Say Cheese (less than $3; Overnight)

Cheese, I hear, is bad for you. It clogs the heart. People can die of cheese. This is weird, isn't it? It's just a little clotted milk with the whey wrung out.

Hey, did I ever tell you the stinky cheese story? Probably. But I'm getting old, so I'm going to tell it again. You can skip to the food part if you've heard this before.

I can't tell you how many people turn my book over (the ten or so who bought it) and say: wow, that's a great picture, you look just like an author. By which they mean: you look like you're smelling something really terrible. You look like you're thinking: "Bad prose is everywhere! It offends the nostrils, it stinks to high heaven! I am rarified! I write!"

Actually, it's rotten Gorgonzola. It really is a bad smell, the smell I can only liken to nasty, nasty, dirty ass.

But wait: I get ahead of myself. Picture this: a romantic honeymoon, picnic lunches in picturesque plazas in Italy in April, etc. etc. We were there on the cheap, so we foraged for food in the morning, backpacked it til noon, bought some wine and ate al fresco. We had olives above the forum, with the best mozzarella and grilled eggplant I've ever tasted. We ate bread and artichokes at the Pyramid or near the Pantheon. I can't remember it all. The point is, we went to the bread store, bought bread; went to the fruit market, bought fruit; went to the cheese man (blessed are the cheese-makers...), bought cheese.

One day, unsure what any of the labels read at the particular formaggeria where we were standing, I saw a familiar label: Gorgonzola. I'd heard of that! Hurray!

I held up my palm. In my Engaliano, I said: as much, as thick as my palm. The nice man said prego, wrapped it in three or four layers of wax paper and a paper bag, we paid, and four hours later, bread and loquats (in the rose family!) in hand, we were ready to consume.

You have all, I think, seen my palm. It is not a dainty thing. Likely we had -- conservatively -- half a pound of Gorgonzola in a bag, four hours in the heat.

When we opened the backpack, there was a visible mushroom cloud. Not spotting any dogs nearby, I said: honey, was that you? Chuck said: I think there's a sewer grating under us.

Oh, I said.

Then he opened the paper bag with the cheese in it. Strangers fifty yards away passed out.

Close the bag! I shouted.

AAHHH! Chuck screamed, it's on my HANDS! it's on my HANDS!

Moist towelettes (they have a MUSEUM!) did nothing; a whole bottle of water did nothing; no, rotten Gorgonzola is like sulphuric acid and passes straight through skin to impregnate the blood and muscles underneath with the smell, as Chuck put it, of thousands upon thousands of dirty pigeon butts.

I can'd brede, I said, my eyes rolling back in my head. Oh God, helb me.

Dis is an excellend dime for a pigture, Chuck said.

Snap.

This is the story of the author photo I love best. Yes, I am smelling terrible terrible things. Really. This is not a metaphor.

The cheese I'm about to tell you how to make, however, is both mild and easy; it substitutes naturally for cream cheese, sour cream, any savory, thick dairy. I haven't tried it in sauces that I would heat, feeling like it would lose its structure this way. But we use it, cold, for all kinds of things.

What you need is a man's hanky, plain, unflavored yogurt (I use non-fat, but feel free to try whatever), a little milk, and some salt. C'est tout. In the end you have about 6 oz of spreadable cheese.

Beside a sink where you can let the cheese drip overnight, line a largish soup bowl with the clean hanky. Dump about half a 32oz carton into the bowl on top of the hanky. Bring two opposite corners together and tie in a half hitch. Grab the other two corners and tie these in a double half hitch securely over the faucet handle. You want the proto-cheese to swing free and drip into the sink.

Go to bed. Sleep. Leave the thing for 24 hours.

When it's done, untie the hanky and let the cheese ball (in roughly the shape of its packet) roll out into a bowl you can seal.
Add about a TBSP of milk and about a tsp of salt. Mix with a fork and refrigerate.

We serve this with crackers and paprika Nick McRae brought us from Europe. I eat it on sandwiches, all by itself. I've even used it for dipping chips. It's really versatile, I swear, and doesn't smell in the least.

There you go.

