Poetry and Rum Cake

I’ve never asked for payment to read a few of my poems to an audience. As long as I have gas money (which is becoming increasingly difficult these days), I’m willing and ready to share my love of poetry and my poems to anyone who will listen. The way I look at it, the more I promote poetry, the better the likelihood that someone will pick up a pen and pad and share their own poems.

Why? It’s simple. I am of the opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone wrote poetry. There certainly would be more people in touch with their feelings; empathy would be a common trait for everyone. Dialogue, whether in the form of a poem, prose or spoken word, would be less muddled. Maybe poetry receives a bum rap because of our tendency to mask our feelings. Maybe we’d understand and recognize each other more easily, as human beings who share a remarkable world, if we’d write or read an occasional poem.

Do I think poetry can fix the world’s problems? No. But I firmly believe it could be a tool to work toward that goal.

I recently had the pleasure of reading a few poems to an English class at the college where I work. The class was small but receptive to my poems. I enjoyed the smiles and the laughs that the more humorous poems brought from the audience. After reading my Southern Legitimacy Statement #5, a student spoke-up and said, “I like that”, and I could tell that something in that poem was relatable to him.

Now that’s payment that’s better than money. :)

Cissy Murphy, the instructor for the class, gifted me after the reading with a very nice card, money (she really shouldn’t have!) and a gem of a family cookbook. She’s given me permission to share a few of the recipes here, on The Frugal Poet web site.

And so, without further ado, let me share the first recipe I prepared from her family cookbook:

Bacardi Rum Cake

1 box or package of yellow cake mix
1 (3 ½ ounce) package instant vanilla pudding
4 eggs
½ cup cold water
½ cup Bacardi Dark Rum
½ cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour (I used Baker’s Joy cooking spray and did not flour) a 10 inch tube pan. Mix ingredients. Pour into a pan. Bake for one hour. Cool the pan for 25 minutes then invert onto a serving plate. Prick top (I used a fork). Spoon and brush rum glaze over cake.

Rum Glaze

¼ lb butter
¼ cup water
1 cup sugar
½ cup dark rum

Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in water and sugar. Boil for five minutes. Remove from heat and stir in rum.

One note: prior to pouring the mix into the tube pan, I added brown sugar and pecans to the pan, right on top of the Baker’s Joy that I’d just sprayed. Once inverted, this gave me a topping of brown sugar and pecans.

I’ll close with an untitled haibun I penned recently. Have a great week!

for the second time this week, i pluck a honeysuckle blossom, pinch the bottom, pull the stem through, exposing a tiny droplet of nectar at the base of the blossom. i extend my tongue, savor its sweetness like a fine wine.

haiku poets are more attune and appreciative of the seasons. it is a bonus gift for having chosen haikai no michi, or the Way of Haiku. i’d go so far as to say that we become one with the natural world and the seasons and are keenly aware that we are transient beings existing only for a moment in time...

solar flares...
a new sunspot
on my skin

Ripened Fruit

Lately I’ve often found myself dwelling on seasons and the expected versus unexpected timing of events in life.  It’s important to allow moments to fully bloom, large or small, long or brief, giving them the individual consideration and respect they deserve.  My oldest daughter recently moved into a great new apartment in a neighboring state.  My youngest daughter is poised to move to we-don’t-know-where-yet-but-still-outside-of-mama’s-easy-reach-too in order to more easily realize her career aspirations.  My husband of a bit over 5 years is retiring after a long and successful military career and will be moving home next week where we will begin another chapter in our lives together.  In preparation we bought a beautiful old girl of a house which we promptly all but gutted - it’s being lovingly put back together bit by bit.  So much change in a brief period sends mama to the kitchen where big issues can literally be chopped into digestible bits so I can pretend for at least a little while that I’m not forced to swallow them all at once. As serendipity would have it, my dad showed up at my back door with a flat of just-picked, still-warm-from-the-field strawberries on his birthday last week.  Talk about timing...

I’ll not give the recipe here for what I did with that flat of strawberries (a strawberry cobbler per Birthday Man’s request).  Instead I’ll offer you two recipes instead of one.  The first can be enjoyed immediately and will have probably disappeared from your kitchen before you’ve washed the prep dishes (admit it, we all love immediate gratification).  The second recipe best shows its beauty given a little time to reflect on the wealth of a season passed.

