Celebration Meatloaf - Day 17.

Nothing says, "Let's Celebrate" like a meatloaf.  No, really.  Of all the things I make, meatloaf is Uncle Eater's favorite meal.  And, after working for 143 consecutive days (okay, there was a smattering of days off 10? 11?) that man deserved a hot, heaping plate of favorite dinner.
There isn't much one can say about meatloaf, though mine is especially good as it is topped with fat slabs of smokey bacon.  I was also a lazy local spendivore that day.  I went to the specialty Italian market to get the bacon, they carry a wonderfully meaty smokey slab bacon that I can get three or four slices of as I need it, and the rest of the ground meat (beef, pork, veal) I needed was right there.  It was also $4/lb more expensive than the ground meat I could have gotten at the butcher just down the street.  And I bought it anyway.  I felt a little guilty about it, mostly for taking away a sale from Main Street butcher, but my spendivore dollar voted to cut the shopping trip short and head home sooner with Little Eater to play baseball in the yard.  It amused me to note that, much like in the grocery store, one pays a premium for "convenience food."  Unlike at the grocery store, however, I knew that this convenient purchase was buying me fresh, top quality, ethically sound food.
Anyway, make my meatloaf.  Seriously.  It's really, really good.

Meatloaf
1 - Tablespoon olive oil
1 - medium onion, chopped
1 - large celery stalk, chopped
3 - garlic cloves, minced  You can use more or less to taste.  We like garlic.
1 - jalapeno, chopped  Chop it with the ribs and seeds if you want more heat
2 - teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 - teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 - teaspoon ground cumin  I am also usually a little more generous with cumin
2 - eggs
1/2 - cup milk
1/2 - cup tomato sauce or ketchup
1 - cup dry bread crumbs
2 - lbs ground meat, 1 lbs beef, 1/2 lbs pork, 1/2 lbs veal (you can sub lamb here, if you prefer)
4 - strips thick, smokey bacon.


1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Add onion, celery, garlic, and jalapeno and cook until tender but not browned (about 10 minutes), stirring occasionally.  Add salt, nutmeg, and cumin.  Remove from heat to cool.
2. In a large bowl, whisk eggs.  Blend in milk, ketchup/tomato sauce, and bread crumbs.  Add meat and cooked vegetables and work with your hands to combine.  Don't over mix.
3. Pat into a 9x5 inch loaf pan.  Cut bacon strips in half and lay crosswise over the meatloaf.  Bake for an hour or so or until an instant-read thermometer registers 150 degrees F.  Remove from the oven and pour off most of the accumulated fat. 

Turn Up The Heat - Day 16.

I have been so inspired lately on my trips to the grocerette on Main Street.  Catering to the largely Latin local community, they carry a host of delicious looking foods that I have no idea how to cook or, in some cases, have never heard of.  Colorful foods.  Rich-smelling foods.  And an entire wall of chili peppers, some I know, some I don't.  I don't cook much with whole dried chilies other than readily available chipotles, because it seems that whenever I have a recipe that I want to try, I either can't find the pepper or they're $11 for a bag of 3 Whole Foods.  That's too rich even for my foodie blood.  It was a cold morning and I woke up wanting to make something for dinner that would warm the house, some spicy braise of something meaty.  That's how the morning menu planning usually begins - I feel like making something that will make me feel something and smell like something and use something with a side of something and something and I want to cook it in/on something.  I fill in the blanks for the somethings and a dinner plan was born.  In this case, with a damp chill clinging persistently to the day and the image of that wall of enticing dried chilies in my head, the menu mad-lib ended up looking like this: I feel like making something that will make me feel warm and smell like meat and spice and use up some tomatoes with a side of white rice and salad and I want to braise it in my cheerfully green Dutch oven.
Bittman gave me the recipe and the grocerette practically gave me the chilies at $2 for a big bag of 12.

