Quick Dinner

I decided to just start going through couple cookbooks, making things for Sam. I chose a bean spread, thinking that he has liked beans in the past, and I can spread it on a roll to hide it. Well, he found the spread with his nose, then his fingers, and tossed the roll into the air. I tried to talk him into it - How many words does he understand? Does he understand that this is a convincing voice? Blah blah Sam blah blah try blah blah beans blah blah bread, then he gets the objectionable thing re-offered. I'm sure he figures things out. Incidentally, the rolls I picked up at Trader Joe's molded in two days. Two! I wanted more bread, so I picked up a horrible baguette from Pike Place Market. Oh! It looked good, but was like cotton - all airy and like a Safeway baguette. You offend me!

I was prepared to use the spread for the grown-up dinner, if things didn't work out with Sam. I made bruschetta and a salad-like thing, dressed with balsamic vinegar and e.v. olive oil. Delicious. You may recall that I made an hors d'oeuvre like this, but with arugula. I did have arugula for this meal, but it rotted quickly too. Can't wait until I have my own in the garden. That is, if the raccoon doesn't eat it! Yeah! Raccoon! I scared it off the roof by hurling rocks at it. I'm sure I'll see him again. He better not eat my strawerries ... or the neighbor's raspberries, which Sam plans on eating this summer.

I made the easiset soup ever as a complement to the bruschetta: meatball. I recently got a few cookbooks from Amazon, one of them is Lydia Cooks from the Heart of Italy. I just love her show on PBS, especially when she has her mother on. Everyone deserves a cute, Italian grandmother figure. So, perusing her book for an easy soup, voila: meatballs in broth! Of course, any serious cook would have made her own broth. And I am serious, but I was seriously short on time and patience, so I made the meatballs and set them in canned broth. It was delicious!

I halved Lydia's meatball recipe, which actually called for 1&1/3 cup pork and 2/3 lb. veal, and used only pork when I did. I thought about getting good veal from WF, but decided that it wasn't worth the extra trip, since this was supposed to be easy fast dinner. Also, I decided not to saute them, opting for poaching in the interest of added calories. Also, the recipe calls for orange rind, but I didn't have any. I wonder what they would be like with the citrus ... I'll have to make it again. With homemade broth, too.

So, I'm writing out the recipes below, but I was reading another blog the other day, and the author brought up the possible ethical - at least, and legal, at most - violation that ostensibly occurs when one posts a recipe that "belongs" to someone else. That brings up the issue, for me, of How does a recipe belong to anyone? As in, Did you completely and totally make it up? I thought of Caesar dressing as an example. It appears in a million cookbooks and magazines, but no one gives the origanl Cesar credit, saying that the recipe you now see is "adapted". That, in itself, is another issue. To whit: someone commented that it grates on them when a person claims that they adapted the recipe, but really only made a couple of substitutions, or something seemingly negligent. Is anything "negligent" in cooking? If I adapt by substituting thyme for rosemary, that changes the flavors, right? Does that count? Certainly adaptation in biology leads to nothing more and nothing less than survival of the species. In my comment on said blog, I mentioned Napster, positing that perhaps all of us bloggers are a very disperse Napster to the cookbook and magazine insdustries. One day, we shall all be tried en masse. I look forward to taking it to the Supreme Court so I can meet, and by vigorously questioned by, Justice Sotomayor.

White Bean Spread with Bruschetta and "Salad"

Spread: Whir together 1- 15oz. can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed; 1/4 tsp. minced rosemary; 1 garlic clove; 2 T each olive oil and water; 1 T lemon juice; salt and pepper, to taste. Salad: mix 3 oz. arugula and 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced, with 1 T each balsamic vinegar and e.v. olive oil. Bruschetta: slice your bread of choice, and toast under the broiled for a couple minutes on each side. While hot, take a clove of garlic, peeled, and rub it on the toasts. This melts the garlic onto the hot bread. You might need a couple cloves, depending on their size. Then, brush a light coat of olive oil on top of that. You now have all the parts - put them together!