Chocolate-Strawberry Shortcake

½ c. shortening 1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 ¼ c. white sugar 1 envelope unflavored gelatin

2 eggs, separated ¼ c. cold water

1 ¼ c. sifted all-purpose flour 2 c. whipping cream

2 tsp. baking powder ½ c. sifted confectioner’s sugar

¼ tsp. salt 3 c. fresh strawberries, sliced

⅓ c. cocoa 3 whole strawberries (optional)

⅔ c. whole milk

Filling

1 ½ (4-ounce) bars sweet chocolate ½ c. chopped. toasted almonds

¾ c. butter, softened

Cream shortening; gradually add 1 ¼ c. sugar, beating well at medium speed.  Add egg yolks, beating well.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.  Mix after each addition.  Stir in vanilla extract.

Beat egg whites - at room temperature - until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into batter.  Pour into 3 greased and floured 9” cake pans.  Bake at 350 F for 18 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out cleanly.  Let cakes cool in pan 10 minutes; remove from pans and cool on wire racks.

For filling:  Melt chocolate in top of a double boiler; let cool.  Add butter, beating at low speed until smooth.  Stir in almonds.

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in a small saucepan; let stand for 1 minute.  Cook over low heat, stirring until gelatin dissolves.

Beat whipping cream in a chilled bowl at low speed, gradually adding dissolved gelatin.  Increase to medium speed and beat until mixture begins to thicken.  Add powdered sugar and beat at high speed until soft peaks form.

Place 1 cake layer on serving plate.  Spread ⅓ of chocolate filling over layer.  Spread ⅓ of whipped cream over filling and arrange ½ of sliced strawberries on top allowing berry tips to peek over cake layer’s edge.  Repeat procedure, ending with whipped cream.  Garnish with whole strawberries.

Balsamic Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper

2 cups fresh strawberries, trimmed and quartered

1 ½ cups white sugar

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

Bring all ingredients to a boil in a small heavy saucepan.  Stir and skim and surface as the strawberries produce foam.  Simmer the mixture for approximately 15 minutes, skimming foam occasionally.  Cook until strawberries are translucent and thickened.  Remove pan from heat and wait for strawberries to cool completely.  Preserves will keep for approximately one month in refrigerator if they last that long!  Unlike many preserve recipes, this one does multiply easily if you want to double it, triple it, etc and preserve it in sterile jars.

reckoning

late winter empty nest and i don’t know how many more times i can bear noticing when the heating system kicks on or how long it takes to accumulate a washer full of dirty laundry or how difficult it is to cook in proportions that won’t result in a week of leftovers.  but mostly i wonder if they enjoy their lives as much as i prayed they would and laugh with their lovers at odd hours and still make it to work on time and dream big enough and work hard enough to smile for really good reasons and take time to be thankful for them. and i want to know how many more days it will be before i can open my house’s windows to spring breezes and warm winds and birdsong and take a really long, deep breath

swell’s cusp —

i stand on top

of rain

Frogpond - Volume 34, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2011

Inner Voices

Chalk it up as being one of those things you do -- knowing it was a bad idea all the while -- and, yet, you do it because you can’t help yourself. It’s like that time years ago when I was a young impetuous lad watching an electrical storm from my parents’ front porch. Mesmerized, I leaned against a metal railing to get a better view of the storm, streaks of lightning turning night into day, thunder exploding like the big guns of a battleship. An inner voice told me that it would probably be a good idea to go inside, but another voice -- much louder and more persuasive -- said, “OOOOoooo look at the lightning! Let’s stay a little while longer and see what happens!”

A few minutes later lightning splintered a nearby oak tree; the metal railing I was leaning on absorbed some of the dispersed electrical energy and quite literally jolted me into clear thinking. I hurried inside thinking that Benjamin Franklin was a very lucky man!

Sometimes it pays to listen to that inner voice.  

Which begs the question: Okay, Dunlap, where was your inner voice two weeks ago when you used canned biscuits in a crock pot chicken and dumplings recipe? I had a feeling that my pal, fellow Frugal Poet, Susan Nelson Myers, would and did call me on taking such a non-frugal short cut. After all, as she mentioned in last week’s Well, I never! post, “Dumplings are biscuits...just smaller and formed by hand.” The only excuse I have for using canned biscuits is that up until I met Susan, the only biscuits I knew how to make were mayonnaise biscuits and I ain’t about to post that recipe here. Nope. That would be foolish. Why, that would set Susan off again... Wait-a-minute! Maybe I should post my mayonnaise biscuits recipe! It sure was fun seeing Susan’s dander up, watching her fingers flying wildly over her computer keyboard in response to my canned biscuits snafu.

