Sunday, January 29, 2017

Comfort Food

 I’m sitting in my room, in front of a gas furnace flame, on bean bags.  I have my cup of coffee and piece of chocolate cake covered in peanut butter waiting patiently at my side for any pause in my train of thought.  It’s been a long time since I’ve written on the blog.  It’s been a long time since my thoughts have rested on something I thought might be worth writing down at the same time as my brain and body could handle writing them.  These days, I’ve struggled to find something to write about that wasn’t just a downer.  Who needs that?

I’ve watched as a semi-outsider while my home country struggles through a very divisive period in our history.  You can imagine how it strikes me as strange that, besides missing my family and friends, I’d rather live over here right now. . . even though the actions of our new president put me and others in some areas of the world under more intense scrutiny and greater danger . . . and even though they alienate the very people I’m learning to love every day.  So, I’m not going to talk about that right now.

Our family has struggled with health issues ranging from vitamin D deficiency to concussion-like symptoms to a dental cyst.  I’ll probably write about some of that at some other point in time, but probably after it’s all healed and it’s easier to see the other side of it.  So, I’m not going to talk about that right now.

It’s been snowing and we’ve been dealing with the cold, but I wrote about dealing with the cold last year about this time.  So, I’m not going to talk about that right now.

You know what I’m going to talk about?  Comfort food.  Yep, who doesn’t love a good cooking blog?  Usually, me.  It’s been historically hard for me to read people’s posts and look at people’s pictures of all the amazing food they have been eating because I spent the better part of the last 5 years learning to cook in a new way with new ingredients.  These days, I may not have arrived, but I feel like I’m at least rounding the back stretch of being comfortable in my kitchen.  So, today I’m going to share some of the things I’ve been enjoying cooking lately.  Nothing relaxes my spirit and brings me close to my neighbor more than sitting down over a good meal.  So, without further ado: Comfort Food.

Squash of all Kinds

The last few months have seen an influx of squash at the veg stands.  These include a local, long, green squash, zucchini, yellow pumpkin, and orange pumpkin.  There are also these great green pumpkins with an inside like an acorn squash.  For zucchini and local squash, I peel them with a veggie peeler and then shred them into ziplock bags for all kinds of sweet breads and casseroles.  My favorite bread these days uses any kind of squash, carrot, or fruit puree with pumpkin pie spice to make a quick bread.  I also really like to add nuts or chocolate chips.  I can also use 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of sugar it calls for if I put in the chocolate and it still feels like dessert.  We’ve eaten this an average of once a week since November and I just now ran out of my stash in my freezer!

For the pumpkins, I open them up with a big kitchen knife, scoop out and clean the seeds and steam hunks of the inside, still in the rind.  I coat the seeds in olive oil, salt, and garam masala or pumpin spice and roast them in my oven.  The kids get so excited when they see these!  After the flesh is steamed, I scoop it out and measure it into the right amounts for pies or breads and freeze it.  If I’m feeling particularly lazy, I just put butter on it and hand it to the kids.  They eat it like it’s pudding!  Now, on to:

Pies

Pumpkin and apples were in season.  Also, potatoes are extra-good this time of year.  I make a combination of sweet or savory pies depending on what’s in the fridge and on the shelves.  The only things you need to make a good pie are a great crust and an inside that’s the right consistency -- not to wet, not too dry.  I like to cook my inside in advance.  That way, it never goes wrong.  I can always add more fluid or more thickener if it doesn’t come out the way I thought.  So, if you’re wanting to make a pie, start with the inside.  Make yourself a savory or sweet stew on the stove and then you’re halfway there.  After that, crust is pretty simple.  2 parts really cold butter, 3 parts flour.  Cut the butter into the flour with a fork or pastry cutter until the pieces of butter are pebble-sized.  Then, mix in 1 part ice-cold water with your hand.  If it is too sticky to roll out, add more flour, but not too much.  You can also use crisco or lard for the crust, but here we have butter and it tastes pretty amazing.  Some of my favorite pies are mashed pumpkin with fresh ginger and home-ground pumpkin pie spice, apple with berry jam and lemon, cherry/berry, roast chicken with root vegetables, and mexican flavored with ground chicken, and corn/potato chowder with homemade cream of mushroom.  Have fun experimenting!

Breads

For several years, I was trying to use some yeast that, I think, had been killed from traveling during the summer a few years back.  Everything I made ended up much denser than I’d hoped and I just thought I wasn’t very good at making homemade bread.  Then, recently, I used up the last of that dead yeast and opened a fresh jar.  Wow!  I’m GREAT at bread-making!!!  Well, at least if I can remember to take it out of the oven before it burns! :)  I found a recipe for starting your own sourdough in a cookbook I had and decided it was worth a shot.  Yum!  I now have sourdough starter in my fridge at all times and, as long as I plan a day ahead of time, I can always have fresh sourdough.  Just today, I cut off a hunk of a loaf, toasted the insides with butter, and added over-easy eggs, shredded Himalayan sharp cheddar cheese, and freshly sliced tomatoes.  Again, Yum!  Also, I found a recipe for making pretzels.  I don’t have rock salt or anything fancy, but I made pretzels at home out of a recipe for pizza crust.  Again, Yum!  I also love to make plain bread, dinner rolls, or cinnamon rolls.  It’s not as hard as it seemed now that I’m not changing a diaper or feeding a kid every 10 minutes and I’m in the kitchen a lot anyway.  So, if you have an infant to toddler aged kid (or 2 or 3) and are thinking, "Wow, that Emily is amazing!  I'm not as amazing of a Mom as she is!"  Well, who am I to disagree with you!  Just kidding.  Seriously, though, I did NOT make fresh bread while I had an infant to toddler aged kid (or 2 or 3).  And if you have 1-3 of those kids and are making fresh bread as well, could you send a loaf to another Mom who doesn't have it as together as you do?!

Gulabki (pronounced Guwumpki by my Polish-ancestry in-laws)

I stumbled upon a recipe in an international cookbook I own for this dish that rolls ground meat, onion, and rice into steamed cabbage leaves and covers it with a tomato-vinegar sauce.  This was a dish that I heard about from Chris and his family that his Grandmother used to make a lot.  I think I had it once at his Aunt’s house or somewhere, but I never knew how to cook it.  After finding this recipe and trying it with my family, we have eaten it fairly regularly.  It’s Jed’s new favorite!  I have to use chicken instead of the original beef, but I’ve not received any complaints.  It brings joy to my heart to be able to put a dish on the table that brings Chris back to his childhood and encourages Jed to eat his veggies!  Yes, please.

Well, those are some of the comfort foods that have filled my tummy and kept my hands busy over the last few months.  If you want more specifics about any of the things in here, you can ask in the comments or just google it.  I’m sure someone else has a better recipe than mine.  And their cooking blog will probably have beautiful pictures attached that look all professional and stuff.  I’ve just got this picture of a crazy family enjoying another of our comfort foods while we were in the big city.  Chai and Aloo Paratha!






And to make it all the more comforting, we got to enjoy our comforting breakfast next to the comforting community urinals!!  (Yes, several men used the urinals while we ate.  This is very common.)

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