Pork Meatballs (this is half of Lydia's recipe; makes about 25 small meatballs)

Mix together 1 lb. ground pork, 1T golden raisins (soaked in boiling water for 5 minutes, then chopped), 1T toasted pine nuts (chopped), 1 egg (lightly beaten), 1/4 cup bread crumbs, 1/4 cup grated Parmesan, 1 tsp orange zest. Make small, 2 tsp., meatballs, rolling them in your hands. Drop them into salted boiling water - they will sink, then rise. Cook for 5 minutes, then remove. You must discard this water. Then, make your own broth, or used canned chicken broth for the soup part. Oh, if you want to saute the meatballs, Lydia suggests you dredge them in flour, then add them to a pan that has a generous coat of oil on the bottom. Turn them to brown on all sides and cook through.

Let's talk about meat

My son didn't nap today. He's a good napper, and that leaves me time to do things - like this. And I get emotionally attached to the things that I want to do - like this. So when he doesn't nap, or when I have to drive him around so he sleeps, I don't get to do what I want ....


Fighting ... urge ... to ...


talk about staying at home with the boy....





Let's talk about that meat. Specifically, meatballs. I simply love making meatballs - patties of any sort, really. I don't know what it is. I used to detest getting my hands into anything. "Uhhhh! The dough is stickyyyyy!" Now I happily cast aside spoons, remove my rings, and cut back my fingernails in anticipation of making patties of any and every kind. I actually had my nails a bit too long for these particular meatballs and got some ground chuck under them. Gross. And, have you ever tried to get meat out of mille grain? Not easy.


But I just adore throwing in seasoning ... maybe some onion and garlic ... maybe a few breadcrumbs or, in this case, rice! Yes. Uncooked white rice went right into the balls and the little grains plumped right up in the cooking time in the soup. Genius!


How does one brown meatballs? The recipes always say to "brown all sides." I may misremember (bless you, GW) my geometry, but I'm pretty sure spheres don't have sides. I usually brown them as a sort of plump pyramid.


This recipe is from my father, although he doesn't know that I have it. I actually photocopied his recipe book. He has a binder with all of the recipes that he either made up or took from magazines or the newspaper. Lots of good ones. I have a similar binder of my own creation, as well as a copy of my dad's. So, as I said, one of his: Mexican Meatball Soup. What makes it Mexican, I suppose, is the seasoning: oregano and chili powder. Might be a stretch. A delicious stretch.


I guess the tomatoes, peppers, corn and zucchini (?) are all American ... and since the vast majority of the geographic area known as The Americas, especially the part that produced the aforementioned vegetables, once belonged to Spain ... and part of that then became Mexico, then that also makes it Mexican. Sure.

This particular ground beef came from our supply in the freezer. It is 1/4-steer's worth of meat, in fact. In the freezer, that is, not the meatballs. I got talking to a guy at a farmers market this summer and thought, "Well, shucks, grass-fed, free-roaming beef in WA? Family-run business? Sounds like a great reason to get a big ol' freezer and a quarter of a cow." It is so family run, in fact, that the dad is the cowboy and the sons are the cowboys-in-training. The mom runs the business end, usually manning the farmers market booth so she can chat up the clientele, as well as phoning, emailing, and keeping the records. Oh, and they are definitely country folk. When we showed up at the appointed time and place, with our coolers, to pick up our order, Amy (alone!) was working her way through a serpentine queue of customers, chatting up every single one as she crossed them off her handwritten in a spiral notebook list. I kid you not. It was somewhat quaint. But the city (suburban) girl in me just wanted to elbow my way through everyone and rearrange everything so as to make it efficient. Hey, I happily made friends in line for over an hour, but would I have liked a 5-minute drop-off on my doorstep instead? Perhaps.

What does 1/4 steer look like all packaged up and ready to go, you ask? I think the two boxes we got both weighed 30lbs. 40lbs.? One was all 1lb. tubes of ground chuck; the other was different cuts like sirloin, filet mignon, short ribs, etc. The ground chuck seems endless. And I haven't used nearly enough of the cuts - a couple steaks and some ribs. Besides, how many servings of beef should one have per week? This cow has eradicated my anemia, I must say.

I made the this soup with Sam running around my legs - quite an accomplishment. I usually have to wait for Josh to get home to finish, or heck!, even start dinner. It was nice to have it done when he got home so that we didn't have to eat at 9pm.

I had a different vision of being a stay-at-home mom. Uhhhh.

Fighting.

... fingers ... want to talk ...

about ... today

and lack of Me Time ....