What’s that you’re saying inner voice? Speak-up. I can’t hear you! ;-)

All joking aside, Susan is my friend. I am forever indebted to her and her family for their neighborly kindness shown to my daughter and me since we took-up residence in Poet’s Cottage. In fact, I will go so far as to say that there wouldn’t be a Frugal Poet blog had it not been for Susan’s willingness to teach me how to can jars of marinara sauce, fire-roasted salsa, tomato bisque soup and icicle pickles, frugally preserving vegetables grown in her father’s garden for the winter months ahead. And while the two of us sharing a kitchen can be quite comical at times, I do know how to hush-up and listen when Susan switches into teaching mode. Followers of this blog saw Susan in teaching mode last week. ;-)

Here’s a tasty little hamburger sauce I concocted recently. Use this sauce instead of mayonnaise and/or ketchup. I’ll credit the name of the sauce to Susan’s daughters Lindsay and Deedee Grummett, two brilliantly gifted ladies with quick minds and a delightful sense of humor.

Furtis Sauce

2 tablespoons horseradish
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 to 2 teaspoons pepper vinegar (or use white vinegar with a dash or two of hot sauce)

Stir ingredients in a bowl until blended to a smooth consistency. My favorite go-to burger for this sauce is a cheeseburger topped with jalapeno peppers and onions, but a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato and dill pickles will work with this sauce too.

Until next time, I’ll leave you with the following contemporary haiku I penned last year.

canning season --
an extra pinch of spice
in the pickle jar

"Well, I never!"

We Frugal Poets  normally divide our blogging duties such that one of us posts a personal recipe and poem each week.  Curtis graciously offered to write for two consecutive weeks when I needed to help one of my daughters move last weekend.  I certainly appreciate his willingness to help me out but...talk about a mouse playing while a cat’s away!

I never would have encouraged anyone to use canned biscuits in a recipe, but that’s precisely what Curtis did in last week’s Frugal Poet post.  Now I realize that many of us take shortcuts  when cooking but certain substitutions constitute no less than cheating in my book.  Rather than pick that recipe apart here, I’ll just suggest that any non-lazy person interested in a real dumpling refer to an earlier Frugal Poet post for a bona fide biscuit.  Dumplings are biscuits...just smaller and formed by hand.  If you’re looking for a chicken and pastry recipe...well, I guess I could help you but I simply won’t.  That’s a recipe from a different part of the state where they just don’t know any better.

I imagine that Curtis’ crock pot chicken and dumpling recipe will work fine enough in a pinch - we all deal with hectic schedules at one time or another.  But his substituting canned biscuits for handmade dumplings compelled me to think of other recipes which, while tasty and some even carved into regional culinary stone, were merely quick fixes to the problem of needing to put something on a table when the cook had little to no time to properly address a dish.  After reading Curtis’ post from last week, the first thing that came to mind was a recipe for a congealed salad that I’ve been served more times than I’d like to count but which I ate every single time.  I even asked someone for their recipe (sorry, but I can’t remember who to credit here.  I hope no one’s offended but, truthfully, I’ve had several versions of the same dish just the Jello changed colors - and you don’t want to get me started on the issue of food preservatives and dyes).  I even included this recipe in a handwritten cookbook I made for my daughters.  What you’ll read is precisely as written in their personal copies...just I’ve changed a name and omitted a few adjectives to protect the guilty.

Blueberry Congealed Salad

“Yes, I’m including this recipe since it reminds me of my childhood, my aunt Midge, and [the potluck dinners after] church revivals that I thought would never end.  It probably contains enough preservatives for you to set it afloat on the Atlantic in a piece of Tupperware, and it would arrive in England in pristine condition years later.  Don’t ever tell anyone where you got this recipe, or I’ll brand you a liar and a cheat.”

2 small boxes black cherry Jello
1 large can crushed pineapple, drained
½ cup chopped pecans
1 14-1/2 ounce can blueberries, drained
3 medium bananas (too bad these don’t come canned too)
1 8-ounce package cream cheese softened
1 8-ounce carton sour cream
¼ cup white sugar

Mix Jello according to package directions.  Fold in pineapple, pecans, blueberries and sliced bananas.  Pour into casserole dish and refrigerate.  When Jello has become firm, mix cream cheese, sour cream and sugar - spread on top of Jello.

And, finally, a senryu for your enjoyment...

what he says
what you hear -
funhouse mirrors

Prune Juice, Issue 8, Spring 2012

Stew Pot Conversations

I had the pleasure of spending a day with an amazing person last November. Melvin Nelson is a man of many talents. He’s a beekeeper, selling jars of honey to locals and to restaurants; he grows vegetables in one of the most productive gardens in the county; he can build, weld, mold, shape anything he sets his mind to do; he’s a master storyteller, Brunswick Stewmaster and he can cook a hefty pot of some of the best chicken and dumplings you’ll ever taste. Melvin is also a master at frugal living and the father of my friend, Frugal Poet, Susan Nelson Myers.

