Miss K - - Page 11

by Miss K

One-Man Food Fight

Let’s face it.

Feeding a baby is gross.

And by face it, I mean rub it all over our faces, put it anywhere but inside our mouths, and hope that some nutrition is absorbed through our pores. At least, that’s seems to be my darling child’s interpretation of “face it.” As in:

“Elijah, open your mouth so I can spoon some mush into it.”
“No, Mom, I’d rather face it.”

In the past few weeks we have progressed from total body coverage to mainly face/bib/hand/spoon, but it’s still a messy, messy business, this baby feeding.

in Personal 2 comments

by Miss K

Labels are for Soup Cans

It is a question I’ve had to answer again and again. If it doesn’t come up the first time meeting me (what tipped you off — the obviously thrift store jeans or the decrepit Earth shoes?) I know it still dwells in my new friend’s/coworker’s/grocery store checker’s mind. Maybe they open my fridge for another beer and encounter a meat drawer full of cheese. Perhaps they suspiciously eye my container of leftover tofu pad Thai. Whatever sparks it, I always know it’s lurking below the surface like Jaws, if Jaws ate black beans instead of people. “Are you a vegetarian?”

The answer, strictly speaking, is no. The answer, compared to most Americans, is basically, yes. I first heard the term flexitarian a few years back, and I actually suppressed a gag reflex. Sorry ES, I know they once received a nomination for eater of the year, but I am not ready to unite my eating habits with the soy hemp pomegranate latte crowd. At a recent foodie gala thing, I overheard someone say, “I don’t know what I’m going to eat when I go home because this is my first Thanksgiving as a pescatarian.” Cue aforementioned gag reflex, and accompanying eye roll. I mean, come on, you could practically cut the sanctimony with a fillet knife. Blech.

So, my answer, like most real ones, is, it’s complicated. I like happy meat from happy cows and you likely won’t find any animal parts in my fridge unless my husband has a hankering for sausage on his homemade deep dish pizza. One coworker dubbed all of my leftovers “nut-berry casserole.” But…I believe in hospitality, both giving and receiving, so I will eat (and enjoy) any lovingly prepared food, animal or otherwise. Don’t knock the West Virginia pickled hot dog ‘til you’ve tried it. And if the only place to watch the Illini game is Buffalo Wild Wings, bring on the hot and spicy wing platter.

I don’t think telling you how great vegetarianism is will convert you any more than telling you how often I go to church is going to make you a Christian. But St. Camillus does have a fabulous 10:30 mass if you ever care to join me, and if you come for lunch afterward, I dare you to leave any nut-berry casserole, I mean Gado Gado, on your plate.

Gado Gado (A dish so nice they named it twice)

by Miss K

The Unfortunate Fungus Incident

One of my favorite foodie books (an ever-growing category if ever there was) is Hungry Monkey: A Food-loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater by Matthew Amster-Burton. My own 4-month-old monkey is still happily gorging himself day and multiple times each night on breast milk, and is growing steadily rounder as a result. However, as a godmother to two just-turned-four-year-olds, I found myself nodding along with many of the book’s tales.

One moment that remains caught between the teeth of my memory is when the author describes how he spent hours lovingly seasoning and reducing a pot of split-peas and ham in order to disguise some leftovers for yet another post-holiday meal. After he finally perfects the rich green broth, he confidently places it on the table for his family’s presumed enjoyment. His daughter inspects the bowl, smiles sweetly, and says something like, “But daddy, you know that I don’t like soup.” That’s right. Not peas, not ham, not green food. No, she has determined that she cannot stomach an entire category of cuisine, an entire course. Let me just say — I feel you, man.

in Cheese / Personal / Recipe / Veggie 1 comments

by Miss K

Eat This, McDonald’s

My husband and I have been reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which, for those of you have not heard about it, breaks down the evils of fast food generally, and McDonald’s specifically, point by saturated point . Each chapter is more disturbing than the last, from factory farms to exploited workers’ rights on down the digestive tract to e. coli tainted meat. Ugh.

But among all this, what really knitted my eyebrows was the role of the self-titled “flavorists” in the McManufacturing process. These chemists are responsible for nothing less than making that flash-frozen, shipped, thawed, deep-fried potato stick taste (well, smell, actually) like a McDonald’s French fry. These highly educated men and women have managed to create something so deceptive that the author, upon smelling a slip of paper laced with these chemicals, had to open his eyes to make sure there was no one in the room actually grilling a burger. Yet the only shout-out these alchemists receive (at least publicly) is a mention of natural (that’s right, natural) or artificial flavors at the end of a very long list of Mcgredients.

And therefore, as I explained to an understandingly confused friend, it was a compliment for my husband to say that my apple tarts tasted “as good as McDonald’s apple pies.” And no pHd in taste-manipulation required. Here’s the recipe so that you too can feel like a “flavorist.”

