My Mother’s Ginger Cookies -

Except that they aren’t. These are really a variation on soft molasses cookies. That’s what kept driving me nuts over the years. I made these with my mother when I was young and have never been able to duplicate them since (until now). Mother was from Kentucky and these may be what Louisville people called ginger cookies, but they are not like the normal ginger cookie. I know. I’ve tried all kinds of ginger cookie variations and they were never right. Good, maybe, but not what I was looking for.

Anyway, try these. They’re rather good.

1 stick shortning - can be butter flavor or plain (1 cup)
210 g sugar (1 cup)
1 beaten egg
400 g all-purpose flour (2-1/2 cups)
350 g molasses (1 cup)
4 g salt (1/2 tsp)
9 g soda (2 tsp)
3 g cinnamon (1 tsp)
3 g cloves (1 tsp)
3 g ground ginger (1 tsp)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Cream the shorting and sugar. Beat in the egg and molasses. Add the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

You can skip the cinnamon and cloves if that’s not to your taste.

Traditionally, chill the dough, roll thin on a floured surface, then cut out with a cookie cutter. Place on a greased cookie sheet.

That’s too much fuss for me. I don’t fool with the chilling bit. I just drop tablespoonfuls onto the greased cookie sheet (doesn’t need greasing if non-stick type), then kind of pat flat with my greasy fingers. Works just fine.

Somewhere around 10 minutes in the oven, then let them cool on the sheet before transferring to a cooling rack. Don’t burn them. The molasses makes them kind of touchy.

Enjoy.

Herself Sez: OMG These are good! Although my little Gam was from Kentucky, too, she didn’t make anything like these - she wasn’t from Louisville - she was from the Eastern Mountains - Pulaski County. So the foodways and traditions were somewhat different.
She was a good cook, and I still am trying to find her cookie recipes for a date-spice drop cookie and an almond-pecan icebox cookie. Both are delicious. She only made them at Christmas time. {{SIGH}} I don’t know what was wrong with me - when she was alive and “with it,” it didn’t occur to me to get those recipes and some others that are very important and precious to me now. But isn’t it always the way??

But the Ol’ Curmudgeon has successfully reconstructed his mother’s “ginger” cookies. They are delicious. Not crisp, but soft and chewy. Uuuuuuuum!

Southern Sweet Cornbread -

The staple of the South for many years was cornbread. The Southern wheat flours are not really very good for bread. They are super fine for pies and such. Therefore the South developed the tradition of cornbread. This is what I use when I am in the mood for cornbread. Kind of a variation of the way my mother made it. Actually, the very best cornbread I ever had was made by my best friend’s mother, but I have never been able to get the same results, even with her recipe. But this one works very nicely.

150 grams unbleached all-purpose flour (1 cup)
166 grams yellow cornmeal (1 cup) (Aunt Jemima or Perkerson’s yellow)
65 grams sugar (5 Tbs)
8 grams baking powder (2 tsp)
4 grams salt (1/2 tsp)
244 grams milk (1 cup)
65 grams bacon drippings (1/3 cup)
1 large egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Lightly grease an iron skillet with bacon grease.

Roughly mix everything up. Should have flour clumps about the size of BBs.

Bake for 26 to 30 minutes, the edges should be brown, the top golden, and a toothpick in the center should come out clean.

Serve hot with good butter. Dandy for soaking up pot likker.

I suppose that it is possible to do some substitutions to make a food nazi happy, but why bother. The flavor is the name of the game. Same with the pan. You could use a square or rectangular pan, but the purist uses an iron skillet.

Herself sez: Welllll, there is a slightly different recipe for every Southern cook!! Some people use self-rising corn meal mixes, others use white cornmeal. Some don’t add sugar, some add less sugar, some add more. Some add more shortening, some add less. Some will add “cracklins” to their cornbread. These are bits of crispy pork fat - not quite as crispy as the pork rinds you see in the grocery, but gently rendered to a slightly crispy texture. Some people use bits of “chittlins” - chicken intestines cleaned, chopped up and fried. I’m not as fond of the cornbread with cracklins or chittlins it. The daughter-person and her husband like white cornmeal mix with little or no sugar added for making their cornbread. I prefer a sweeter, yellow cornbread, and the Ol’ Curmudgeon’s recipe suits me just fine!

