Category: Food

Squash puppies

Squash puppies with pesto

While eating squash fritters a few days ago and thinking about other things to do with squash, the idea of squash puppies occurred to my wicked mind. For all I knew, I was the first to think of such a thing as squash puppies. But a little Googling showed that I was late to the game. There are many recipes out there for squash puppies.

If you want to make them, and you come across a recipe that calls for precooking the squash by boiling it or something, move on. I’m sure that you’d prefer a recipe in which raw grated squash is used in the batter. The squash will cook just as quickly as the other ingredients in the batter.

Deep-fat frying is one of my least favorite things to do. But for squash puppies I just had to do it. The squash puppies will cook very fast and will puff up like marshmallows, so watch them carefully. As you cook them in small batches, put the finished squash puppies onto a paper towel on a baking sheet in a warm oven, about 175F. The finished puppies will be very light and soft. They will want a sauce or a dip, whatever your conscience allows.

I made a smallish batch and couldn’t eat them all. Mrs. Possum will have squash puppies tonight.

Squash fritters

When squash is in high season (and it is), squash in every way imaginable is on the table. Squash fritters sound like a lot of fuss, but actually they’re quick and easy.

Coarsely grate the squash (and some onion) in a box grater. Add egg, flour, and seasonings. Drop the mixture into a skillet with enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet.

Blue Ridge Parkway eateries


Clouds from a summer squall move eastward above a Doughton Park trail head.

In the Blue Ridge foothills, elevation about 1000 feet, the high temperature yesterday was about 91F. Sixty miles away in the Blue Ridge Highlands, elevation about 3,500 feet, the high was about 75F, with a constant cool breeze and rain showers. I should get up there more often in the summer.

There were two primary missions — to meet a friend from Charlotte for a little hiking at Doughton Park, and to have lunch at the newly opened Bluffs Restaurant, which I wrote about previously here.

The Bluffs did not disappoint. It was easy to see from the happy, accommodating staff that the restaurant is doing well and that the people who work there are sharing in the success. We had fried okra with a ranch-style dipping sauce (excellent); hushpuppies with molasses butter (also excellent); side salads; and fried-green-tomato BLTs on sourdough with fries on the side. And iced tea, of course. We ordered too much and ate too much, and lunch came to $25 each. If you’re in the area and are considering visiting the Bluffs, it’s at milepost 241 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Laurel Springs in Ashe County, North Carolina. The place is very busy, and they recommend reservations. The number to call (as well as the menus) are on their web site. They’ve set up a large, wedding-style tent with picnic tables in front of the building to accommodate people who’re waiting to go inside. They also serve under the tent. My hiking companion’s dog waited under the tent while we were inside, and kitchen workers and waitresses took the dog snacks and icewater.

Driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway with the windows down (the speed limit is 45 mph), in and out of woods, past lush meadows and the occasional farm, under a busy sky, birds singing, I kept thinking, “I remember this planet. This is the planet I was born on.” The population of the earth has doubled since I was born in 1948. Except for the Appalachian Highlands, I often think that the entire east coast of the U.S. is now one big suburb.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was an economic stimulus project during the Great Depression. Work began under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. It’s one of the nicest gifts the American people have ever given themselves, from an era in which the rich paid their fair share and when government was understood to exist for the benefit of the people. The American people desperately need another era like that, now.


A U.S. Park Service version of a kissing gate. There’s no moving gate; it’s just assumed that a cow can’t get around the bend. Split-rail fencing made from locust wood is common in the Appalachian Highlands. Locust is plentiful, resists rot, and splits easily.


Near Cumberland Knob, milepost 217.


The interior of the Bluffs


Fried okra at the Bluffs


Side salad at the Bluffs


I had this humble diner burger at a roadside restaurant at Fancy Gap, Virginia, while driving to the Bluffs

Runaway squash and cucumbers

I had the good sense this year to plant a sparse garden for easier maintenance. Even so, when the garden kicks in, you can’t turn your back on it even for a day. I had skipped a day of harvesting, and this morning I picked five pounds of squash and cucumbers from four squash plants and four cucumber plants. Some of the squash and cucumbers had already gotten a little too big.