Kale and Rice (under $10; 45 mins)

[Chuck says for my student followers especially, I should list cost and time to prepare. I'll start doing this in the title, but so that no one is confused, I preface this with this preface. The feta and pine nuts are the most expensive part of this: prepared this way, you'll spend probably six or seven dollars on the whole thing, which will feed at least four people all the way full (or one Chuck and one Emily and one lunch). If you buy the kale cut and cleaned, the rice takes the longest to prepare at 40 minutes. Assembly is 3 minutes.]

One of my colleagues felt so out of place in a small town in the South ("Butt freak!" "Film Buff!" -- nothing like some Canadians to put the South in perspective) -- with its culture of tradition-uber-alles and unhealthy ideas about food, and backwoods backassward politics. When she got the chance to go back west, she went; she now lives where she and her dog and her husband can walk for hours in all directions, or bike, and never have to contend with religious nuts, uncaring writer/students, fried Twinkies on a stick.

She introduced me to our local CSA (community supported agriculture), which I've dropped given its sheer cost and its erratic production and distribution. But while I was in the co-op, the only one around here by the way, I ended up one day in fall with a shitload of something green and leafy. The tag said "kale" (wow! and healthy, too). I'd never heard of it. Really. Seriously. Never heard of it. So I sent an email or something, maybe made some phone calls: "I have this stuff called 'kale.' What the hell do I do with it?"

I didn't check the internet. I still don't trust it easily for recipes. Ironic, that.

My colleague responded. She told me she had the best, easiest, tastiest preparation for kale ever. Her friend in California told her about it. 

We tried it. We discovered that kale is in fact vegetable crack (best drug website there is). One puff and you will sell your children for it.

The trick to this is to eat kale in season, which for here, is right now. I have 30 kale plants in my garden almost ready to harvest. I say almost. They're biggish, and we just had a frost, but I want to wait just a little more; except I don't, and so I bought a bag of kale and made this last night.

Also, this tells me how much you'll need, too, so -- that's good, right?

Anyway, this is fall-winter-early spring ONLY.

What you'll need:

about a pound of washed, trimmed, and coarsely chopped kale. Color is immaterial.

about 6 cups cooked rice (brown is better)

a standard block of feta cheese, crumbled (I think this is 4 oz) -- sometimes I use a little less

1/4-1/2 cup pine nuts

soy sauce, crushed garlic, hot peppers, olive oil

In a lightly oiled pan, toast the pine nuts over medium heat. Be careful: they burn FAST. Keep them moving in the pan until about half of them are golden brown. Take the pan off the heat and let them sit while you fix the rest.

In a very large stockpot with a lid, put about 2 TBSP olive oil and heat until you can smell it. Add about a tsp of crushed garlic, and enough hot pepper stuff to affect your sinuses. Stir for just a minute. Dump in the kale and keep moving it against the bottom until it's half-reduced in size. Turn off the heat and cover to let the kale steam. Stir once or twice. When it's done, it'll release a little water and be about a quarter the volume of the original kale.

Add three medium splashes of soy sauce. Stir.

In a deep bowl, layer the rice, then the kale and its juices, then the pine nuts, then the feta. Often I bake this a little in a 350 oven just to toast some of the edges of the kale and soften the cheese, but that's not strictly necessary. It's ready to go once the layers are done.

My mother, who thinks "vegetarian food" means "nasty shit poor people who can't afford steak eat" downed three bowls of this in a single sitting. It's good stuff.

There you go.

Beans, Beans. They're Good for Your Heart.

My grandfather was a notable flatulent. I knew "pull my finger" (I laughed until I cried at this video) before I knew much of anything else, I think. He used to sing this song all the time. Also, a variation of a song with a drunk pig in it, or a drunk man: I can never remember. Then he'd pop out his dentures, and we'd all shriek and run away.

I didn't know then that in my future were a lot of beans.

As everyone knows, beans are a cheap, reliable source of protein for people who don't eat much meat. In my pantry I have bags of red and brown lentils, limas, pintos, kidney, and black beans (note the gas-free recipe). The enchiladas I describe below use black beans but you could probably substitute anything else that's meaty-tasting and get the same effect. You can substitute canned beans; rinse them very well, until the sliminess is gone, if you do.