At (soon-to-be) age 77, Melvin shows no signs of slowing down. I learned many things while helping him stir the dumpling pot outside near his garden that day, but one of the most important things I learned was to hush-up and listen when he starts a sentence with a slow southern drawl of “Well...” What often follows is a bit of wisdom or a story steeped in good old-fashioned common sense, sage advice from which anyone can benefit. Many of us have a family member or someone we know like Melvin, willing to share their real world experiences if we’ll take time in our schedules to pause and listen. Spending time with Melvin that day was a treat for me. I hope I have the pleasure of spending time with him at a stew pot again.

Conversation has always been easy around Melvin. We verbally traveled the world that crisp November day. Highlights of our talk included Sandy Ridge, NC (where Melvin was born and raised), to the western states (Melvin enjoys Louis L'Amour’s Sackett series of movies while I’ve read the novels), to Australia (we are both fond of Tom Selleck’s motion picture Quigley Down Under), to Africa (we discussed Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan movies), to back home, here, not far from Tobacco Road where I confessed to Melvin that Gene Tierney's performance in the movie Tobacco Road was among my favorites by the glamorous movie star.

Here are a few pictures I took  that day.

Melvin's 25 gallon stew pot

Melvin Nelson stirring the dumplings

Melvin Nelson storyteller and stew master

Melvin with his granddaughter, Lindsay Grummett

Chicken and dumplings southern style

The recent cool April mornings have set my appetite to craving chicken and dumplings again. Here is a scaled-down crock pot version of chicken and dumplings. I use a seven quart crock pot for this recipe. It is also one of the few recipes I use that calls for canned biscuits.  (Susan’s on hiatus this week so I’m using ‘em where I can get away with it.  For purists, please see a homemade biscuit recipe here.)

Crock Pot Chicken and Dumplings

6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
(You can also use thighs, just cook the chicken until the meat falls off the bones. Remove the skin and bones when the chicken is thoroughly cooked.)
½ stick butter
1 - 26 ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 - 10.5 ounce can cream of celery soup
chicken broth
1 - onion diced
2 - (10 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit
dough, torn into small pieces

Directions:

Line the bottom of your crock pot with chicken.

Add butter, soup and onion.

Add enough chicken broth to cover the previous ingredients

Cover with crock pot lid and cook for 5 to 6 hours on high.

Add the torn biscuit dough (dumplings) to the crock pot an hour before serving time. Allow the crock pot to cook the dough until it is no longer raw.

I'll close with a contemporary haiku I penned during my time with Melvin.

hoar frost...
gleaning stories
around the dumpling pot

Food Portions

In the world of food television shows and upscale restaurants, I have a difficult time understanding why someone would pay an exorbitant price (especially in this economy) for an entrée that appears as a tiny circle in the middle of a plate. Sure, I know “presentation” is an important element in the dining experience and all that vacant space left on the plate helps the eye to focus on the morsel in the center, the bull's eye of the meal if you will. I’m just of the mind that I won’t pay for an entrée that, in this humble poet’s opinion, should be demoted to appetizer status. I don’t want to eat dinner and be hungry an hour later. I want my appetite satiated completely. I want plenty of good food at a decent price. Fill my plate and if I can’t eat it all, I’ll take leftovers home.

Before I go further, let me clearly state that I’m not dissing food television shows, upscale restaurants or chefs for that matter. I’ve enjoyed meals, in one form or another, by all three. In fact, I have a friend who’s attending culinary school and is well on his way to becoming a chef. I blame my gluttonous love for large portions of food on my southern upbringing and will vehemently claim that the good state of Texas ain’t got nuthin’ on its southern sister states in the BIG department when it comes to supper time. Dining is an event here in the south; it’s something to be shared and enjoyed. We often cook so that there will be leftovers. Sometimes we cook for the sheer joy of cooking then deliver a hefty amount of food to a friend or neighbor as a token of appreciation and love. Southerners learned long ago that you don’t have to skimp on portions to eat frugally. A couple of biscuits smothered in tomato gravy with several dashes of black pepper thrown in for good measure can occupy those aforementioned vacant spaces of even the largest plate and be a tasty inexpensive meal.