Unlike tomatoes, which love to sit and look out the kitchen window, squash and cucumbers start to lose their freshness the instant they’re picked. I pick them in the cool of the morning, wash them in cold water, dry them, and pop them in the fridge.

I’d have fried fresh squash every day in summer if it weren’t for the calories. Curried squash is probably the lowest-calorie way to fix them. When I fry squash, I like to not use egg. I slice the squash and let the slices sit for about 10 minutes. A sticky dew will form. That stickiness helps the flour stick. Roll the slices in seasoned flour. Then roll them in a mixture of flour, seasonings, and water, about the same thickness as you would with an egg mixture. Then roll them in semolina flour and pop them in the skillet.

Pasta is a piece of cake


Homemade tagliatelle with basil-parsley pesto. The basil, parsley, and lettuce came from my garden. The pesto was made with a mortar and pestle.

When I posted last week about working on my Italian cooking (“A summer project: Italian cooking,” June 2), I was not thinking about pasta — honest. I was thinking about how to make the most of the summer vegetables from my garden.

But as I read more and more of Elizabeth David’s Italian Food, I realized that pasta is part of the deal in Italian cuisine. So I needed a pasta plan — including figuring out how not to eat too much of it.

It was easy to see that a pasta machine would be necessary. I am pretty sure that I will never, ever, be able to make pasta with a rolling pin. So, when I was grocery shopping on Tuesday, I stopped by the Williams Sonoma in Winston-Salem and bought an Imperia (made in Italy!) pasta machine, $80. This is a hand-cranked machine. Williams Sonoma also has attachments for KitchenAid mixers. But the attachments are much more expensive than the hand-cranked machine, and I reasoned that a pasta machine driven by such a high-powered motor would be a very high-powered way to make a very big mess.

With the hand-cranked machine, at least, the mess is much less than I feared. I was afraid of a sticky mess. But instead it was a mere floury mess. If you’re used to handling dough, your second batch of pasta will be excellent. I won’t presume to give any instructions here, because I’m just a novice. But there are many videos on YouTube about how to make pasta at home.

Amazon also has the Imperia machine, for less, naturally, than I paid at Williams Sonoma. It’s a heavy little thing. And it’s entirely practical, not at all a use-it-once kitchen gadget.

I do have one warning. Most recipes for pasta will make an outrageous amount of pasta, enough to feed a family of ten, to require a 40-gallon cauldron for boiling, to keep you turning a crank for half a day, and to run out of places to hang pasta. If you’re cooking for an old-fashioned Catholic family, I understand. But since I cook only for myself and for the possum who makes nightly visits to my backyard, even a one-egg batch of pasta is more than twice as much as I can eat. My possum will eat Italian tonight.

A thought that helped me overcome my resistance to making something as high-calorie as pasta is that pasta skills (and a pasta machine) also will assist with egg dumplings, which would make a fine winter comfort food. Also, the method of making Asian noodles can’t be that different from making Italian pasta.

I’m probably the last California-influenced cook to start making pasta. There are two skills involved, I would say: How to make the pasta (easy); and how not to make too much of it (hard). The real technical challenge with homemade pasta, I would say, is making no more of it than you ought to eat.

A summer project: Italian cooking

A friend who lives in the south of France asked me yesterday in email what plans I have for summer. I couldn’t think of a thing, other than trying not to hide too much indoors in a bug-free, air-conditioned house. Then I remembered one thing: That, with the riches I hope to get from the garden, I plan to work on my Italian cooking.

It was about ten days ago, upon observing that though the early garden was 90 percent a failure because of the cold, dry spring, the summer garden looks promising. I will have yellow squash next week. The cucumbers and tomatoes are blooming. The basil and onions are coming along, but slowly. I planted okra from seed today.

Like most Americans, I grew up with spaghetti. Every few years or so I’ve made lasagna at home. I put some effort into improving my pizza skills, especially with crusts. I’ve had a few incredibly good dinners at proper and properly Italian restaurants in North Beach in San Francisco. But I have never made an effort to concentrate on authentic Italian cooking. I realized that I needed a book for that.