Lamb Shanks with Pasilla Chili Sauce
by Mark Bittman 


1 - tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4 - lamb shanks, about 1 pound each
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 - cups sliced onion
2 - cups chopped tomato (drained canned is fine)
2 - cloves garlic + 1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 - tablespoon fresh marjoram or oregano leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
1/2 - cup chicken, beef, or vegetable stock
1 - teaspoon ground cumin

1. Soak 3 to 5 pasilla or other mild dried red chilies in hot water to cover until soft, about 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, put the oil in a large pot with a lid or a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  When hot add the shanks and brown on all sides, sprinkling with salt and pepper as they cook.  Remove the lamb and pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat.  Add the onion and 1 cup of the tomato and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened and onions are golden, about 10 minutes.  Transfer the onion mixture to a food processor.  Drain the chilies, reserving the soaking liquid, and tear them into pieces while removing their stems and seeds.  Add the chilies to the processor along with 2 cloves garlic and puree, adding the chili liquid as necessary to get a smooth paste.
2. Add the minced garlic and marjoram to the Dutch oven and cook for a minute, then add the stock,  the chili puree, and remaining cup chopped tomato.  Sprinkle in salt and pepper and 1 teaspoon ground cumin.  Return the lamb shanks to the pan, turn them once or twice, cover, and turn the heat to low.
3. Cook for 30 minutes and turn the shanks.  Continue to cook for at least another hour, turning occasionally, until the shanks are very tender (a toothpick inserted into them will meet little resistance) and the meat is nearly falling from the bone. 

Sausage Fest - Day 15.

If there's one thing we all love in this household, it's a good old-fashioned blind taste test.  You'd be amazed at the the number of like things we have found in recent years that can be tested blindly.  But, mostly, it's either sausage or champagne.  So, with three butchers within three blocks of each other who make their own sausage in-store, I was neither surprised nor confused when, upon asking Dad Eater what he wanted to do for dinner that night and he responded, "sausage fest."  So, off we went in search of sausage.  On the way, we decided to get two each of hot and sweet from each place.  We went to the bikini butcher first where, upon checking out the shopkeeper enthusiastically gushed "That is such good sausage, isn't it?" with such pride it was inspiring.  "Yes!" I replied, matching his enthusiasm, though I had not, in fact, ever had their sausage (why, oh why, am I so socially awkward).  We then trotted down the street to the long-standing butcher, the one that's been there for 50 years, Little Eater racing ahead of us and then racing back laughing and gleefully shouting, "SAUSAGE!  SAUSAGE FOR DINNER!"  Two large links later we kept on marching down to the Italian specialty market.  I let Little Eater do the ordering here.  He walked right over to the butcher counter and, when asked what he would like "Sausage, please.  Not too spicy."  Both the bikini butcher and Main Street butcher sell their sausage for $3.99/lb.  At the Italian market, the sausages go for $5.49/lb.  We headed for home and the day went on as it usually does.  When Uncle Eater got home from work and asked what we were having for dinner, he also understood, without further clarification, the rules of the meal.  Like I said, we really love our taste tests.

Sausage Fest, Eater-style.  And, Uncle Eater's foot.
Hello, foot.

While the guys hung out in the living room, I grilled the sausages without telling them what sausages came from where.  So, the taste testing was only truly blind to Dad and Uncle.  Little Eater had eaten his not-too-spicy sausage earlier.  We started by tasting the sweet sausages.  I sliced a small piece of each of the three, placing them in identical locations on all three plates.  Top sausage, middle sausage, and bottom sausage.  Everybody tasted and remembered but did not discuss their preference.  We then repeated the process for the hot sausages.  There was little deliberating and everybody picked their preferences.  And the winner was...
By unanimous vote, the oldest butcher on Main Street was our favorite sausage both hot and sweet.   The biggest surprise, though, was not that Main Street butcher was so tasty, but that the more expensive sausage from the fancy specialty market didn't make top pick on any list.    In fact, though their sausage was quite good, and I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers, it was last choice for each of us with only one exception where it was my middle choice for hot sausage.  In the case of this experiment at least, more money did not equal better quality.  



 

Every Main Street Tells a Story - Days 13 and 14.