To make the beans, I use a crock-pot. It's less labor intensive than soaking, rinsing, and regular cooking. I cover the bottom of the crock-pot with washed unsoaked dry beans, then dump in about six cups of water. Here I've added jalapeno paste, crushed garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, basil, bay leaves, cumin and a little cinnamon. Set the pot for six hours, and go do something else. If I'm home, I stir every couple of hours and check the water level, if I remember to. If not, not. Beans are not only cheap and proteinous, they're low-maintenance when they're done like this.

If you just want beans and rice, when the beans look done -- they're soft and you can break some up by stirring -- make rice. White rice cooks at a roughly 2:1 ratio -- 2 parts water to one part rice (though this post describes another way of measuring). Probably three cups of water to 1 1/2 c rice will make plenty for two or three people. Boil the water with a little salt. When it's boiling, add the rice, stir once, bring to a boil at medium high heat. Lower the temp, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes or until all the water is absorbed. Let stand off the heat for five minutes with the cover on before you eat. Note: I dislike rice that falls into separate grains. If you like that, this is not how to get that.

If you use brown rice, which I prefer, the ratio is more like 3:1 (3 parts water to 1 part rice). Brown rice cooks longer too: more like 40 minutes. But it's really better tasting.

However, if you're going to make enchiladas with your beans as I am about to do here, you want:

cooked black beans
cooked rice
cream cheese
tortillas
grated cheddar
enchilada sauce
salsa

I use bottled sauces this time of year because the tomatoes are SO bad, but feel free to use whatever you like. I also use prepared tortillas, since I have an electric stove and they just don't work right for me here. In India, I did good ones; here? Nope. Maybe when we change over to gas.

Here's how totally inauthentically Mexican black bean enchiladas work.

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the beans and the rice together. You can, and I often do, saute diced onions and peppers until they're soft and mix them in as well.

Set out a tortilla. In the middle, plop a hefty spoonful of the beans and rice, top with a spoon of cream cheese (I use neufchatel or yogurt cheese, but you can use cottage cheese, ricotta, sour cream, any of them). Fold the left and right sides of the tortilla over the filling and roll the tortilla up to make a black bean envelope (starting at 2:31 in this video). To do this, take the bottom part of the tortilla, fold it over the filling away from you, and roll the body of the tortilla away from you until it forms a tube, like a burrito.

Set each of these in a lasagna pan whose bottom you've coated in salsa, which will sort of prevent them from sticking. The enchiladas can touch each other. When the pan is full, drizzle the enchiladas with enchilada sauce. Don't worry about using too much. You won't.

Top with grated cheddar. Try not to put so much on that you can't see where the edges are, since you'll have to try to lift these out separately. Bake until the cheese is melted and a little browned and the sauce is bubbly (maybe 20 minutes). These are better even the second day, and they freeze, unbaked, pretty well too.

There you go.

Oat MEAL.

Way back in the bad old graduate school days, my neighbor was a psych grad student and I was dirt poor, I mean poorer than I've been since I was babysitting for a living. I'd lost a job, my boyfriend at the time lived a bazillion miles away, my dissertation director was abusive, I was in the midst of both a divorce and a nasty sexual harassment debacle, and maybe not coincidentally, I wasn't writing. Which meant I wasn't finishing my dissertation, and that was bad, bad, bad. I cried. A lot.

I needed work, I thought. If I could do something, I would be okay. My neighbor, probably a do-gooder who pitied me, but at that point I didn't care, told me she needed someone to read her psych texts into a tape recorder so that she could listen to them as she drove, and she would pay me $10 or something a tape. They were the most boring books I ever read. At one point, she told me to stop yawning since it was dangerous: when I yawned, she did, and that made her sleepy, and after all -- she was driving, so could I PLEASE stop yawning. Yeah, I didn't.

[Right now I'm yawning. Typing the word makes me yawn. Saying it makes me yawn. What IS that?] [Holy crap. Watch the chimps yawn. Mirror neurons? Wow.]