Cookbooks are available from Italian cooks with current TV shows, but I wanted something classic. The classic work on Italian cooking for English-speaking cooks was easy to identify. It’s Italian Food, by Elizabeth David. It’s one of the most beautiful cookbooks I’ve ever seen, illustrated with excellent color prints of Italian paintings of food. The book was printed in Verona.

Italian Food. Elizabeth David. Barry & Jenkins, London, 1954, 1987, 1996. 240 pages.

First published in 1954, this book satisfies my curiosity about what any culture’s cuisine was like when the cooks had experience and memories that went back to the 1800’s. What I saw in my grandmother’s kitchen in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina in 1954 (she was born in 1896) was nothing like what one sees in even the best kitchens today. New developments in cuisine, such as the ideas of an Alice Waters or a Michael Pollan, are very important. But cooking also has roots, and some knowledge of those roots is a must-have for any cuisine.

I ordered this cookbook through Amazon. It was shipped from the United Kingdom. There must be a good many copies in print, because the book is not hard to find. Booksellers don’t usually say what edition they’re selling. Mine is the 1996 edition, in very good condition.

I’ve a lot of good reading ahead of me, but the part about basil convinced me that this is indeed the cookbook I want:

“Nothing can replace the lovely flavour of this herb. If I had to choose just one plant from the whole herb garden I should be content with basil. Norman Douglas, who had a great fondness for this herb, would never allow his cook to chop the leaves or even to cut them with scissors; they had to be gently torn up, he said, or the flavour would be spoilt. I never agreed with him on this point, for the pounding of basil seems, on the contrary, to bring out its flavour.”

By pounding, I assume she means pounding in a mortar and pestle, which is now the only method I will use for making pesto.

Italian cooks, she writes in 1954, go to market twice a day. That’s a beautiful idea, but no American can live that way anymore. Some of us can, however, go to the garden twice a day.

Elizabeth David, who died in 1992, is an important figure in the history of cooking and cookbooks. The Wikipedia article is a good starting place for information about her.


Click here for high-resolution version


Lettuce pesto with lettuce from my garden

Pesto from lettuce?

Lettuce pesto sounds bland and watery. In truth, it is a little bland and a touch watery. But if lettuce is what you’ve got, then lettuce pesto it is. It will be three weeks or so before I can expect any summer basil from the garden. The winter basil from the kitchen window is almost gone, but I had enough of it to season the lettuce a bit.

Peace of mind, and the weather


The basil in the garden is just getting started. This pesto was made from the last of the winter basil, which I grew in the kitchen windows. More about the mortar and pestle below.

Living in the woods as I do — reasonably secure, healthy, and retired — my stress level isn’t very high. I feel for those who are still in the world of work, living in heavily populated places, with heavy responsibilities and heavy demands. For four years with Donald Trump in the White House, peace of mind was tough even in the woods. Now, with Trump gone and on his way to prison, what’s the biggest threat to peace of mind for woods-dwellers? The weather, I would say. (Because it was so easy for me to isolate, Covid-19 never felt very threatening here.)

For several years, the rule for the weather here was warmer and wetter, with occasional and minor deviations. The spring of 2021 broke that pattern. Spring this year was strangely cool and dry, with late and destructive frosts. It hasn’t been raining. Some of the grass is turning brown. The birds are looking for water. They notice within minutes when I start the drip system in the garden and flutter down for a drink. A big part of my disquiet is witnessing the stress of the plants and animals around me. The trees should be fine, though. Only a prolonged drought (which does not seem to be in store for us in my location) is hard on the trees. It’s the smaller things that suffer.

The cold spring was a big setback for the garden. Things that I planted from seed — radishes, lettuces, kales and chards — just never germinated. Water was never a problem, though, because of the reliable streams just down the hill and a neighbor who hauls water up the hill with his tractor for our irrigation systems. Even ten years ago in this area, drip systems for garden irrigation were not the rule. These days, just about everybody with a serious garden has a drip system. I’m water rich, in that two streams come together at the lower end of the abbey’s five acres. One stream is fairly sensitive to recent rainfall, but the other is fed by nearby springs that no one remembers ever going dry.

