12 kalamata olives
1/2 cup feta cheese cut in cubes
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup frozen peas defrosted
1 TBLS diced red onion
1 red bell pepper cut into cubes
1 teaspoon dried oregano or 1 TBLS fresh (I have it growing in my garden)
salt, pepper to taste

Bagels and Religion

Bagels and religion go together. Growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, my parents were determined to give their children a proper Jewish upbringing. The three tenets of the Jewish family are food, education, and culture. Our family took frequent weekend trips to Philadelphia about 90 miles away. The schedule was lunch at a Jewish Deli, visit relatives in the afternoon, have dinner at Bookbinders, then off to the glorious Academy of Music to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra or to a theatre for a play.

After the evening performance, our parents would take us to the bagel factory. This was before the days of Lenders and Sara Lee. I still have the memory of walking down a dark alley like a scene in a Hong-Kong action movie. We'd enter a decrepit building. Inside it was warm and smelled delicious. The place had just opened after the Sabbath ended on Saturday night. Old men sat behind a counter, bent over dough, rolling bagels by hand. My parents spoke Yiddish and would complete the transaction, a bag of bagels to take home and one to eat right there, warm from the oven. Now that I remembr this almost mystical setting, I wonder if for Jews, the bagel is the host.

Bagels should be chewy, not fluffy. They should be dense. Plain, sesame, poppy and salt are acceptable. Chocolate chip, asiago, blueberry, and jalapeno are just wrong. They must be purchased in a deli or bagel store. The ones from the supermarket, especially the bagels packed in plastic bags, as they say in the South, are no count. Bagels from big East Coast cities especially New York are the best.

Bagels on the West Coast suffer from fluffiness. For several years, the best bagels in our small town near San Francisco were from Boogie Woogie Bagels. I went on most Sunday mornings to get bagels for our breakfast, a salt bagel for my husband, sesame for me. The bagels were OK, not great, but I continued with this tradition because they were the best around and I like to support our local merchants.

Then House of Bagels moved into town. We tried their bagels. Yum! Not quite New York, but fresh and they had that toothsome quality. House of Bagels is a franchise. The raw bagels are delivered after the dough has been boiled, then baked at the store. Boiling the dough before baking is what makes a bagel a bagel instead of a roll.

I've just come back from my Sunday morning trip to House of Bagels. This morning I negotioated the sale in colloquial language. "Three salt bagel," I say, just like the Chinese proprieter does, without making the bagel word plural. "That will be $2.25." He hands me the paper bag with three bagels. I open my change purse and give him two one-dollar bills and a quarter. He rings up the sale. I say, "Thank you." Next to the cash register is a red Jade figure. Without my reading glasses it looks like a Happy Buddha or as I get closer, perhaps a dragon, there for good luck to keep us aligned with our gods and our ancestors. I rub its snout (if a dragon) or its belly (if a Buddha) before I leave the store.