But this was several weeks after she found me crying in the back yard of the trashy little house I rented (and loved) [search Woodrow St, Athens, GA at this site]. She told me I was depressed, and asked why I didn't come over and have some oatmeal and we could talk.

Her name was Amy, she was very concerned in a nice maternal way, and I hated oatmeal. I said, yes, (snork, sniffle), expecting at least to find comfort, if not good food.

This is Amy's oatmeal, minus the mashed banana, only because my bananas weren't ripe. And I ate probably three bowls of it that morning. Afterwards, I went home and threw away my instant oatmeal packets -- never even thought twice again about buying those shitty little envelopes of pre-made oat-refuse my mother'd pawned off as oatmeal. What Amy made, and that crap, are not even kin. I'm telling you what.

What you'll need:

Oatmeal -- I've gotten snobby and buy steel-cut oats (they have their own website!), but plain Quaker regular-cook oats will do

water

dried fruit (here, raisins and dates)

nuts

applesauce or finely diced apples

a little butter and sugar (maple syrup is also good)

Milk or cream if you like to eat your oatmeal that way, though I don't.

Oats cook at a 3:1 ratio: three parts water to one part oats. For three people, if you're having toast, 3 c water, 1 c oats. If you're feeding Chuck (search Bowie on this website), this feeds two people, with toast. One if he's really hungry.

If you're doing just these servings, you'll need about a 1/3 c nuts, 1/2 c dried fruit, 1/4 c applesauce or one small apple, about a TBSP butter and a tsp of sugar.

Boil the water with a little salt, maybe a tsp or so. Add oats (and if you are using diced apple, the apple), stir once, return to boil, turn heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the water is absorbed.

Meantime, break up the pieces of nut into bite-sized bits with your hands. In a small frying pan, melt a little butter and toast the nuts over medium heat. When they smell like toasted nuts (intensely nut-smelling) and start to turn deeper brown, sprinkle with about a tsp of brown or white sugar and take off the heat.

When the oats have absorbed all the water, add the nuts, dried fruit, and applesauce. If you're using just diced apple, you may want to add about 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a little sugar. Stir. Taste. Adjust salt (for more intense taste); sugar (for more sweetness); or butter (for more richness).

Eat. Think of Amy who was kind to me when I needed it. Thank you, Amy.

There you go.

Salad. Of. Potatoes!

My brother Karl hates mayo (though it's pretty cool how it works). He calls it pus. I'm not a big fan, either, so I make potato salad with whatever else I have. Today I had some mayo and not much of anything else. So I had to use the pus. Sorry, Karl.

Purists will note: this is not German potato salad, or hot wild vinegar potato salad, or weird-ass fancy potato salad. It's potatoes dressed in white stuff with a few other things, such as salt. Very basic.

You'll need:

Boiling potatoes

Eggs

Pickles

Yogurt, sour cream, mustard, mayo if you have to

Spices (I use jalapeno paste here, but have been known to use rosemary, thyme, and/or tarragon)

salt and pepper

The first thing you want to do is take about a half-dozen medium-sized red-skinned (boiling) potatoes (about two pounds I'd guess). DON'T peel them. Cut them into chunks roughly the same size. Boil them until they're just done, drain, and refrigerate.

In another pot, boil 2-3 eggs until hard. Best way I've found to boil eggs: put eggs in cold water that covers them. Heat on medium-high. When they start boiling hard, let them boil just five minutes, then turn off the heat and let them cool to room temperature. Douse them in VERY cold water and peel immediately. Generally speaking you only lose a couple of eggs in a dozen to shell-stick this way.

When you're ready to make the salad, put the potatoes in a large bowl. Chop up a handful of small gherkins and add them to the potatoes. You could use half a large dill if that's all you have. You just want some of that pickle-y taste and the crunch, too.

In a separate small bowl, put about 1 1/4- 1 1/2 cups of white stuff. I like to mix mustard and yogurt (Stonyfield is the best), but sour cream is nice too; I've used yogurt cheese, softened cream cheese mixed with milk -- just about anything will do.