The forecast is looking a little better. With luck there will be a modest rainy spell here starting in about five days.

Basil and pesto

 
When I was Googling for help on improving my skill with pesto for the 2021 basil season, I came across several articles saying that the old-fashioned way of making pesto — with a mortar and pestle rather than a food processor — makes a big difference. I’m hardly an expert on Italian cooking, but so far I can find no reason to disagree. It’s not just the basil leaves that like to be pounded with marble rather than whizzed with a stainless steel blade. The garlic and nuts also like it. The old-fashioned pesto ends up looking more textured, with the different ingredients more visible. And I do believe that the taste is sassier and somehow more complex. The large granite mortar and pestle (ordered from Amazon) has earned its place in my kitchen. The Cuisinart food processor has been with me for more than 40 years. Unless someone convinces me that hummus should be made with a mortar and pestle, the food processor is in no danger of being donated to a thrift shop.

Trump

 
Though I admit that I am far too preoccupied with politics, I’ve avoided posting about it. Trump is history. He does not deserve our attention except insofar as the law continues the slow process of sending him to prison where he belongs. Though the media have finally started to foreshadow Trump’s trials and imprisonment, they still cater to the Trumpian notion of Trumpian invincibility and the idea that Trump will get away with everything. My view is that Trump & Co. will be held responsible for everything they have done. Let’s not feel guilty about the schadenfreude. The payment, at last, of Trump’s debt to justice (and his dollar debt to Russian oligarchs and oil oligarchs and therefore his final bankruptcy), will be tremendously satisfying and healing to those of us who have had to live with Trump and his insufferable supporters. They are more insufferable than ever, actually, as their gloating has turned into threats, insane denials, and a doubling of their rage.

The weather

 

According to the Climate Prediction Center, the entire western United States is in for a serious drought this year. If the forecast is accurate, the eastern United States will squeak by. Still, summer is now a scary time, as scary as winter must have been for so many of our ancestors.

Making peace with summer

 

Every year, I think about how I might overcome my dread of summer, with summer defined as the hottest parts of July and August in the American South — temperatures well over 90F, high humidity, bugs, weeds, and indoor air conditioning as the only escape. Should I get a canoe for the Dan River? Nah. The cat wouldn’t enjoy canoeing. One idea I had today is to focus on improving my competence with Italian cooking. After all, I’ve got a garden, and if I can keep the garden going against the heat, humidity, the weeds, and the bugs, then I can be as rich with summer produce as anyone in Tuscany. We shall see. Tomatoes, squash, basil and cucumbers do an awful lot to ease the discomforts of summer.

The joy of dieting


A diet-day main meal of scallops and roasted cauliflower in a creamy tomato sauce. Painless.

To say that I’m an experienced dieter sounds like I’m making a joke. That’s because it reveals that, when I lose weight, I gain it back. That’s true. I do gain it back. But as long as one’s weight oscillates within reasonable limits, that doesn’t seem so bad.

It’s my belt that lets me know. When I have to loosen my belt a notch, it’s time to start thinking about a diet.

As much as I dislike (and postpone) making the decision to go on a diet, I always find that dieting is not so bad. A diet to me means 1,200 calories a day. That’s nowhere near a starvation diet. It’s also a predictable diet. On 1,200 calories a day, I lose about two pounds a week. So, when I start a diet, I know how long it’s going to last.

Medical opinion about dieting seems to be changing, moving toward a consensus that diets don’t work and that diets aren’t worth doing. If that’s the case, I very much disagree. Diets do work. If one gains back the weight one lost, then the solution seems simple enough: Diet again. To me, the discipline involved in managing my weight isn’t about maintaining my optimum weight. I’m bad at that. But what I’m good at is starting a new diet when my belt tells me it’s time to start a new diet cycle. The window in which my weight oscillates is about ten pounds. That window needs to be kept small, to make one’s diets shorter and therefore not as daunting to undertake.

Being an experienced dieter has its advantages, chiefly familiarity and predictability. How to go about dieting is probably very confusing to many people, because there are so many theories, so many specialty diets, and so many books and articles on dieting.