I’ve already shared a dining experience I had at my grandmother’s table in the form of a prose poem. Here are two additional food moments that helped mold me into the kind of guy that would frown on being served a tiny Cornish Hen breast with a broccoli spear, drizzled with a sauce for dinner. (Okay, that was a slight exaggeration but maybe the reader will understand the gist of my complaint. Sometimes, less is more but not at the supper table!)

Margaret is a lady who lives in the community of Shiloh, a few miles east of Mayodan. Occasionally, I’d stop by to visit her son, a longtime friend. I cannot remember a time when Margaret failed to feed me while I was there. It never mattered that I’d already had supper at home. This wonderfully, splendid cook always insisted that I have something to eat while I was in her home. Margaret’s hospitality was as big as her heart and the portions were amazing! I’ve dined on as little as a slice of homemade chocolate cake (a slice being nearly ¼ of the cake) and as much as a plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, biscuits and gravy. To refuse food when Margaret offered it would be impolite. And I’ve never been one to be rude where food is involved.

Ruth was a member of my church. Sadly, Ruth died a few years ago. She was a unique woman who gave selflessly of herself to her community and church. I am not ashamed to admit that I’d planned on skipping church one Sunday to go fishing with friends until I found out that a covered dish would be served after the sermon, which could mean only one thing: Ruth would be there with her amazing caramel cake. I quickly canceled my fishing trip. I went to church and listened patiently to the sermon that day. Later, I enjoyed a good old fashioned heartfelt hug from Ruth and two slices of her caramel cake. Sometimes, a way to a man’s soul is through his stomach, especially when good food is in abundance.

The following is my recipe for tomato gravy. Serve this with a sausage patty over biscuits. Figuring in the frugal factor here, use whatever tomatoes you have on hand. Just be sure to use enough flour to thicken the gravy to a desired consistency and season it with salt and pepper to your liking.

 Tomato Gravy

• 2 to 3 tablespoons oil (I usually fry bacon or sausage and use the drippings, but for the health conscious folks, vegetable oil will do.)
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour stirred into a 3/4 cup of water (This is an old trick for thickening gravy during the stirring and heating phase.)
• 1 16 ounce can of petite diced tomatoes (or whatever you have on hand. I’ve seen my mom use tomato juice.)
• salt and pepper to taste

Set your stove top burner on medium-low. Add oil and one tablespoon flour to a skillet. Turn the heat up to medium and stir until the flour starts to brown.

Add the can of tomatoes including the tomato juice to the pan. Stir to break-down any globs of flour that may form.

Turn the heat up to medium-high. Start seasoning with salt and pepper. Stir constantly to avoid sticking.

When the pan starts to boil, add the flour water mixture and continue stirring. Turn the heat back down to medium. Stir until the gravy thickens. Continue seasoning with salt and pepper to your liking.

Serve over southern biscuits with a side of bacon or sausage.

Here’s a picture of a pan of tomato gravy I made with hog jowls.

During this time of soaring gas prices, when we pay more and receive less wherever we shop, it’s nice to know that there are still a few tasty meals that can be prepared in abundance. We live in times when many of us are spending less on extravagant meals. People are focusing more on necessities. Perhaps the following haiku I penned on my way home from work illustrates this shift back to basics and the essential things in life:

down sizing...
a satellite dish
shelters the wood pile

Spring Moons

When my daddy bought a few acres of land adjoining his property a few years back,  you’d have thought he’d finalized The Louisiana Purchase for all the plans we started hatching.  Aside from an idea to expand our existing vegetable garden, we now had ample room for several varieties of fruit trees, berry brambles, a huge herb garden and several flower beds.  Except for the traditional vegetable patch, we only had to plant once to reap rewards for years to come, but we had to be patient - especially when it came to the asparagus.

We prepared one small bed as neither of us had before planted it.  We ordered one-year old crowns to put into soil and had to wait two entire years before enjoying our first harvest.  We reasoned that the crowns should produce for twenty years - plant once and reap for twenty years? - surely following the planting and maintenance instructions would be worth the wait.  But we quickly learned that the hardest thing about growing asparagus is the waiting.

We found it difficult to resist cutting the slim, emerald-green shoots that popped up during those two years.  Well, they looked ready to eat - like spring itself all crisp and pristine, each stalk its own tiny and perfect monument.  But we waited.  And then we waited some more.  Now my daddy would have me believe that he never snapped one of those stalks before its time, and I’d have my daddy believe that I’d done as good a job of following the rules.  That said,  I know for a fact that raccoons don’t carry pocket knives and that their teeth won’t clip a tender shoot at a clean 45-degree angle.  We avoided telling the truth better than we left those first asparagus spears alone.  We liked them so much that we quickly decided to put in another, much larger bed of it.

