Undaunted

Emma was born in 1892, and in 1980 I lived in her basement and she gave me a 1940 seafood cookbook pamphlet, me being a Midwesterner living on the east coast where fish was the cheapest food, and I have treasured the cookbook, especially the Fish Roll recipe I made several times to feed hungry me and drug-addled friends, all so mentally ill we stayed out 'til 4 a.m. listening to bands like The Young Snakes and Rubber Rodeo singing songs like "Life Sucks, Then You Die," and vomiting, etc. Emma didn't like when police came to the house looking for "Eric" or whoever. . . "Unexpected guests will not daunt a hostess who knows how to make a fish roll," said the cutline beneath the illustration -- and in honor of those days we used to sleep ("crash") on bare hardwood floors, today having on hand 1.5 cups of  leftover cooked fish and an onion and some parsley in place of green pepper, I got out the cookbook (pictured) and made the frugal fish roll (result, pictured).

I used one of those baggies of Bisquick baking mix. The recipe was supposed to serve 6. In 2019 it serves 3. Great way to make leftover fish appealing.

A daunted hostess? Me, never. In grad school out east, fellow grad students, easterners and Midwesterners, all of us extremely thin, dropped by my place to chat and after a while might venture, "Uh, you wouldn't have, like, anything to eat around here, would you?" Food has always been my second-highest priority, after rent.

Making Kale Chips in the Microwave

Crisp and ready to salt and eat.

This is an easy way to eat your kale. Wash the kale, tear it into bite-sized pieces and let it dry thoroughly, as thoroughly as you'd dry lettuce. Then toss the leaves with a small spoonful of olive oil until each leaf is oiled and shines. Now arrange them on a plate, with some space between each leaf. Then microwave on High for three minutes. Only 3 minutes, that's right! They will shrink but are now finished and crisp. Salt them to your taste.

Oiled and plated for cooking.

After microwaving.

Tomatoes in February

Six days in the downtown of a big city, and I began longing not only for Missouri but for what I realized was my very high-grade diet instead of oil-drenched, over-salted, very tasty, expensive and calorific restaurant food (I rarely dine out) that was turning my blood to peanut butter. Baltimore's famous crab cakes are crabmeat welded with mayonnaise and fried. I've enjoyed them in the past but choked even thinking of them. The breakfast buffet had eggs fried every way but none boiled. The buffet was $20 so I felt it was okay to ask for one. Still wanting normal food, without exercising (having no energy!), I unlocked the hotel's exercise room and swiped an apple from its fruit basket, getting away with this for two days before someone removed the basket.

The plane landed back in St. Louis at 9 p.m. and I, waistband now too tight, prayed to get to the grocery store before closing for fresh produce: tangerines, apples, bananas, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, escarole, yogurt, almond milk and tofu--grateful I live where I could buy all these in one place for the price of one restaurant meal in Baltimore and more grateful I can pay. After spending that much money on six days of restaurants I will never again skinflint myself and be alarmed by $35 a week on groceries for home consumption. Heirloom tomatoes were $3.99 a lb but I had been dreaming of a perfect tomato sandwich, technically available only in July and August unless I store-bought heirloom tomatoes. Besides, they were pretty. Home at last, I didn't allow myself to sleep until I'd set up a whole-wheat bread, carrot salad, and a pot of escarole soup. The next morning the bread was ready and was made into said tomato sandwich with onion. OMG, I was so happy to be home.

Notes on Barbecue

• My favorite barbecue place is Super Smokers and I'm so satisfied with their pulled pork with the applesauce side I never order anything else. I sauce it with Texas Hot.
• Texas Hot is their only sauce not available in stores.
• My personal sauce recipe: half Hunt's (and only Hunt's) bottled barbecue sauce, and half medium salsa. Hunt's because it is the least sugary of the commercial sauces. I don't understand Maull's or Pappy's or Kansas-City-style any other bottled sauce. I don't want corn syrup on my barbecue.
• I never ate barbecue until I moved to Missouri. In Wisconsin and in upstate New York "to barbecue" meant "to cook on the grill" weenies, bratwurst, and hamburgers.
• I buy a half-pound or pound of pulled pork, sauce it and heat it up a bit, and toss it in green salad.
• I'll settle for barbecued chicken if that's all there is, but it's only good until you peel the skin off. After that it's not barbecue.
• Invite me to a barbecue.
• Don't buy the ready-to-eat pulled pork that's in the supermarket meat case. The meat's tough and fatty.
• I took two really classy Perry-Ellis shoes-made-in-Paris Cafe-Napoli-in-Clayton Ph.D. friends for barbecue, and they loved it, proving everyone can love it.
• Bandana's, once a favorite, has gone downhill.
• I don't, myself, make and serve barbecue, believing it's best left to professionals.
• Re the bumper sticker: radio station KPIG in California plays rock, country, and bluegrass.