But the fundamental science of dieting has not been overturned. If you consume fewer calories each day than your body burns, you’ll lose weight.

Therefore, as I see it, counting calories is essential. One could invent a specialty diet based on eating nothing but Krispy Kreme doughnuts. That would work, if one counted calories. But that would be a miserable diet that would be terrible for one’s health. It would be miserable because the carbs involved would make one hungry all the time. I have a saying, “Carbs today, hungry tomorrow.”

So, as I see it, the healthiest sort of diet also is the least uncomfortable diet. That means keeping carbs to a minimum. When I’m on a diet, I have to give up my favorite food: bread. Ideally, a diet should improve one’s health, not damage it. I find that fish (or tofu) and low-carb vegetables are ideal. One can even have three meals a day, if two of them are small. When I’m on a diet, I cook only one main meal a day. Breakfast, if I have it, might be a couple of teaspoons of peanut butter and sauerkraut. I might have popcorn for an evening snack. These days, with fresh local strawberries to be found, the evening snack might be strawberries with a little cream and a couple of very thin cookies. This does not feel like a hardship.

It worries me when I see articles like this one in the Washington Post, “Five myths about obesity.” Encouraging this kind of hopeless attitude seems unkind, though clearly the motivation is kindness and tolerance for those for whom weight management is particularly hard. I understand that. But the unintended unkindness, in my view, is that it leads people to not even try to manage their weight, though they might want to. I also find some of the premises misleading. Though no doubt it’s true that there is individual variation in how calories are processed by the body, that does not mean that the law of calories in vs. calories out has been rescinded. It just means that individual variation must be factored into dieting.

I can testify that, in my 72 years, weight-watching is nothing new. Based on what I overheard from adults years ago, people did this even in 1958, when I was ten years old, when most people were more lean, and when I was told that I was going to dry up and blow away if I didn’t eat more. There is no such thing as not being able to lose weight.

Barley dumplings


Barley dumplings in tomato sauce

I’m on a constant quest to test the versatility of barley. The latest experiment was barley dumplings. I think I can get the grade up next time, but my first effort would get only a C+.

The ingredients were barley flour, egg, and seasonings. I ground the barley flour myself (from organic hulled barley) in the milling attachment for my Champion juicer. I steamed the dumplings, thinking that they’d be less likely to fall apart than if I boiled them in stock. That was a mistake, because the dumplings were dry, and there was no risk of their falling apart. They needed to be in water long enough for the barley flour to take up more water. Also, I think that flat dumplings would have fully hydrated better than round dumplings.

Barley is magical, and healthy. After all, Scotch and ale are made from barley. There’s nothing like barley for thickening soups. But there have just got to be other uses for barley that are equally good.

A classic diner returns (I hope)


From the 1950s

If you’re like me, as things reopen after a year of staying in, you’ve been thinking about how much you’ve missed eating out. I’ve even been thinking about where to go for an eating-out celebration. Until yesterday, my plan was to go to Bernadin’s in Winston-Salem. But I learned yesterday that a classic diner on the Blue Ridge Parkway, long closed, will reopen on May 27.

The restaurant is The Bluffs. It first opened in 1949. It was in operation for 61 years until it closed in 2010. The National Park Service could not find anyone to operate it. A great many people remember the place fondly, and the Park Service was under pressure to reopen it. Lots of people donated money to a campaign organized by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. The Appalachian Regional Commission contributed, as did the stingy state of North Carolina. You can read about this at the restaurant’s web site, here.

Those outside the eastern United States may not know that the Blue Ridge Parkway is a national park. The Bluffs is at Doughton Park. That’s at Laurel Springs, at Milepost 241. Part of what’s exciting about this reopening is that it’s a public-private project worth supporting.

I’ll have a report soon after The Bluffs reopens. I’m just hoping that they get it right. Judging from the photos, authenticity was priority 1 for the renovation. I hope the same is true of the cuisine, though I suppose that heavy porcelain dinnerware, and glasses and cups that aren’t supersized, would be too much to hope for.


The renovation