When shopping for the new crowns to plant, I was thrilled to find that a small family farm in Michigan sold two-year old crowns online for less than I paid first go-’round.  We’d only have to wait one year before harvesting.  We then planted an asparagus bed roughly twice the size of our first.  As we already had the first bed from which to harvest, surely we’d be able to avoid pilfering the newest one for a scant year.  We watched with great anticipation as that bed filled with delicate ferns in fall, red berries weighing down its tall, fragile wisps of green until the first cold snap reduced it to a tangled nest which we’d clean up early the following year.

Spring is a busy time for us and daddy frequently hires a few extra hands for the trimming and mowing of his property.  There are several such men he calls on to help him out.  They usually have two names - the first by which everyone knows them and the second being their real name that no one quite recalls.  Southerners have a deadly accurate habit of nicknaming people so the most commonly-called name is usually the one that suits best.  I won’t go too far into my own speculations about the reasons Southerners like to put their own brand on everything, but my point is how Cosmo showed up to lend us a hand one morning.

Now Cosmo’s a hard worker who doesn’t own a belt.  He’ll tackle just about any task you set before him and be done with it by lunchtime.  If you don’t get all sidetracked with speculation over how he got his name, his gritty zeal is something to behold.  It was with this robust sense of enthusiasm that he took a weed whacker to both asparagus beds already offering up their tender spears before we even knew he’d finished.  I had a few more names for him after that.

some things
better imagined -
full moon

This recipe can easily be tweaked to a lower-fat version by substituting with the ingredients appearing in italics but don’t you dare ever call it by anything other than its proper name.

Not Cosmo’s Asparagus Casserole

Salt
roughly 2 pounds (.45 kilos) fresh asparagus
6 tablespoons (86 grams) butter (6 tablespoons margarine)
4 tablespoons (57 grams) all-purpose flour
1 cup (237 ml) heavy cream (1 cup non-fat half and half)
paprika
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced
2 cups (.45 kilos) day-old bread, cubed
1 cup (.23 kilos) coarsely-crumbled butter crackers
½ cup (.115 kilos) freshly-grated parmigiano-reggiano

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (approximately 176-7 Celsius).  Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  While bringing the water to a boil, prepare the asparagus by holding each spear with both hands, gentling bending at its bottom half where it finds a natural snapping point.  Discard the harder, fibrous ends.  Cut asparagus into bite-sized pieces (not too small!) and cook it in the boiling water until just softened.  Remove the cooked asparagus and reserve a cup of the water.

Make a roux by melting 4 tablespoons butter (or margarine) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat.  Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes.  Whisk in reserved asparagus water, then add the cream (or half and half), stirring constantly until smooth and thickened.  Add a few pinches of paprika, then season to taste with salt.  Assemble the cooked asparagus, eggs and sauce in layers in a medium-sized casserole dish, ending by smoothing sauce over the casserole’s top.  In a medium-sized bowl, toss bread cubes, cracker crumbs and cheese until well-blended.  Scatter this mixture over the top of the asparagus casserole and dot with remaining butter (or margarine).  Bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes.

Comfort Food Craze

Comfort Food - two words that have become the catch phrase for selling food magazines.  While waiting in line to pay for a few groceries at the supermarket the other day, I counted four magazines using the term “Comfort Food” on their covers. After reading Taste of Home Comfort Food, Cooking Light Comfort Food Classics, Southern Comfort Food and Soups and Stew Comfort Food, I must admit that I fell under the spell of those two words and nearly added a bit of reading material to my shopping cart. The sheer cost of the magazines jolted me out of my reverie. After all, the cost of one of those magazines can buy a lot of pasta, rice and beans.

But how do you define Comfort Food? I’d like to hear from you. What do you consider to be a Comfort Food? For me, it’s a bowl of homemade chili with a side of cornbread in the winter. In the summer I would consider a tomato sandwich (with mayo and black pepper), a slice of watermelon or a bowl of homemade ice cream to be comfort foods. Answers.com defines Comfort Food as “Food that is simply prepared and associated with a sense of home or contentment.” The validity of that definition became apparent to me the other day after I sent a picture of cornbread, mustard greens and pinto beans I'd prepared to a friend who had recently taken a job in Kauai. My friend jokingly scolded me when he replied to my email, stating that the picture made him long for home and that it was no longer possible for him to hop in a car and drive a short distance to taste his mother’s homecooked meals. Perhaps we’ve found Comfort Food of the highest calibre at mother’s and, yes, even grandmother’s table!