Since today I just had a little yogurt and no mustard, but did by some freak of nature have mayo, this is yogurt and a couple of spoons of mayo, with a heaping tsp of jalapeno paste. Add a scant tablespoon of salt (salt has its own newsletter!) and mix together.

Pour over the potatoes and pickles. Mix GENTLY. You want chunks of potato, not mashed potato. If you need more dressing, mix some up in the separate bowl and pour and mix again.

Chop egg coarsely and add to salad. Sprinkle black pepper over everything. Mix GENTLY.

Check that your salad has enough dressing. Some people like it drier than others (we like it pretty dry). Taste and adjust seasoning. You want it to taste like something. At this point, it'll taste mostly like egg, potato, and pickle. If it just tastes starchy, add some salt. It's what usually needs adjusting, so try a little of that first, then adjust the rest. Let sit in the fridge for at least an hour to combine flavors.

There you go.

Biscuits. Just Biscuits.

I grew up on Bisquick biscuits. In hindsight, I think there should be a law against them. I graduated to Grands (canned biscuits by Pillsbury) I think sometime in the 90s. My brother still uses them. Grands leave nasty grease marks on the cookie sheet and dissolve in your mouth. You could eat 63 of them and not feel full, which is probably the point, right? And they're comparatively expensive.

Making your own biscuits isn't hard. Just remember: people who couldn't read or write or add and subtract -- who could hardly talk credibly -- got up and made biscuits without fancy stoves or Danish butter every morning of their lives. Really. And, in parts of the country where it's still 1957, or 1937 even -- like where I live -- they still do.

So here we go.

All you need is:

2 cups flour (I use King Arthur unbleached white bread flour )

1TBSP baking powder

1 tsp salt

6 TBSP softened butter, Crisco, or any solid fat EXCEPT spreadable margarines

1 cup, more or less, buttermilk, spoiled milk, plain milk (milk of any sort)

Utensils: Oven, big bowl, measuring cups and spoons, knife, hands.

Measure out the milk into a measuring cup. Set aside. Pour about 1/4 cup flour on the surface you'll use to knead and cut out the biscuits.

In the big bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder. Do yourself a favor and ONLY use Rumford or other non-aluminum-based powders. There may possibly be a link between the ingestion of aluminum and Alzheimer's, and many baking powders are aluminum-based.

With your hands, rub the fat into the dry materials. Don't overdo this. When you look at the flour, you should still be able to see some pieces: not chunks, but pieces. In the picture, here, you can see what that should look like.

Add the milk all at once and mix with your hands until all the flour is incorporated and the dough forms a ball. If the dough sticks to your hands, dust with a little flour until the dough forms up. If the dough is dry and won't pick up all the flour in the bowl, splash in a little extra milk. Just a little at a time.

On the floured surface, knead (only the kneading part of this video) the dough just two or three times. To knead, press the dough with the heels of your hands, rotate 90 degrees, fold top down over, do it again, rotate, fold, etc.

Pat the dough out into an even, flat disk or amoeba shape. Doesn't matter if the edges are regular since you're cutting those off anyway. The thickness of the dough is up to you; the thicker the dough, the fewer -- but the taller -- the biscuits. Biscuits should about double in thickness when they're cooked.

You can wash your hands now.

Lightly grease (spray-grease or pass over it with a little butter or Crisco) a cookie sheet or pizza stone. I use the latter because I have a Neanderthal oven and using the stone means the bottoms of the biscuits don't burn. It also evens out the temp in the oven. But a cookie sheet is just fine.

Square off your dough by removing the edge strips with a knife and cut in even-ish squares. Place the biscuits on the cookie sheet.

Collect the edges into a ball, pat out, square off, cut up, and repeat until you don't have enough of the edges to make a biscuit. Roll this into a ball and place on the cookie sheet.

Now, pre-heat the oven to 425. Don't do it before now, since this allows the biscuits to rest and rise a little before being cooked. Anyway, that's what I imagine is happening in their tender little bodies.

When the oven's heated, bake the biscuits. Set the timer for 11 minutes, and then keep checking. The biscuits are done when the tops are golden brown -- you know the color a biscuit should be: that color.