Japanese Rice – Sort of –

Rice is one of the major sources of food for the world. It originated somewhere in the area of China and spread throughout the world. We have been cultivating it for about 5,000 years or so. Americans don’t really know about rice. We look for instant rice that has little character and flavor. I don’t know why, since the real deal is so easy and so versatile. Real rice is going to be a little bit sticky and can be eaten with chopsticks quite easily. (Chopstick and rice manners vary by region).

Chopsticks appear to have originated around 5,000 years ago in China, and spread all over the Orient. One of the reasons that they work so well is that the food has already been cut into bite size before preparation, which means that cooking requires less fuel and time. The Chinese chopsticks are usually rectangular, about 10 inches or so, and blunt ended. Japanese chopsticks are generally rounded, about 8 inches, and pointed. The snazzy lacquered wooden chopsticks were developed about the 17^th century in Japan and are somewhat slicker and harder to use than plain wooden chopsticks. Hereself likes to takes our own very fancy chopsticks in their snazzy carrying case to Oriental restaurants. Ours are Japanese. I don’t generally care one way or the other. The disposable type in restaurants (wari-bashi) are easier to hold and to pick up food than the lacquered type, but the finer lacquered finish has better mouth feel. Life is a bunch of trade-offs.

Incidentally, there is nothing in the Oriental gene pool that makes them instinctive chopstick users. It is a skill that has to be learned like any other. If you want to see something hysterical, look at a video of any Oriental mother teaching her baby the proper use of chopsticks. It is delightfully funny – and quite messy.

Now to business. Get a good grade of some kind of Oriental rice. If nothing else the Mahatma Jasmine rice is better than most grocery store rice. If you can find some real Oriental rice at a specialty store try it – you will be amazed at the flavor difference. Anyway, for the most part follow the directions on the package, if any. If no directions then use this general way to cook the stuff. 2 parts water liquid measure to 1 part rice dry measure. That is 2 cups water to 1 cup rice for 4 people. 1 cup water to ½ cup rice for 2 people. (It doesn’t hurt to have rice left over). Stir the rice and put on the heat. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. You may have to reduce the cooking time if your stovetop doesn’t get low enough heat. I have to use the smallest burner on the lowest setting. Turn off the heat and let it sit for at least 10 minutes. Do not lift the lid at any time! That’s it. Most people goof by lifting the lid to look and that will ruin it. Experiment a time or two. If you burn it then reduce the heat or time the next time – but DON’T lift the lid to see. If you’ve got a good lid you can use a wok for the rice, or any proportionally sized pot with a good lid.

We like rice with butter, soy sauce, or in other dishes. A nice, easy dish is a Japanese sort of thing. Oh yeah, this works very well with leftover rice. If you have a wok and know how to use it this is a good wok recipe.

2 cups cooked Japanese rice (Leftover is even better)
¼ cup chopped onion
¼ cup chopped carrot
½ cup broccoli flowers
½ cup diced meat of some kind – we like shrimp. Pork, ham, and chicken also work well.
2 eggs
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 cube chicken bouillon dissolved in a little hot water
2 Tbs Japanese soy sauce (We like Kikkoman)
vegetable oil
sesame oil

Whip up the eggs and scramble them quickly in hot oil. Set aside in a dish. High heat, add more oil and a bit of sesame oil for flavor. Sauté the vegetables until they are tender. Ham or pork goes in at the same time. If shrimp, add just before vegetables are done. Add the garlic just before the vegetables are done. Add chicken bouillon and rice and mix together. Lower heat and add soy sauce and mix it all up quickly. Add the scrambled egg, mix quickly. Get it off the heat, serve and eat immediately.

