Pie O My (Remember? From the Sopranos)

Ok, so it's pie season.  As Adam and I prepare to move to Hood River for his new spiffy job (yay, Hood River!  yay, job!) I started to get creative with ideas for my own income.  The idea that I liked the most, until I made the world's WORST peach pie the other night, was to start a little baking operation.  Nothing huge, you know, just a few pies every week to sell to local coffee shops, maybe restaurants, and even if I just broke even or made enough for a six-pack of a weekend, that would be great.

Little did I factor into my calculations that you actually have to know how to bake first.  Good lord, when did baking become so difficult?  It used to be, back in my grandma's day, you just whipped up a pie with crust from scratch of course, threw it in the oven, and then let it cool idyllically on the window sill.  

Ha ha.  

So where did our grandmothers learn this hardwon  art?  I suppose from their grandmothers and mothers.  Not that I can blame my own mom-- I could have asked for some guidance, and if I had, I'm sure she would have taken the time out of her schedule running a marketing and design firm to show me.  But I didn't, and though I get occasional tips from my grandma, I'm afraid I'm turning into an old dog whose capacity for new tricks is on the wane.

I've made probably ten pies in my lifetime.  Maybe nine.  Or eight.  They've ranged from pretty good to abysmal.  The abysmal one was the most recent, and though it was an embarrassment from which I'm still recovering, I think it was the slap in the face that I needed.  I need help.  I'm sure that I can justifiably distribute blame-- my oven sucks for one, leaving the top crust nearly burned and the bottom crust completely raw; and my peaches really were no good-- dry and mealy.  But the thing is, good bakers work around these obstacles.  In the face of adversity, they flourish.  They mask dry, gross fruit and they do something to the crust-- I don't even know what-- to make sure it's not two-toned charred and raw at the same time.  

So here's my proclamation.  I vow, here and now, to make ten pies this summer.  (Whoa, I got butterflies in my stomach, just writing that.  This is a huge commitment!)  But I'm sticking to my rolling pins here.  Ten pies.  If, by the tenth pie I do not succeed in baking something decent, then I'm going to give up the practice forever.  Before I get started, do you have any tips?  If you pie bakers out there could single out the most important thing to remember when baking a pie, what would it be?  And hey, if it's all a bust, well, at least my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are winners.

Mama Jammer

First off, before I even write my dismayed post for the day, I have to give a shout out to my mom's strawberry rhubarb jam.  WOW.  Quite possibly the best jam I've ever tasted.  I busted it open this morning for breakfast (with a little toast, of course) and didn't even make it to the table, but rather stood over the kitchen sink, munching in ecstasy.  Mom tells me she thinks it's the rhubarb that makes the jam-- gives it a roundness that strawberry alone doesn't have.  Whatever it is, it's damn good.  Too bad she doesn't market them, otherwise I'd put a link to her website right here: 

(I've got a photo of it too, but for some reason I'm not able to upload it right now.  I'll try again later.)

Veggie Reuben Recipe

Hi, fellow food-lovers.  To relieve you of my recent verbosity, today I'm going to post a simple recipe, made up on the fly this afternoon by yours truly.  As a vegetarian, I had been missing the awesome flavor and texture combinations of the Reuben Sandwich (salty and chewy pastrami, sour and crunchy sauerkraut, pungent mustard, sweet thousand island, musky swiss), so I decided to attempt a vegetarian version.  It came out great!  It has a lot of potential too, as I had to make do with some less conventional ingredients.  But here's what I came up with.

Veggie Reuben Sandwiches (2 servings)

-1 package of Tofurkey deli slices (they didn't have fake pastrami at Trader Joe's)

-4 slices wheat bread (but rye is probably better)

-About 1 cup of sauerkraut, rinsed and drained (squeeze it to get all the water out)

-A few slices of white cheddar (but try swiss; I believe that's the tradition)

-Mustard to taste

-A few tablespoons of homemade Thousand Island dressing (see below)

Homemade Thousand Island: mix the following 3 ingredients

-1 1/2 Tbsp. ketchup

-1 1/2 Tbsp. mayo

-1/2 to 1 dill pickle, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Split the package of Tofurkey into two stacks on some tin foil, exactly as you would like them to appear on the sandwich.  I suggest folding a few of the slices in half and at different angles to bulk it up.  Lay your slice(s) of cheese on top of each stack.  Bake, then crank it up to broil in five or so minutes, to get your cheese all melty.

Toast your bread.  Slather one side of each pair with the T.I. dressing, and the other with mustard.  If you don't like too much mustard, which I don't, don't slather.  Just dab.

When the cheese on top of your "meat" has gotten bubbly and melty, take them out of the oven, and lay each on a slice of bread.  Split the sauerkraut between them, and put the remaining slices on top of each.