Apple Chutney Tarts

in Recipe 3 comments

by Miss K

The Return of Miss K…and the Great Stuffed Pumpkin

Last fall, I wrote a few posts for this website, heading down a path I was sure would lead to fame and fortune as a food writer. It wouldn’t be long before Gail Simmons was calling me to do a story and Rachael Ray was looking to me for advice on new ways to serve chickpeas. But then I hit a literal bump in the road in my relationship with food — pregnancy. I spent the first three months “uneating” my dinner every night at ten only to wake up ravenous at 3 am. Why exactly is it called morning sickness? Then, I took a job as a camp counselor for 3- and 4-year-olds, which left me with exactly enough energy each afternoon to go home and go to bed, sometimes at 7 pm. Eating became rote, done primarily to keep my stomach from devouring itself before I could make it downstairs for breakfast.

My darling boy arrived in September at a robust 8 lbs, 6oz.. I guess someone was getting enough to eat. Now that the haze of the first few months has lifted, I am back to some of my old hobbies, namely cooking and writing. Plus, we finally polished off the last casserole in the freezer. For my return, I have a recipe that represents my life — the same as a year ago, but really not the same at all. Here’s an updated take on last year’s baked stuffed pumpkin:

in Recipe / Veggie 1 comments

by Miss K

Foolproof Fruit Crisp: A Dessert Even an ESer Can Bake

Like the rest of ES, I don’t do desserts. Which is not to say that I haven’t tried. My torrid history of dessert disasters goes back many years. I’m sure my mom still remembers the day my fifth grade best friend and I attempted chocolate chip cookies. Amateurs both, we used the recipe from the back of the package of chocolate chips. Careful adherence to the directions left us with a concoction that was more early-December-snowfall than Pillsbury doughboy. So we tapped into some sandbox wisdom – we added water. Baking the resulting quicksand yielded a burned, slippery looking substance that firmly coated the doomed cookie sheet. Mom was more upset about the wasted ingredients and the lingering smell of burning than the charred cookie sheet, which was logical given the infrequency of her own cookie baking.

Undaunted, through the years I have managed to produce (accidentally) sugarless banana bread, baking-soda-flavored butterscotch cookies and Rice Krispie treats so hard that they actually made someone bleed.

My friend Sarah received a cake-making book for Christmas in order to carry on her family tradition, wherein the birthday honoree gets to choose a cake from the book for their party. The cake is made from scratch, of course, with a long, scary list of ingredients and Mensa-approved instructions. And that doesn’t even take into account the frosting. My children better either ingratiate themselves with Aunt Sarah or learn to love brownies from a box.

All this poses a problem, though, when I am asked to bring dessert to a friend’s dinner party. Believe me, visions of artfully arranged Chips Ahoy have danced in my head, but high fructose corn syrup freaks me out. Fortunately, discount farmers’ market produce has led me to seek out (and find) a dessert that is not only practically foolproof, but also meets some of my beloved recipe criteria: few ingredients, use of food just this side of the compost pile, and general crowd pleasure.

in Desserts / Recipe 2 comments

by Miss K

Bi Bim Bapping

It all started in childhood with Nature’s Best Market in Downers Grove, IL. My mom would take me to that tiny family-run Greek grocery store and even then, I knew we were some place special. The produce section took up half the store and I encountered many fruits and vegetables for the first time in my young life. It was after trips there that I first savored the juice of lychee, crunched on jicama and sampled fresh-made tomatillo salsa. After the produce section, we navigated our way to the deli counter, where the man behind the counter sliced us off a block of fresh feta cheese. The whole goats hanging from the ceiling intimidated me, but the olive salad was worth the trip all by itself. On the way home, we would stop at a chain grocery store for peanut butter and paper towels., canned tuna and pasta sauce. Even to my young self, it was anticlimactic in comparison to the jam-packed riches we had just left behind.

Since that day, I have always sought out tiny ethnic grocery stores for my produce needs. My dream is to someday only go to Giant for toilet paper. Which is why when I visited Korean Korner last week, I knew I was in love. The produce is varied, the aisles wide enough for a cart to slide easily down, and the meat section is vast. If I knew what to do with a whole fish, I probably would have bought one of those in addition to some goat meat, beef and seasoned pork.

The pork had me most excited because it was one of two necessary-but-hard-to-find ingredients in bi bim bap, the other being kimchi. For those of you unaware, kimchi is a Korean standby — a pickled, spiced cabbage concoction. It is served as a side dish but is essential to the Korean dining experience. Once you acquire these two ingredients, bi bim bap is very easy to make. The only other ingredient that can be tricky to find at the regular grocery is bean sprouts, but I am sure that WF (I refuse to call that paycheck black hole by its full name) carries them. After you get that, the rest is all about seasoning and presentation.

Easy Bi Bim Bap (Serves 4):

in Eggs / Pig / Recipe 3 comments

« Previous