As a variation you can add a small bit of honey to the soy sauce over heat and stir it well. There is nothing sacred about the ingredients. You can use any veggies or meat that you have on hand, just add them in the order that they need to all come done together.

Crabs and stock cars -

Back in 1950s my father worked at the General Motors plant in Doraville, GA. It was called the BOP - Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac were made there. My mother taught math at GA State University. It was convenient for them (and us kids) that the break between Summer and Fall quarters, the vacation my father could take, and the kids’ school break all lined up throughout the 50s. We would take off for vacation at that time every year. For a while we alternated between my mother’s sister in Mobile, Alabama and my godmother in Orlando, Florida.The trip was not too bad for the kids. My parents were pretty smart. We had a 1954 Chevrolet two door sedan, green with a white top. Other cars before that, but that is the one I remember best. I think it was the only new car my father ever bought. He got it at the GM employee discount. They would very carefully pack the back between the front seat and the back seat with suitcases, level with the back seat. Then padding, blankets and sheets would soften the platform. They kept my sister and me awake until it was time to leave. We would leave about midnight, and us kids would drop off almost immediately. The parents would drive through the night, alternating as necessary. You must remember, this was before the expressway system was built. It was all two-lane highways, maybe four-lane on occasion. You had to be very careful about speed traps near the smaller GA and ALA towns. This I found out the hard way as a teen. 45 was 3 times the speed limit in some places. The kids would wake around eight or so, and we would arrive within a few hours. Less stress on parents and kids. I still get sleepy in a car if I’m not driving.

Herself Sez: He gets carsick, is what he gets. If he isn’t going to drive, I have to feed him Dramamine!

My aunt and uncle lived in a suburb of Mobile with the Indian name of Chickasaw, after the local tribe, Chickasha. Chickasaw is just about due north of Mobile, about 5 to 10 miles and was originally settled during the French period. We could always tell when we were getting close. There was a paper plant on the edge of town. Scott paper, I think. The inhabitants couldn’t smell it, which is typical of those who get used to a mill nearby.

My aunt’s husband was a Georgia Tech engineer who worked for a Mississippi barge company that freighted stuff from the headwaters in Minnesota down to the Gulf of Mexico. Other rivers connected the Mississippi to most of the Northern industrial states. I’m not sure exactly what his function was, probably something to do with load calculation or some such. I don’t think that my aunt worked. There were two cousins of the male persuasion, a year and 3 years older than I.

The arrangement of houses was somewhat different, I don’t know if this was just in this neighborhood, or throughout Chickasaw. Anyway, the houses were completely reversed from the norm that we see here, houses face the street, back faces back. In that neighborhood, the houses faced each other, with a sidewalk running between front yards, and the back faced the streets.

We would drive down to Mobile Bay, walk out on the piers and drop fishing lines and crab baskets into the Bay. The crabs were so easy to cook. Just put them in a pot of salted boiling water until they turn color. It’s probably easiest to just buy a commercial crab boil at the grocery, but if you want to roll your own, vary, add, subtract from the following base:

1/4 cup fennel seed
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons coriander seed
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 cup kosher salt

Mix up the spices thoroughly and wrap it in cheesecloth. This is called a garni bag if you like the French version.

Anyway, just plop the crabs in, preferably still alive, after the water comes to a rolling boil. It only takes 3-4 minutes. When they turn color pull them out, crack the shells and dig out the meat. Good drawn butter is the best. To draw butter just put a few sticks in a small saucepan, boil it gently until all the milk solids separate out. Ladle out the clarified butter into heated dipping tubs. Good stuff. Don’t forget the claws, that’s some of the best meat. BTW - you don’t get much meat out of a crab, most of it at the leg to body joints. Don’t try to eat the lungs, the largish white things on the sides.