The following is a basic crock pot roast recipe. There are many variations to be found on the Internet these days. I offer it here to my friend who resides on a speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and to anyone who would claim that they have no cooking skills. Share this simple, tasty meal with friends or family and your reputation as one who can prepare Comfort Food will grow.

Basic Crock Pot Pot Roast

2 to 3 lbs. pot roast
2 stalks celery (sliced)
1 large onion (sliced)
2 medium potatoes (halved then quartered)
2 carrots (sliced)
1 cup beef broth (water will do)
1 package of onion soup mix

Pour the broth or water into the crock pot. Add the pot roast. Pour the package of onion soup mix onto the roast, spreading it evenly. Add the vegetables. Cook on low for about 7 hours. Serve over rice or with a biscuit.

I paid half price the other day for a two pound pot roast that was set to expire in two days. Using the above recipe, my daughter and I enjoyed several meals out of that pot roast.

I’ll close with this prose piece that was originally published in the November 2009 issue of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

Southern Legitimacy Statement #3

You never formed sentimental attachments to live stock on the farm—dogs, cats, even a mule was okay, but be careful about making a pet of chickens or cattle, anything of that order. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way. I was seven at the time, but a big boy for my age. My family and I had gathered around the supper table to indulge in the delights of one of Momma’s home cooked meals. I had just forked my second sausage patty (for it was not unusual to have breakfast for supper or supper for breakfast, you ate what was available) when it suddenly occurred to me to inquire as to the whereabouts of my pet pig, Sparky, a scrawny little thing that I’d adopted, helped feed, and watched grow into a massive 500 pound hog. Sparky had been missing for a couple of days, which wasn’t unusual as he had an annoying habit of breaking out of his pig pin. Daddy and I had trudge the hills and hallows of Western Rockingham County on more than one occasion, in mud, rain, and sometimes snow looking for that pesky hog. Most of the time we’d find him waiting for us when we returned home, snorting and grunting for something to eat. I’d have inquired about my missing hog sooner, but I’d been preoccupied, of late, with a tree-climbing, freckled-faced, red-headed girl what lived down the road. (Trying to keep up with that girl sure worked on a fellow’s appetite—but I digress.) So, amidst the clatter of forks, spoons, and plates, I put the question to Daddy, “Have you seen, Sparky?” says I, during a lull in the dinner chatter.

“Why yes, son,” says Daddy, looking over his glasses, “I saw him recently.”

“Is he nearby?” I asked, dipping another spoonful of tomato gravy onto my plate.

“Yep,” says Daddy, “as a matter of fact, there’s a sizable chunk of him on the end of your fork.”

Peeing on an electric fence couldn’t have jolted me more than the impact of Daddy’s words. The table fell silent, except for a slight snicker from my oldest buck-toothed sister, Essie, who enjoyed tormenting me whenever the opportunity arose. I stared at my fork, gravy dripping off the remains of my pet pig, wondering if I was looking at the end that snorted or the end I wanted to kick whenever he broke out of the pin. My heart sank… …right into the pit of my ravenous stomach.

“Dang it,” says I, taking another bite of Sparky, “I reckon he had it coming.”

Comfort food can sometimes offer unexpected surprises. ;)

Y’all have a great week!

Waste Nothing

Bones. They make me nostalgic. Strange? Probably. But they remind me of times when I was forced to be more frugal and resourceful. When there was no money for cable television, there was a wealth of conversation or time for reading, solitary contemplation and discovery. When gasoline expenses soared and I opted to stay at home, I found myself spending time with family and neighbors (yes, you’re reading this online...go offline when you’ve finished reading this! It’s where real life happens). Bones and spare times take us to where souls and their expressions most creatively reside. Almost anyone reading this article can name a point in their personal lives when times got a bit financially tight - when you ate leftovers a few more times than you preferred, if you even knew with certainty that your next meal was indeed assured. Such times leave us with a confidence that we can endure another round of paltry circumstances should they occur. They leave us feeling empowered and happy for the lasting it all out. And they certainly serve as a long-lasting reminder of the definition of waste (read here as “don’t!”).

 Bones. What’s left when the meat is gone. All that remains when the energy is seemingly spent. But bones are still capable of providing sustenance and a tasty round at that. Now imagine my delight on a recent grocery trip when I found a 7 pound hen priced at $5.50 USD! The bird’s freshness was set to expire a scant 2 days from my date of purchase, and would have frozen well for later use, but I had more immediate plans for it. The temperatures were frigid and I had no homemade chicken soup on hand - a must in this household. My point here is not the meat on that chicken...nor the soup I eventually made from it. It’s the bones and what I did with them that matters and how my food dollars stretched their legs like a thoroughbred.