So much time passes so quickly.  I have been both pleased and surprised with how easy shopping from Main Street has been.  Every day I get a slightly deeper understanding of my community, learn a little more of the local story, and foster now important relationships with a street full of hard working merchants.   But in many ways, my days are wholly unremarkable.  I expected this to be harder.  Two weeks in to this experiment, I expected to have daily things to say about one little struggle or another, one hard decision, one massive frustration.  In the absence of these things, what the heck do I write about?  I go out into the world, buy the food I need for dinner, go home, cook the dinner, and eat the dinner, just like millions of other people.  I don't want this to simply become a recipe blog.  Also, though the politics of food growing, buying, and selling are important to me, I want this to be a mostly apolitical project.  I'm not interested in preaching.  Everybody has to eat dinner, but I'm not about to tell somebody I don't know how to go about doing it.  I am confident, though, that if you're taking the time to read this blog, you're willing to start thinking about what kind of spendivore you are and what kind of vote you're casting with your food dollar. 
So what, exactly, is my point?  I confess, that I've lost sight of it a little and that it's been stressing me out.  I've worried that I'm not writing clearly enough about why I think this project is important.  Then again, I've been thanked by readers for not beating people about the face and head with MY MESSAGE.  Prattling on about it on Sunday during dinner - we had ordered in fried chicken - Dad Eater reminded me that this is an experiment.  It would not have been at all experimental if I knew all the answers before I started.  Thus far, I have discovered that some of what I thought were my most unmoving tenets of food buying went right out the window when, forced out of my comfort zone, I've had to do a little more research before making a choice.  It turns out that some of the things I knew I did not actually know.  Main Street taught me that.  I've realized that for most of my adult life, whenever I purchased a chicken, I was thinking only from the perspective of the chicken.  Now when I walk into the butcher shop, I look a man in the eyes and am learning there's more to the story.  My understanding of what it means to eat ethically is being completely rewritten.  Main Street had those lessons waiting for me.  And they were free.  What can your Main Street teach you?

Dinner for One - Day 12.

A rarest of rare occurrences happened on Saturday, I had nobody to cook dinner for.  Dad Eater was working late.  Uncle Eater had dinner plans with friends.  And, I decided to treat Little Eater to one of his favorite meals, spinach pizza from the pizzeria at the end of the block.  So, with no menfolk to feed, I did as I often do when I'm on my own and unleashed my inner vegetarian.  She's a rarely spotted creature these days, that sprout-eating, thanks-I'll-just-have-salad, turn-up-at-your-house-for-dinner-carrying-her-own-box-of-black-bean-burgers girl.  In fact, she's kind of obnoxious, so it's just as well I usually have at least one ravenous carnivore to feed most nights. 
I had on hand a sweet potato, a head of red bore kale, and garlic, so I needed only ricotta cheese to make this Sweet Potato with Kale and Ricotta recipe which is a standby favorite of mine (and of my inner vegetarian).  I don't follow this recipe exactly these days, but it is a great place to start.  I like lots of vinegar in my greens, I fry up extra slices of garlic, and generally use whole milk ricotta.  A note on ricotta cheese - if you can find it freshly made, it is well worth it.  It is incomparable to the supermarket stuff, sorry Polly-O.  I got mine from the Italian specialty market; it was glorious.  I did feel a bit like a cheating lover though as the butcher stared at me from across the market with a mixture of shock and confusion and finally what I am sure was genuine sadness as I meatlessly checked out and headed for home.

World of awesome.

Two and a Half - Day 11

It was a dark and stormy night.  Which gave way to a dark and stormy day.  Which made me want to cook something hearty, delicious, and warming in a single pot.  Though the day brightened up and dried out, it was still a one-pot meal kind of night.  Little Eater was feeling a little under the weather in addition to being extra super specially two and a half.  He was so two and a half that the Spendivore Stroll took an hour to buy the three things I needed for arroz con pollo (chicken, rice, and olives) since it became absolutely essential to him to assert his independence with every step.  Main Street was treated to such toddler gems as lying down in the middle of the sidewalk and pretending to nap after telling me to, "Go away, I'll be right here resting."  And, attempting to engage strangers in games of stick ball by stopping suddenly in front of them, pulling his hat over his face, screaming, "I'm wearing a face mask," and swinging a stick about wildly.  It's a good thing he's cute.  I confiscated the stick and told him he could have it back when we got home thinking it might motivate him pick up the pace a little.  But no.  Somehow, it convinced him that he was, in fact, a chicken.  And the rest of the walk went something like this:

Me: Come on, sweetheart, we're almost to the butcher and then only one stop after that.
Little Eater: I'm chicken.
Me: Ok, you're a chicken.  Let's go.
Little Eater: (stopping entirely to peck his beak on the ground) cluck, cluck
Me: (grasping Little Eater firmly by the wing) Now, chicken.  March!
Little Eater: cluck, cluck, cluckcluckcluckcluckcluckcluckCLUCK!