If you wind up with fish and maybe mussels or clams you can do a fish stew. Just boil the crabs or shrimp lightly, and shuck them, fillet the fish and cut it up in chunks. Sauté some garlic and onions in olive oil in a heavy dutch oven. Add a quart of water, 1 cup wine, 4 chopped tomatoes, 4 chopped potatoes, fistful of chopped fresh parsley, spices to suit. You can try a pinch of cloves, pinch of cinnamon, ½ tsp marjoram, ½ tsp tarragon, about 10 to 20 grinds of fresh black pepper. Add sweet red pepper flakes if you like. Simmer all the ingredients for about an hour. Add any fish, the more variety, the better, and the shellfish. If you have clams or mussels, wait a couple of minutes before you add them. You don’t want to overcook. You want the fish to be done when the clams or mussels open. It takes in the neighborhood of 10 minutes for the fish. It takes about 5 minutes for clams. Add salt and pepper to taste. Easy on the salt until the end. If your shellfish are salt water, the liquor may add some salt as it mixes. Anyway, simmer for about 10 minutes or until the fish looks white and done and the clams are open. I like a good, strong garlic bread with this. Garlic bread? Most people get a French loaf and bake it, slice it , and then try to run garlic butter down into the slices. There’s an easier way to get better bread: Smash several garlic cloves on your cutting board with the flat of the knife. Pull off any skin. Rough chop the garlic. Sauté it in a skillet with a good bit of butter, olive oil, or both. When the garlic gets soft start sautéing slices of a good rough bread until it is a light, golden brown on both sides. Add olive oil or butter and garlic as necessary so that each slice get a good coating. Greasy is better than dry. Now serve all this up with some fresh parsley garnish. I like some grated parmigiano reggiano (parmisean cheese) over the stew. Don’t use the canned crap. Get a small block of good, fresh cheese and a micro planer and do your own. Your taste buds will appreciate. Now you can fiddle with this to your every whim. Use beer instead of wine. Add any veggies that seem good. Different species of fish, different spicing. Do your own thing. There are no hard and fast rules, just enjoy.

Another activity that the men folk liked was the stock car races, this was in the early days of NASCAR, and stock car racing was just getting popular as an underground movement. NASCAR is really big business now. Enjoyed by millions, both men and women. Sometimes I think the women like it because the horribly loud noise and vibration, including subsonic, rattles their ovaries. I think the men like it because it rattles the women’s ovaries. I don’t like it because it hurts my ears. I may have worked in heavy chiller and boiler plants for too many years. Heavy bass hurts. Another reason I just don’t care for it is that somewhere around 1955 we were watching the cars go around and around the oval when there was a truly horrible crash. One driver was killed, I think his name was Lamar Crabtree. Several others were injured. I just can’t watch a race and not get saddened by that man’s death. For those who do follow the races, I believe I remember that he was No. 3, same as Earnhardt. Anyway, I did drag race a bit when I was a teen - didn’t we all back then? But - I just cannot watch oval racing to this day.

It was good to be a kid in the 50s.

Herself Sez: I can’t find a reference to a multi-car crash on a track in AL in 1955 or so. Searching for Lamar Crabtree I found one guy who drove at that time - and he died in 2003! Maybe it was a different Lamar Crabtree? I do try to keep Himself accurate in stuff like this.

Baked Eggs -

This is one of those baked egg dishes that is the devil to get right until you learn your oven and the timing. Then you will not be able to blow it once you learn the looks of the thing done right. Warning: an uneven broiler (like mine) can cook one dish rock-hard and the dish next to it can be just about raw. That can drive you nuts.To bake eggs use individual gratin dishes or Pyrex bowls of about 3 to 4 egg capacity.

Put the oven rack on the top or whatever will get you about 6″ from the broiler. Yeah, I know we call them baked but it is really broiled. So, preheat the broiler while we get all this together.

Crack the 3 eggs each into separate dishes. You don’t have time to futz around cracking eggs when you get going. Be careful not to break the yolks or get shell into the mix.