What City People Eat

Today I went to an urban business lunch, a buffet serving grilled chicken breast halves (about 6 ounces each), pasta with vegetables (pretty good), salad, and rolls. My table seated 8, seven women and one man, and I surveyed their plates and saw:

1. Chicken, pasta, salad, roll.
2. Only chicken.
3. Only salad.
4. Only chicken.
5. Nothing but a nutrition bar she unwrapped and cut with a knife and fork and ate like it was a meal.
6. Chicken, salad.
7. Only salad.
8. Chicken, pasta, salad, and, going home in the car, still hungry (because no one takes seconds) a package of peanut butter crackers, and at home, blackberry pudding.

Guess which one I am. Made me wonder, where is this country going?

Introducing "Piehole Midwest"

It's a Midwestern home-cooking orgy, so if that sounds good to you please see my branch blog, "Piehole Midwest," get on your elastic-waist pants and join in. In Shakespeare's soliloquy "The Seven Ages of Man" the fifth stage is described as a man with a "fair round belly with good capon lin'd, " and some good-cook and big-eatin' friends and I are at that stage now. "Piehole Midwest" (thepieholemidwest.blogspot.com) is blissful photos, recipe try-outs, and remarks about the food that ends up in front of me, and of course like all Midwesterners I eat what's put in front of me. I've also posted hand-picked links to guaranteed enjoyable food and recipe blogs, and I take the best photos I can.

Enticing Local Eats, Eureka, Mo.

Eat locally! These signs at two different eateries in Eureka are not 200 feet apart. I haven't tried either delicacy. Do you dare me? Or, better, drive to Eureka, Mo. and try them yourself.

Keep Those Home Fries Burning

Salivate over the potato-and-egg salad that could be made outa these, or red-potato home fries that will make your friends get up and kiss you without even takin off the napkin from around their necks.

Delighted to see fresh produce, including zucchini, now available from a place not far from here that's a cross between a garden and a farm field, and bought these little gems -- averaging about ping-pong ball size -- for their blushing beauty and of course to think of a hundred decadent ways to cook them.

Demetrius grew these in his garden. Potatoes are mysterious and I had no idea when they'd be ready to dig, but he knew, and I helped him harvest his little red edible gems that began their growth in clusters, kind of like grapes underground. While spading them up you can't help but scar some of them, but I was so bewitched that I turned every inch of earth around there to get 'em all, backache or no backache. This year at the "honor" vegetable stand (where you leave your money on a table next to the road) these were 2 lbs for $2.

It's Bread

Tried the Almost No-Knead Bread Recipe 2.0 from Cooks Illustrated, and this is what I got. So gorgeous I had to take the photo to admire forever. Tasted as good as it looks, did not need butter to be delectable. Has miniscule amounts of vinegar and beer to get the "artisan" taste and texture. I let it rise overnight. Recipe asked for a Dutch oven to bake it in -- that's the secret of the crust -- but my heavy stockpot was a good substitute, obviously. Because the bread is oil-free it does not keep, but I softened up the next day's bread with a zap in the microwave -- best way to "save" stale bread. I can't post the recipe because of copyright, but you can find it by googling "Almost No-Knead Bread 2.0." Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country are two of my favorite magazines, and everything I make from them awes my friends.

A friend was amazed to hear bread had protein in it, from the wheat gluten. Of course it does; that's why they call it "the staff of life."

My best bread story: Went to a Filipino home for dinner. They eat rice, not bread, but they had bought bread for the American guest and had it in a basket on the table; so very thoughtful of them, although I ate rice like everyone else.

Asparagus Keesh

("Keesh" spelling is courtesy of Demetrius, who spit the stuff out at a party where they served "pizza quiche." He was the same guy who microwaved some kiwifruit and stormed, "These are the worst potatoes I have ever eaten.")

Ahem. Friend and I, not all that old but experienced in life, were talking about pleasure, and when all is said and done, good eatin' is the one pleasure that never fails. In spring, whether one is young or not, one's fancy turns to thoughts of asparagus quiche, roasted asparagus, asparagus raw, sauteed, or steamed, asparagus pasta. I recommend using Baby Swiss cheese for a delectable result, and put the asparagus, once you steam it, on a layer of sliced spring onions if you can. Try as I might I couldn't get this photo right-side-up; must be the planets today.