Sometimes I dust the top of the cooked biscuits with salt. Other people rub the tops with butter. Whatever works. Serve with more butter and jam. This is my own peach jam, which tastes awesome because this year's peaches tasted better than any year I can remember.

There you go.

Apple saucy

There I am, standing in the wet (it's been wet ALL SUMMER and ALL FALL this year; I'm sort of nostalgic for the drought, but don't tell anyone), standing I say in the wet at this little po-dunk vegetable stand next to the Goodyear rip-you-off-every-chance-we-get auto repair store by the police station (dear god, Carrollton's finest have a website!), and I'm asking the bluest eyed guy I've ever seen if I can have a box of apples.

"I want," I say, "a whole box. It's a bushel, right?"
"ehYep."
"Can I get Jonamacs?"
Stares at me.
"Jon. A. Macs. You know, cooking apples. Do you have them? A bushel?"
"Wahl, no'm, don't think ah do. But I got these y'here Romes."
"A box?"
"ehYep."
"What do they cost?"
"40 pounds ud be bout eighteen dollar."
"Thank you, I'll take them."
"ehYep."

So I give the guy my $20 bill, buy a couple of other things and head home to make applesauce, apple butter, all kinds of apple-y goodness. I was familiar with Romes (who isn't?), which are very fine cooking apples: they make very good consistency sauces by falling apart as soon as you touch them.

Word to the wise? Don't work with Delicious apples. They taste like sawdust. And only buy apples when they're harvesting where you are. Which is why I was doing this in the fall, just after we'd picked our own Fujis from our one and only productive apple tree.

And I'd made a pie or two.

The key to processing 40 pounds of apples is a peeler/slicer.

I got this one for $12 at the local, wonderful, small-town, old-timey hardware store owned by one of the town's oldest families: Burson's Feed and Seed (of course they don't have a website. If you go there, you'll see what I mean). It's got a suction cup on the bottom and is possessed by the devil. As you peel, the handle rotates off; the corer slides left and right because the wing-nut can't be sufficiently tightened; when you try to move the corer/slicer back into place, it mutilates your hand.

Blood content of my applesauce is not high, but I probably should put it on the label.

The process of making applesauce is pretty simple. Peel, core and chop up some apples.

Add a little water, sugar, and spices (I use cinnamon and a little allspice). Cook until the apples are soft (about 30 minutes). Mash with a potato masher, or if you like your applesauce very smooth (icky), press through a sieve or food mill. That's, like, it. EASY. Why anyone buys the stuff, I don't know, since that crap tastes like -- well, crap. And homemade applesauce is just freaking the best-tasting, warm, homey, mommy-loves-me food there is.

The ratios are this, and you should adjust for the type of apple: the tart-er the apple, the more sugar -- though no more than 2/3 cup per 3 pounds of apples (measured before peeling/coring/cooking).

3 lbs (about 9 med.) apples (Jonamacs, Romes, Granny Smiths) -- peeled, cored, and sliced or quartered
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
3/4 c water (more if the apples seem dry, less if they seem very juicy)

In a large pot, heat to boiling. Stir. Turn heat to low. Cover and cook until soft. Mash until it's the consistency you like. Eat warm or cold.

For extra fiber (if you need it, or you like chewing), add some finely chopped peel before boiling. No more than, say, a cup, loosely packed, or it'll eat less like sauce than like chopped apple peel.

Not only do we just eat this (I served a big bowl at Thanksgiving, but we eat it for dessert, too), I use homemade applesauce regularly in baked goods that require oil. You can make a one-to-one substitution, applesauce to oil, but sometimes that changes consistency and taste pretty significantly, so I substitute half applesauce for half the oil, and subtract out some of the sugar the recipe calls for. Cakes are lighter and moister (and actually less cloyingly sweet) when I do this.

To can this (as I do), you fill hot jars with hot sauce, leaving half inch headroom. Boil in hot water for 20 minutes, lift out, cool, check seal, store. Here's a third of the jars I got from my forty pounds: I think all told, I had 10 quarts, maybe 13 pints, and 8 half-pints. Also 4 pints of apple butter. It'll keep us until next fall, if I don't give it all away.

There you go.