Mix up:

1 or 2 decent cloves of fresh minced garlic
¼ tsp fresh minced thyme. (Use a pinch of dried if you don’t have fresh.)
¼ tsp fresh minced rosemary. (Use a pinch of dried if you don’t have fresh.)
1 Tbs fresh minced parsley. (Use 2 tsp dried if you don’t have fresh.)
1 Tbs grated parmigiano reggiano. (You can also use a Gruyere for a nice variety. Don’t skimp on the quality of the cheese.)

Put ½ tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of heavy cream in each dish and place them on a baking sheet under the broiler until it gets bubbly and hot - 3 or 4 minutes. Pour in the 3 eggs to each dish, salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle on the herb-cheese mixture and get them back into the oven.

Broil for about 5 minutes or until the whites are just beginning to set. Take them out a bit before you think they are ready as they will continue to bake in the dish. Serve them up with the nice toast of your choice.<!–

You can vary this with any topping that you like - or nothing but salt and pepper. A good shredded ham goes well. Or crumbled bacon. Different cheeses vary it nicely.

Enjoy.

Herself Sez: As someone who prefers, nay REQUIRES, her eggs to have s*o*l*i*d whites, this was a big disappointment. As Himself Sed, our oven heats unevenly. His eggs were fine for him (somewhat loose). Mine turned out basically RAW!!! Yetch!! Likewise Retch!! In the future, mine will have to be left in an additional 10 minutes or so OR will have to be put in about 10 minutes before Himself’s go in. I can deal with solid yolks. I can deal with solid whites. I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, deal with raw (or even shakey) whites (except in egg nog, when they are well whipped, or in a milk nog - again well mixed in). This little experiment was a total failure for me - he’ll have to try again. Luckily, however, his failures are very few and very far between!

Steaks and Roquefort Sauce -

Here is another delightfully different steak recipe to perk you back up when things are just getting ho-hum. Fast and easy and different and delicious.This is for 4 steaks, so adjust to whatever you have.

Reduce about 1-1/2 cups beef or veal stock down to ½ cup and set aside.

Mix up 2 oz. room temp Roquefort or Blue Cheese and 4 tbs unsalted room temp butter in a small mixing bowl. For this kind of exercise a good kitchen fork usually works better than a blender for putting together this kind of stiff stuff.

Generously salt and pepper the steaks, cook to medium rare. Pan-fried in butter and/or olive oil over medium heat is best, but you can broil them if you like. When things are pan-fried then there is a layer of brown goodies that incorporate into the suace when the pan is deglazed. This is not true when things are broiled. Plate, cover and let rest while you make the sauce.

Pour off the fat from the skillet, leaving about a tablespoon. If you broiled them, pour about a tablespoon into the pan. Add ½ cup of reduced beef stock and whisk vigorously to deglaze the pan. Bring the stock to a simmer and add the butter-cheese mixture in chunks. Stir each chunk in until it has emulsified and blended in smoothly, then add the next chunk. Now the trick is that you may have to diddle the heat and/or move the skillet off and on the heat because you want the mix to blend smoothly and not just become oil. When the sauce is nice and thick spoon it over the steaks and serve. If you want to do a traditional variation you can add chopped nuts just before serving. I don’t like it that way myself.

Herself Sez: I prefer it with the chopped nuts. Lots of chopped nuts. This is a GREAT way to serve steak! Almost, but not quite as good as his Steak au Poivre - wherein I licked the plate when he wasn’t looking the first time he served it! Yeah! I reeeely did!!

Eggs Benedict -

Eggs Benedict is one of those classic dishes that just about everyone has heard of and most have not had - or have had some inferior version at a second-rate restaurant. The real deal is not all that hard to make. All we have is four basic goodies: poached eggs, Canadian bacon, English muffin, Hollandaise sauce. Nothing at all difficult here. The only touch thing is getting the timing right so that it all comes together nice and warm.From the 1920’s to the 1940’s just about everyone named Benedict claimed to have had something to do with the creation. There doesn’t seem to be any definite trail to follow. The only thing that I can say is that any claim after 1898 is probably off, since the oldest reference seems to be in Adolph Meyer’s Eggs, and how to use them, published in 1898. This reference may or may not be accurate, but the basic idea seems to have been around for a while.