And as such, we arrived at the butcher where Little Eater responded to being greeted with a genuinely warm, "Hey little buddy, how you doing today?" with an indignant "I'm CHICKEN!" and set about clucking and pecking the case of rolls.  I took a perverse pleasure in purchasing several pounds of chicken thighs while I was there and mused momentarily on which of my chickens I felt more inclined to cook for dinner. We made it home without much in the way of incident though Little Eater would communicate with me only in clucks and requests to have his stick returned.  He returned briefly to boyhood after we got home as he noticed the olives coming out of the shopping bag.  10 or so olives later, he was back outside in the yard, pecking, clucking, and sticking and I was putting together our meal.  All seemed fine with the world.  And then, shortly after tucking Little Eater into bed and having served up hot, comforting, chicken-y bowls of arroz con pollo, Little Eater woke up and began to cry.  In his final, dramatic act of two and a half for the day he promptly ralphed his dinner and what seemed to be way more than 10 olives down the front of Dad Eater and Me.

Little Eater: Moooooooooommmmyyyyy.  I burped.
Me: I see that, sweetheart.  We'll get you all cleaned up and comfy, cozy again.
Little Eater: cluck, cluck.

Fortunately, arroz con pollo is just as good cold as it is hot.  I used this recipe from Martha Stewart.

Simmering, chicken-y, rice-y
olive-y goodness.

Mom Eater And A Duck Walk Into A Bar- Day 10.

Q: Why do ducks have webbed feet?

A: For stamping out forest fires.

Q: Why do elephants have such big feet?

A: To stamp out burning ducks.

 ***

A man and a duck are walking down the street together. Suddenly the man notices a low-flying airplane coming right for them. The man yells "DUCK!!!!" and the duck looks back at the man with an angry face and yells "MAN!!!!"

***
Two monsters went duck-hunting with their dogs but without success. "I know what we're doing wrong," said the first one. "What's that then?" asked the second. "We're not throwing the dogs high enough!

***
There was a barman who owned a duck who danced on a tin box. He sold it to another bar man who phoned him later asking how to make him stop. He replied "Open the tin and blow out the candles!" 

***
A duck walks into a bar and says to the bar tender "I'll have a beer".
The bartender says "Hey! where did you come from?"
The duck says "I'm working the construction site across the street".
And the bartender says, "Well why are you working construction when you could be making millions in the circus?"
And the duck said "What would the circus want with a brick laying duck?"   

***

I woke up feeling ducky, so guess what I made for dinner? 

Served with sauteed bok choy and white rice

Steamed and Roasted Duck
by Mark Bittman, from How to Cook Everything 

1 whole duck, 4 to 5 pounds, excess fat removed
Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 Tbl soy sauce

2 Tbl honey

1 Tbl minced or grated fresh ginger (or 1 tsp ground ginger)

1 Tbl chopped garlic

2 Tbl dry sherry or white wine

2 Tbl dry white wine or water

1. Rig a steamer.  Put 1 to 2 inches of water in the bottom.  Put the duck on the rack or plate, cover the pot, and turn the heat to high.  Steam for about 45 minutes, adding boiling water if necessary.

2. Remove the duck from the pot, put it on a rack, and cool for at least 15 minutes (you can also wrap it well and refrigerate for up to 2 days).

3. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.  Combine all the remaining ingredients in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring, until just shy of a boil.  Put the duck, breast side down (wings up), on a rack in a roasting pan.  Baste with the sauce.

4. Roast the duck for 15 minutes, baste it, then turn it breast side up.  Raise the heat to 425 degrees F.  Baste the bird again and roast it until the skin is crisp, another 15 minutes or so, until the internal temperature is 155-165 degrees F.  Let the duck rest for a few minutes, then carve and serve.