 I’m relatively sure that a few readers at this point may deem my frugality in cooking a bit overzealous and simple. If you’re a “foodie”, then will you give me a bit more credit if I tell you that Saveur Magazine’s March 2012 issue features an article on bones and what to do with them? Bones make stock. Stock is the backbone of countless recipes - not just soup. I keep quart-sized plastic containers on hand precisely for the purpose of freezing various kinds of broth for future use.

 To begin, always roast bones before tossing them into a stockpot. Rub them with a bit of oil before putting them into a roasting pan and then into a hot oven (400 degrees F/roughly 204 degrees C) unless you’re using duck bones which are fatty enough on their own. If you’d like for your stock to have a roasted garlic flavor, remove as much paper as possible from a garlic head, trim the pointed end of each clove with a paring knife, and throw it into the roasting pan along with the bones. The longer you roast the bones, the darker your resulting stock will be. When bones look a bit charred and dark, remove all from the oven and deglaze your pan with some water, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove the clingy brown bits. Transfer all contents to a stockpot, squeezing the now molten garlic cloves into the mix (discard papery garlic remains) and cover everything with water. Bring the pot and its contents to medium-high heat slowly, skimming off any foam and reduce the heat to simmer for a few hours. If you want to salt your stock, now’s the time to do it or to add herbs if you want. If desired, one can add chopped vegetables. Simmer for another hour or so, then ladle stock into containers, avoiding sediment at the bottom of the pot. If you have cheese cloth on hand, lining a large colander with it and capturing the broth without the sediment makes the task easier. Fat in the stock will rise to the top of your containers once frozen, and is easy to remove with a paring knife should you prefer a low-fat version. 

Here is a senryu by fellow Frugal Poet, Curtis Dunlap.

All Hallows’ Eve
a blues man dances
to the rhythm of bones

Curtis was inspired to write his short poem after watching Dom Flemons, a musician with The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Flemons often employs the use of bones in his music.

Regional Food Quirks

Banana, mayonnaise and black pepper sandwiches, pouring a bag of peanuts into a bottle of cola, a slice of fresh cornbread eaten with an onion pulled from the garden, spreading grape or strawberry jelly over a sausage biscuit. The quirky things we consume, sometimes in odd combinations, are less of an oddity to people raised in regions where it is acceptable to mix and devour what would appear -- to non-regional folk -- a mishandling of edible delectables.

I posted recently on my Facebook page that I was enjoying a bag of salted peanuts that I’d poured into a bottle of Dr. Pepper, catching and consuming the occasional peanut while I drank. Yes, I know, not groundbreaking news, but my friends in and around the state of North Carolina understood the treat I’d given myself, while my friends in other parts of the nation and the world thought I’d lost my southern mind.

A friend with whom I’d discussed the topic of this column told me recently that he had an out-of-state visitor leave his kitchen because she could not bear to watch someone eat a banana, mayonnaise and pepper sandwich.  

But are we fundamentally that different in some of the foods we eat? Eager to try something I’d never had before, I once ordered scrapple at a diner in Delaware only to taste what we call liver pudding in North Carolina.

What regional foods or unlikely combinations of foods are acceptable cuisine in your area? Have you had someone look at you like like you’d wiggled out of a restraining jacket because of something you were eating? If so, I’d like to hear from you. Leave your responses below or email your food oddities to curtis@frugalpoet.com. Perhaps I’ll sample your regional food quirk.

I’m a peanut nut. The local Dollar General store is the cheapest place to buy peanuts in my town. Here's the way I do spicy peanuts.

Wasabi Peanuts

3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons wasabi sauce
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 to 2 teaspoons garlic powder
6 to 8 ounces unsalted peanuts

Pour everything except the peanuts into a sealable container. Shake the container vigorously until all the ingredients are well blended. Add peanuts to the container and shake again to thoroughly coat the peanuts.

Lightly grease a baking pan. Pour the peanuts into the pan; scatter evenly. Bake in 300 degree heated oven for 10 minutes, remove, stir and bake for another 10 minutes.

Ode to the Peanut

Oh lowly pea
masquerading as a nut!
What power
you have over me!

Salty, spicy, bland...
smoothed into butter
slathered in my hand
(if there’s no bread around).

Had I been Eve,
I would’ve chosen you
my diminutive tasty morsel
and not
that pretentious juicy apple!

(With apologies to my Frugal Poet pal, Susan Nelson Myers, who posted an apple butter recipe last week.)

;-)