Canadian bacon. Only in the US is it called Canadian bacon. Everywhere else it is back bacon. Anyway, get some. Slice thin and heat is all it takes. If it is the pre-sliced, pre-cooked stuff we get in my area then all it needs is heating up.

Poached eggs. There are two ways to poach eggs. The traditional directly in water or the use of a poaching pan. If you have a poaching pan you already know how to use it, so we won’t go into that. The traditional method is pretty easy. Get a large skillet, put about 2″ of water and a teaspoon of vinegar in it. Get the water boiling while you crack each egg into a separate glass or small dish. The reason for this is that you keep all the shells out of the way, and you cannot crack eggs directly into the water as neatly or fast enough so that all the eggs come done at the same time. Once the water is boiling, drop in each egg gently with a quick wrist motion. You don’t want the eggs to contact the bottom of the skillet or they may stick a bit. Reduce the water to a good simmer and cook for 4 minutes for done whites and liquid yolks. 5 minutes if you like hard yolks. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. You don’t want any of the water in your Eggs Benedict.

English muffins. Split, butter, toast. Nothing special here.

Hollandaise sauce. This is one of the easiest things to make. 3 egg yolks. 1 stick of unsalted butter, melted gently. 1 tablespoon hot water. 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice. Get the yolks, hot water, lemon juice into a blender. Put on the top with the center removed. Start up the blender and gently pour the melted butter in as the goodies blend. When all the butter has been added keep blending for a minute or two - we want a nice smooth sauce. You can make the sauce while the eggs poach.

Assembly: muffin half, bacon, egg, sauce. Sprinkle with paprika and some chopped parsley. That’s it. The only trick to the whole thing is to get the timing right so that nothing sits around getting cold waiting for something else. When it goes right everything comes done together and assembly is quick and easy.

Substitutions and variations abound:

Florentine: Leave out the bacon and substitute spinach, and you have a sort of ersatz Eggs Florentine. The older version used sauce Mornay, not hollandaise.

Seafood: Shellfish for the bacon.

Veggie: Avocado and/or tomato for the bacon.

Pacifica: Smoked salmon for the bacon.

Redneck: Biscuit, sausage, fried egg, sawmill gravy.

Herself’s Meatloaf

I don’t think I’ve ever made meatloaf the same way twice. As long as the Ol’ Curmudgeon likes it, I won’t worry about it. What is meatloaf? Well it’s a basic food staple.

From time immemorial, people have mixed meat with veggies, breads, thickeners and various spices, baked it in a loaf or patty, and served - sometimes with a sauce or gravy, sometimes without. They did this to stretch the meat in lean times, to use up bits of meat that otherwise might have been thrown out, and to make tough meats more digestible. In early times, the meat used was already cooked - usually leftovers - whereas now-a-days we tend to use a raw ground meat - either beef or pork, but lamb, chicken, turkey and veal can be used, also. Any meat, actually. Horse, anyone? Donkey? Goat? Yup. Any or all of the above!

What I do these days is get or make about 2 pounds of  meatloaf mix - 1/3 ground beef, 1/3 ground pork, 1/3 ground veal. Add in 1-2 sweet Italian sausages removed from the casing. Do not mix, yet!! Now the variations begin! About 1/3 - 1 cup of bread crumbs. I’ve used - pulverized bread out of the loaf, crushed croutons, crumbled cornbread, prepared breadcrumbs from the grocery. I’ve used more, I ‘ve used less. In this case, less isn’t very good, and too much more is not very good, either. Just toss them in on top of the meat. Toss in 1-4 Tbsp of some kind of meat sauce - Heinz, Worcestershire, A-1, Lea and Perrins steak sauce, etc. I tend to use a thick, savory sauce, like Lea and Perrins Steak Sauce. Chop up some onions. About a quarter cup to half a cup is good. I don’t add bell peppers, but some people do. If you add them, don’t add much, chop them up very finely, and “sweat” them before adding. Salt, pepper to taste. I use seasoned salt and lemon pepper. Only now do you mix - very lightly - just enough to get a semi-even distribution of all ingredients.