Cut each sandwich in half, and serve!  I'm very emphatic about slicing my sandwiches in half, even veggie burgers.  The cross section of a sandwich is fascinating-- you can see all the ingredients making their collision with one another into one whole flavor combination.  Plus, that way the meal lasts longer.

 

Home Sweet Dinner

I just got back from San Francisco, and had so many foodily orgasmic experiences that I want to describe them all.  In the interest of producing one of those sound-byte blogs that are the only kind that people actually read, I will devote only one sentence each to my best meals or tastings.

(Friday the 13th.  Around 2 in the afternoon.)  After visiting Papa in Santa Rosa Mom and I wound our way through baking hills on our way to downtown Calistoga, and while we mused about Papa and mortality and the heartbreaking beauty of the countryside, we came upon a cherry stand where a young man-- just a kid, really-- sat with his part-Husky, part-wolf dog named Snow, selling fat, sweet, dark red cherries from Lodi and we bought several pounds of them.

(Still Friday, probably around 4).  I had been to Domaine Chandon before, and so had Mom, only many years earlier, and under much more interesting circumstances, and we told our stories on the patio while sipping two flights of sparkling white wine, the seven of which kinds I wouldn't be able to recollect, but I can tell you that Mom was right when she said the Blanc de Noirs was the best, and I suppose she also must have been telling true when she said that "dry" means "sweet" when it comes to sparkling wine, and "brut" means "dry," though as far as regular white wine is concerned, "dry" means "dry" and "sweet" means "sweet" and I'm not sure I can explain the logic behind this. 

(Friday, 6-ish.)  Thanks to the thinly disguised laughter from the host at Thomas Keller's other restaurant (as in, other than French Laundry) when we tried to get a table without a reservation, Mom and I walked down the street in Yountville to a place called Hurley's and I'm so glad we did, because it was there that I tasted my first squash blossoms stuffed with herb-y goat cheese and I vowed then and there to reproduce the dish or at least something like it with the blooms from the zucchini plant in my own garden, but there were also many dishes besides that we noshed with deep, great pleasure, like asparagus salad, and heady Sauvignon Blanc, and crab cakes with corn relish, and warm chocolate cake to seal the deal.

(Saturday, nearly ten p.m.)  Puerto Allegre is my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, and my best friend Hilary proves her friendship to me by accompanying me there every time I visit; there's always a wait, and this time we definitely broke the one hour mark, no doubt because there were six of us and it was Saturday and lovely out, but it's ok because as soon as you finally sit there are bowls of chips and salsa flowing as fast as you can scoop them, and thanks to Taylor, Hil's pleasure-loving boyfriend, margarita pitchers being passed with frequency, so that by the time your mole enchiladas arrive, you're probably already more than satiated, but the company is so entertaining, and by now you've had enough drinks that you are happy to sit another hour, even if it means cleaning your plate as the time approaches midnight.

(Sunday, Father's Day brunch.)  I think it's called simply, La Boulangerie, and it's on Union St. where all the people who are around my age but earning several times my income gather of a weekend noontime, but anyway it's food we're talking about here not money, so though the place has savory stuff like the open-faced goat cheese, pesto, roasted peppers and mushroom sandwich that I would call very good, it is truly the pastries that deserve all my attention, and it would be  apt for me to even focus solely on the french toast my dad had the wisdom to order, because it's made from day-old brioche, saturated in some egg-y mixture and then I want to say it's fried in a pan like any french toast, but it arrives so custard-y, so fluffy and delicately angelic, that I can't imagine it would survive such a harsh application of heat, but either way Dad groaned over it, and I had a similarly happy reaction to my berry tart.

(Sunday, 1 p.m.)  This wasn't a meal, but definitely deserves to be the epilogue: when we swung by the house to fetch my bag and then head to the airport, Jan had left for me as a parting gift a big ziplock bag brimming with her homemade granola, still warm from the oven, and this time she even added dried mango slivers, turning the crispy, flaky, cinnamon-y, muesli from heaven into an even greater feat of baking, and in the process solidifying her family-wide reputation as the world's best maker of granola.

Ok, well so much for succinctness and sound-bytes.  I can't help it: if you know where to look, the food available in the Bay Area is worth a thousand words and more.

The Coldest Summer I Ever Spent

There are rumors that it's going to get up to eighty degrees this weekend here in Portland, and I'll believe it when I see it.  The past weeks don't bode well, that's for sure.  Here it is, mid-June, and the other night I had to turn on the heater!  Rain, fog, and wind like you would not believe are blustering over our town, and I am sick to death of it.  The weather page in our local paper at least is having a sense of humor about it.  One of their headlines on Tuesday read, "Merry Christmas!  At least that's what it felt like in La Grande."  

