Comfort Food from Childhood - Chili Spaghetti

It is a rainy cold spring day here and I needed a little cheer-me-up so I made a favorite from my childhood. We did not eat out very often but when we did we went to Bob's Big Boy Restaurant. They no longer exist but I have a very clear memory of that big chubby boy with a cowlick that was at all the restaurants(a statue of sorts). Not fine art, but definite pop art.

When we would go to Bob's we very often ordered this specialty, Chili Spaghetti. It is a simple dish. Spaghetti noodles with a hearty serving of chili and a large slice of melted cheese on top. My sister , who also uses this as comfort food, says it has to be American cheese. But I like a nice slice of sharp cheddar cheese.

I think that this must be a western cousin of Cincinnati chili. But I have never actually had this Cincinnati favorite.

When I make this at home I use noodles, canned chili(nothing fancy here) and sharp cheddar. Like I said simple.

Preserving Lemons

I have been wanting to try this for awhile. I happened to have a bag of organic lemons that needed to be used so I gave it a try. But now I have to wait 30 days to find out if it worked. I like the idea of learning old fashioned techniques of preserving food. Because of refrigerators and freezers it is a dying art. I am of German descent and my mother says she remembers her grandmother making her own pickles, sour kraut and olives. I wish the techniques had been passed down more thoroughly. My mother used to make sour kraut but not so much anymore. I have to admit to a slight fear that things will go awry(i.e. rot instead of ferment), which is why I haven't committed to learning to preserve.

Someday I would like to can and preserve more of my own foods. But right now I do not have the time to spare. So just for now I will give these lemons a try. The final product I will use in some Moroccan Food. I will also probably give some to friends. In 30 days I will post an update.

Chocolate is an important health food!

I was reading yesterday on mercola.com that Chocolate is showing promise of lowering the risks of cancer, heart failure, diabetes and stroke. Some said it might rival penicillin in its societal importance and maybe its health component (epicatechin) should be considered a vitamin. You gotta love that! The best part of this article was a quote from a reader "That does it! No more penicillin-chip cookies for me!"

This means that I am now on the hunt for chocolate recipes. But I don't want to overdue the sugar so I am looking for savory chocolate recipes. Mole, anyone? I will keep you posted.

A Poem

When I told my mother about this blog she said I should add this poem. It is an old one and I am having to recall it from memory but I think it went something like this:

Oatmeal and Raisins

Molten porridge,
Instant lava,
Let us sacrifice little wrinkly raisin people
To pacifist Quaker gods.

A Pea Salad and a Do-Si-Do.

Here are some of the veggies for the all American Pea Salad and the finished product. I have been starting a collection of old cookbooks. I frequent the thrift store and pick up ones that seem interesting. I love to see how people used to eat and cook. One of the ones I picked up recently was Marye Dahnke's Salad Book. It was published in 1954.

Our church did a folk dance and Potluck tonight. I decided this would be a perfect dish for such an occasion. According to the alphabet designation half of us were supposed to bring salads and half dessert but as usual almost everyone just brought dessert. Midwest priorities, I tell ya!

Dinner with friends and some Black Tea Ice Cream.

After a very busy day I rushed home and spent 3 solid hours making Veggie Chow Mein(correctly called Lo Mein), Buddhas Delight and Chicken with Black Bean Sauce. But truly the highlight was the Black Tea Ice Cream with Chocolate Hazelnut Rolled Wafers. A recipe will follow. I wanted to try this because while traveling in Japan I tried green tea ice cream as well as black. While the green was interesting and fun to try, I thought the black more suitable for Western tastes. So I gathered some recipes online an then played with them to come up with this:

Black Tea Ice Cream

2 cups milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup pasteurized egg product
3 plain black tea bags
3 Vanilla Nut Creme flavored Black Tea
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
Pirouette Chocolate Hazelnut Rolled wafers to garnish

Step 1 is to heat 1/2 cup of the milk with the tea bags to a simmer. Then take off heat and steep 10 minutes. Then add eggs and rest of ingredients. Process in an ice cream maker(depending on capacity you might not be able to process the full amount in your machine) and place it in a container and freeze for a couple hours.

This produced a really perfect ice cream consistency and feel. I used my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker that my mother gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. And the wafers were a perfect complement with their Nutella-like taste.

The only problem was that one of the guest at dinner doesn't like ice cream. Who knew there was anyone in the world who didn't like ice cream? Sacrilege in our family:)

And now that we are thinking tea, here is a poem I wrote in Granada, Spain about a teahouse (Teteria). The Tuareg are a nomadic middle eastern ethnic group.

La Teteria Tuareg
11-15-97

We throw shadows on the wall
And speak of martyrdom and Perpetua
Candle tilts and melts
Tea is down to dregs
And its cinnamon scent mixes with smoky air
St. Theresa comes to mind
And flees upon appearing
I am not she
I am not even Dorothea, an impassioned fool
God, give me patience to endure and strength for final cry.

Putting my food knowledge to good use: An exercise.

I know entirely too much about food and I am a writer who never writes anything. So why not start my own food blog? Maybe we'll talk Northeast Iowa local food or write some poetry or do some home cooking. I am really a Californian disguised as an Iowan. But since my husband is pastor of a rural church in Iowa, here I am in little Decorah. And Decorah is not without its virtues both for quality of life and food. In California I shopped anonymously at generic stores. But here I buy meat from a friend and am a loyal customer of a particular vendor of produce, a man of few words but lots of tasty tomatoes and extra veggies thrown into my bag. And this will be my 3rd year buying chicken from a family just outside of town.

Now let's talk rustic. There are very few isolated places left in the USA but we live in one of them. We are 70 miles from any large town and about 150 miles from any metropolitan area. So because of that our food habits have definitely changed. Goodbye, gyros and feta and hello, ham steaks:) At first I was scared but we have simplified and gone local. We also have discovered that you can make your own, of just about anything. Imagine making your own bread, pretzels, Moroccan food, etc... Now, I may have some advantages over most people. I have had a pretty good food education previous to moving here. I was raised in home where matzo ball soup was a far more frequent occurrence than boxed macaroni. And we are not Jewish. But more on my food history at a later date.

All of this is to say I am going to give blogging a try. In future blogs I will post some of my poetry, which often features food; talk about my unique food upbringing; relate future food ventures I have planned and last but not least I will talk about cooking and what I am doing in the kitchen.