Precook, about half-way done, enough bacon to cover the top of the loaf. While the bacon is cooking, gently pack the meat into a loaf pan. Liberally cover the top with ketchup. I use Hunt’s - nice deep flavor, not too spicy. Once the bacon is about half-way done, lay the strips over the top.

Bake in a 350degF oven for about an hour, or until the meat is done in the center (145deg on meat thermometer).

The first night we have it, we just slice it and serve warm. We don’t like gravy on it, but others do. A flour gravy, a sausage gravy, brown gravy - whatever you like will work if you want gravy.

The next day, we slice thinly and make sandwiches with lots of mayo and sweet relish on them. I like some spicy dark mustard on mine; the Ol’ Curmudgeon does not. O well! To each his - or her - own!

Other things that can be done with meatloaf include  rolling up into little dough-covered packets - pasta dough makes raviolis, yeast dough makes pierogs, flatbread (pita) makes gyros, tortillas makes burritos, corndough covered with corn shucks makes tamales. Good for lunch pails. The meatloaf should be cooked before adding to these to avoid having food poisoning problems. Every culture seems to have some kind of meat roll.

Roll in packets of wonton skins and cook in chicken-miso stock - you have egg-rolls. (Leave out the meat, only use veggies, cook in miso stock - then you have spring rolls.)

Another delightful thing to do with a meatloaf mix is to roll it in softened cabbage leaves and cook all lined up and stacked in a deep pot (crock pot will do) with some vroth of some kind around it. Cabbage rolls are an Eastern European fave. Think Poland, the Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia, etc. Good with a generous dollop of sour cream on top!

Roll into little balls, cook in a skillet - voila! Meatballs! Add to some cream sauce or tomato sauce and serve over pasta - Spaghetti and Meatballs! Or, add to a savory brown sauce and - Hungarian meatballs.

It’s all the same stuff. And it’s all good, plain, basic, country cooking. Country French, country English, country Russian, country - add your own geographic area.

To get it to where you like it requires experimentation. That’s something we have problems with in our “Mickie-D” society. We want to do it fast without playing around. Some people are actually fearful of experimenting in the kitchen. To them I say, put your fears aside and get your hands dirty!!

Southern Iced Tea -

Everyone in the South grew up drinking iced tea. Sweet iced tea. There was no other kind. Everyone had it in their homes and the restaurants had it. It was strong and sweet and cold and refreshing. You can’t get it anymore unless you make it yourself. There was nothing instant or artificial about it. Even the “Country Southern” restaurants are using instant stuff now. If you have sun tea, custom tea, hippie tea, herbal tea, English tea, or any other they may be good, but they are not Southern Iced Tea. Southern Iced Tea is the real deal. The only point of disagreement among the various tea making artists was tea brand. There were 3 main ones that I remember. Lipton, Tetley, and Luzianne. We were a Luzianne family. It is still the best as far as I am concerned. Lipton and Tetley are good, but will get bitter if over brewed, to my taste. On the other hand, there were just as many, if not more, that preferred one of the others. Try them all, choose your own.

We also used either metal or glass to brew tea. Never use plastic. I can remember when Tupperware swept through the South, maybe the mid-50s or so. There were many things that it was good for. Brewing tea is not one of them. Tastes funky. My family used an old pot with no handle to brew the stuff. Aluminum, I think.