I was getting a bit worried for my vegetable garden-- is it getting enough sun?  Too much water?  Too cold?  So I decided to do a little investigative reporting, and I called up Terry at Kasch's Nursery on Tacoma St. to see what she had to say.  A short, blond woman with a deep, husky voice, Adam and I have seen her the last two springs that we visited Kasch's to pick up our tomato starts and flower seeds.  She's always charging around, watering plants and just generally getting stuff done.

I was hoping she would answer the phone, and she did.  The hook I was looking for didn't really pan out, though.  Apparently, plants are doing just fine in this weather.  For the most part, at least.  Terri told me genially that some people who started planting their spring veggie plots really early had to come back and replace some of their plants.  But for those of us who procrastinated till late May, or early June (or haven't even really started yet), there should be no problem.

I could see the truth of her words in my own plot, but I had just been chalking that up to the compost bin that Adam made last winter and which we positioned right in the corner of the plot so it would, we hoped, leach nutrients to its green, growing neighbors.  We've got tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, basil, cilantro, an eggplant, and a zucchini going strong, and the only thing that didn't seem to take was the okra (which, truth be told, was just fine by me).

Well, I guess I don't need to worry about waking up one wet morning to a plot full of dead veggies.  I suppose the little guys don't mind the rain nearly as much as I do. 

Old New Mexico

There's a restaurant-- Adobe Rose Cafe-- near our house that serves New Mexican food, and unpretentiously at that.  Once I found out about the purveyors of green chile and sopaipillas, I knew we had to go at once.  Some of you may not know that Adam and I met while living in Santa Fe, the enchanting and strange southwestern town at 1700 feet above sea level, and many miles from anywhere resembling anything metropolitan.  Such isolated places inevitably cultivate unique cuisines, and I have been missing terribly the exotic, spicy offerings which, over several hundred years, have been informed by Native American, Mexican, and American cultures.

The interior of Adobe Rose is unprepossessing-- linoleum floors, basic wooden chairs composed the basic skeleton of its decoration, though a couple flowers sat in a vase at each table, and lovely photos of the Land of Enchantment hung on the walls.  We looked at our laminated menus, and decided to go pure-- Huevos Rancheros for Adam, and cheese enchiladas for me.  That way we could appreciate New Mexico's most valuable invention-- chile-- in an unadulterated fashion.

While we waited chips and salsa (free) flowed generously forth, and so did some decent margaritas (not free).  We admired the photos on the walls and tried to guess where they were taken.  One gorgeous church, where Adam and I actually contemplated looking into as a wedding location, turned out to be near Adam's old house in Espanola.  We missed the rolling red deserts with aching hearts, and discussed the prospect of returning to live in a few years.  (On that note, Adam got a job today!  He'll be working for PGE here in Oregon as a wind technician, which means he'll be climbing windmills many hundreds of feet tall every day so that we may have appliances running on clean, sustainable energy.  Needless to say I'm proud of my boy.  Anyway, Adam said that there are a few windfarms under construction in New Mexico, and we just might look into one of them as sources of income when they come to completion.)

So our food was out by now-- plain white dishes with vast plains of melted cheddar lying on top of our enchiladas (only difference was that Adam had a few fried egg mountains on top of his cheese desert).  And oh, delicious memories of sitting, on a balmy evening on the patio of The Shed in Santa Fe, or remembered nights of setting many such chile-and-cheese baked plates in front of tourists and locals alike at Maria's New Mexican Kitchen (where I waited tables for a year).  The chile was good-- very good.  Very spicy, which is good.  I ordered mine "Christmas," (red and green chile) and both colors were fabulous.

I struck up a conversation with our waiter, who turned out the be the owner.  Larry and his partner Terry ("Just remember, Larry and Terry") met while living in Albuquerque and came to Portland almost twenty years ago to start Adobe Rose.  Apparently there are either enough New Mexican natives making their way through town craving "sopas" (sopaipillas are big, deep-fried dough pillows that you can use to sop up your chile or douse in honey for dessert), in order to support such an establishment, or there are sufficient local Portlanders who consider the spicy unique flavors worth returning to, again and again.

Lord knows we will be returning.  Prices are modest and most importantly, the food set us into a sweaty reverie of the arid, sage-smelling place we knew and loved as Santa Fe.

Paper Bag Blues

I just heard a very interesting story on NPR about the rising cost of groceries.  In it they profiled three women of three very different income levels, and each women spoke about the changes she had to make in her life as far as grocery-shopping is concerned.  And though I was fascinated to hear what these women had to say, both because I am interested in food and because I'm interested in saving money on food, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of creativity in their solutions.  The woman with the lowest income (about $700 a month, with kids to support: Yikes!) said she had to switch from whole wheat bread to white bread, and she started shopping at a Mennonite grocery store where the products have passed their expiration dates, and where cereal costs a dollar, but you run the risk of finding an insect colony in your breakfast bowl.  The woman in the highest income bracket said she had to stop shopping at Whole Foods, the poor dear.