This is the simplest stuff in the world, just remember 3-2-1. Three family size tea bags. 2 cups of water. One cup of sugar. Yeah, that’s a lot of sugar. Your food nazi will not like it. No, you can’t substitute anything else and get the taste. Yes, you have to add it while the brew is hot. You can’t add it later and get the same taste. Not possible. This stuff was consumed by people who worked hard. They did not need to worry about calories or diabetes. They were plumb skinny from hard work. Anyway, boil the water, steep the bags. Remove the bags when they have yielded a strong rich brew but before it gets bitter. Good Southern iced tea is never bitter. Looks like a rich reddish umber to me. Stir in the sugar, making sure it dissolves completely, while the brew is still hot. Let the brew cool to room temperature, you don’t want to melt the ice and get a weak drink.

There were some practitioners that added just a pinch of baking soda. I never could tell that it made that much difference. If you want to try it - go right ahead.

Oatmeal Cookies -

The cookie has a long evolution. The first grain stuffs baked were bread forms. These early breads have been traced to the Neolithic era - around 10,000 years back. The earliest breads were unleavened flat breads cooked on a hot stone - think tortilla and such. The next step in the cookie evolution was the risen and baked bread forms. Next, inventive cooks started adding sweets and goodies to the breads and this evolved into the cake. When the bakers started adding all the goodies, they would frequently make small test cakes. These were often so good that the cooks would make whole batches of the little cakes. Various sweet little cakes were common in the Middle East and spread west from the Byzantine Empire. These are still around in Greek and Lebanese cooking: kourambiedes (Greek shortbread) and mamoul (Lebanese/Syrian date stuffed) come to mind. As the little cakes moved west, a Dutch word “Koeptje” was applied. Means - little cakes (how surprising). Anglicized into - cookie.Of course, the Brits would call them tea cakes.

The oat has been cultivated only fairly recently - like the past 3,000 years. It is thought that the oat was derived from a weed which grew in the wheat and barley fields. Unlike wheat, oats grow rancid rather quickly and have to be processed immediately upon harvest. Groats-maker was a recognized Medieval trade - the first step of oat processing is the removal of the outer husk. This is called a groat. It is rock hard and has to be soaked and boiled for a good while or you’d never get them chewed up.

The oat has a pretty good reputation in modern times. Lots of soluble fiber, anti-inflammatory properties, and all that. However, throughout most of history oats were regarded as only fit for animal consumption. If it makes your horse work better, wouldn’t it make you work better? The Romans scorned them. The Scots ate them. It has been observed that the Romans never beat the Scots - oats, anyone?

It took until the Middle Ages for them to be seriously regarded as human food. The Scots bannocks and oatcakes came to the Americas in the 17^th Century. Americans constantly diddled with things in a spirit of unfettered creativity. It was the American cooks that evolved the cookie forms we know today from the European varieties.

As far as we can tell, the modern, true oatmeal cookie was not created until somewhere in the 19^th or 20^th Century in America. Here’s my take on this wonderful treat:

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
192 grams (1 cup) dark brown sugar
100 grams (½ cup) sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1¼ teaspoon vanilla
237 grams (1½ cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of powdered cloves if you want a bit more kick (highly optional)
½ teaspoon salt
300 grams (3 cups) oatmeal
150 grams (1 cup) raisins (optional - but better with)

Oven at 350°.

Cream butter and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix dry guys together: flour, salt, cinnamon, soda. Mix dry guys in gradually and thoroughly. Mix in oatmeal. Mix in raisins. Drop tablespoons on a ungreased cookie sheet, leave enough room for expansion. I find that the kitchen scoops with the squeeze handles work best for quick measuring and dropping. These handy jobbies come in various sizes, making quick, uniform cookies practical. Bake about 13 to 14 minutes, golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Hey, if you want a really quick and dirty, no cook dessert - kinda-sorta related to mamoul, just take pitted dates, shove a pecan half into each date, roll in powdered sugar. Makes a rather nice afternoon tea sort of goodie. Not a cookie, of course.