So I'm interested to know: what have you done to make your dollar stretch further in feeding yourself and/or your family?  I would love to get a response on this, even to the point of publicizing my blog to all my friends and family, a step I had not fully taken.  But the more comments, the better, I think.  Let's inspire each other to save much and eat well in the process.

I guess I should start, since I'm asking the question, but I'll be honest: I'm just learning how to be frugal.  Going out to dinner is one of my all-time favorite activities, and though I do love to cook, I'll go to the store five nights a week to get the ingredients for ONE meal at a time!  So I'll share my practices with you, though I'm hoping some of you out there can outshine me in the creativity department (come on Mom!  I know you've got some good ones up your sleeve!).

1.  Look at your price per unit.  This is not original, but many of my generation may not know this.  It really is cheaper to buy a $30 dollar drum of olive oil than a $9 bottle, if the larger one is cheaper by the ounce.  All price tags will have this per-unit price on it.

2.  Find the cheap produce market in your town!  See my other blog today about Limbo Produce in Portland to see what kind of savings you can get.  As long as it's not all the way on the other side of town and only open during rush hour, the drive should be worth it.  The drive to Limbo for me, for example, costs me no more than a pound of cherries.  A Limbo pound of cherries, that is!  (ie, a couple bucks!)

3.  Plan meals where there are ingredient crossovers.  For example, this week we're planning on making seven layer dip one night for dinner (thanks to Raina's birthday party for the inspiration).  The avocados and tomatoes and cheese used in it will be used for sandwiches and salads.  The yogurt (great sour cream replacement) will be used for a yummy curried lentil recipe.  Your ingredients take you farther, and you waste less.

4.  Plant herbs, lettuce, and tomatoes!  They are so easy to grow, and freshen up any meal.  Of course there are a million other things you can plant, but these are the easiest, and you won't be paying for your most basic salad fixin's all summer long.

Ok, People.  Lay it on me: whether we're in a recession, or headed for one, or just want to plain have greater awareness of our consumption, What's your greatest tip for saving money on food?  What's your favorite recipe that's dirt cheap to make but tastes like a million bucks?  What have you sacrificed from your shopping list?  What item can you not live without?  

   

Lucky In Limbo

Thanks to a co-worker who inspired me to keep a tighter grasp on my finances (and subsequently install the bafflingly complex computer program Quicken, which as yet lies unused on my computer desktop), I suggested to Adam that we do some meal planning and go for a hefty grocery trip to the affordably priced Trader Joe's.  And while I do have lots of laudatory remarks about Trader Joe's abundant and inexpensive offerings (exemplified, of course, by its three-dollar bottles of wine), it the store's neighbor I would like to talk about today, Limbo Produce (SE 39th near Steele).

I thought we'd check it out first-- stock up on fruits and veggies, and then hit up TJ's for our dry and canned (or wine-bottled) goods.  And what an idea that turned out to be!  Like your typical produce-only market, little attention is devoted to architecture or decoration, but when you have sweeping mountains of melons and tomatoes, box after box of potatoes (red, fingerling, russet), and of course, since it is June in Oregon, tiers and tiers of blue-, rasp-, and strawberries to bring tears to the eye-- then interior ambience is of little importance.  Happily the plentiful produce was local and largely organic, and happiest of all... it is DIRT CHEAP.  99-cent avocados!  Dollar-a-basket strawberries!  (Recall, those were three-fifty at the farmer's market.)  Cherries for two dollars a pound!  (At New Season's they cost literally four times as much.)  Big boxes of already-washed spinach for a buck!

We stocked and stocked, and walked away with a thirty-eight dollar boatload-sized bounty, and I've been popping cherries in my mouth like jelly beans ever since.  (I also made a lasagna last night for dinner layered with zucchini and spinach, courtesy of Limbo.)

Perhaps these well-kept secret permanent markets are an even better answer to the conundrum of over-priced, over-bland supermarket produce than farmer's markets.  As much as I love my local FM, it's really expensive.  I've noticed too, that the products at the FM are becoming more and more processed.  Not like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese-processed, but more and more ready-made stuff is being sold, and is pushing out all the raw basics.  For example, instead of a bunch of spinach, vendors now have spinach tarts and spinach tortillas and spinach facial moisturizer.  They are often homemade and delicious and I'm sure very moisturizing, but the prices are also of course jacked up.

Limbo's fruits and veggies are just that: whole, ripe, just pulled from the earth, and ready for me to have my way with them.  So when I want to take a gander at my neighbors on a summer's afternoon, or if I'm in the mood to plunk down some money for some artisanal goat cheese and homemade ice cream sandwiches, I'll head to my local FM.  When I want my fruits and veggies untouched and inexpensive, I'll head on down to Limbo, the produce heaven.