But I can’t let the Coleman stove stifle my creative cooking instincts. And I’ve been meaning to make cookies for my friends here in the boatyard for a while. Finally, this past Sunday evening, I made a batch of No-bake Oatmeal Cookies.

One of the rules I break all the time is this one: Never ever make an untried recipe for company. In this case, I was hoping they’d be good enough to give away, but I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t tell anyone ahead of time and get their expectations up.

I carefully followed the recipe, which came from an issue of Practical Sailor. It’s not exactly Cooks’ Illustrated or Gourmet — in all the years I’ve read the magazine, this was the first time they’d actually printed a recipe. There are a lot of sailors out there with stoves and no ovens, so no-bake cookies are important!

Anyway, the reason Barry found me collapsed in laughter was the result of my attempt at no-bake cookies. The result was suspiciously like peanut butter-chocolate fudge with oatmeal in it, not a cookie-like consistency at all. And when I tried to cut them, they crumbled horribly. So I came up with a new name for them, a contraction of “fudge” and “cookie”: Fuckie.

As Barry came around the boat, wondering what was so funny, I knew I had to offer him one. “Honey,” I gasped, “Would you like a … fuckie?”

“A WHAT?” he asked. Between chuckles, I managed to explain the name. I tried to hand him one, but half of it dropped off before he could eat it. They truly were “fuckies.”

Nonetheless, they tasted OK, and folks who are working on boats need all the treats they can get. So I passed them out, and they went over remarkably well. One reason might be this: I chickened out and changed the name. I mean, most people won’t accept a fuckie from someone they hardly know.

Fookie, anyone?

Dahl was living near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and working for Shell when war was declared. As one of the few Englishmen around, he was expected to lead a platoon of local black soldiers and round up any Germans trying to leave the country. Given his lack of military training, even he thought this was ludicrous — the Sergeant and the troops were very well trained, and he was embarrassed to be catapulted into a leadership role over them, solely based on his skin color and nationality.

On top of this, when they set up the blockade, he hadn’t thought to bring any food (he was used to having those things taken care of by his servant, a funny and capable man named Mdisho). The 23-year-old Dahl rather humbly asked the Sergeant he was commanding for some of the evening meal that was prepared for the soldiers.

“Then the Sergeant made a fire out of sticks and began cooking supper for his men. He was making rice in an enormous pot, and while the rice was boiling, he took from the truck a great stem of bananas and started snapping them off the stem one by one and peeling the and slicing them up and dropping the slices into the pot of rice. When the food was ready, each askari produced his own tin plate and spoon and the Sergeant dished out large portions with a ladle. Up to then I hadn’t thought about my own food and I certainly had not brought anything with me. Watching the men eat made me hungry. ‘Do you think I could have a little of that, please?’ I said to the Sergeant.

‘Yes, bwana,’ he said. ‘Have you got a plate?’

‘No,’ I said. So he found me a tin plate and a spoon and gave me a huge helping. It was absolutely delicious. The rice was unhusked and brown and the grains did not stick together. The slices of banana were hot and sweet and in some way they oiled the rice, as butter would. It was the best rice dish I had ever tasted and I ate it all and felt good and forgot about the Germans.”

I haven’t tried making this yet, but it sounds delicious to me, too. I think I’ll make a pot of pressure-cooker brown rice, toss in some sliced bananas, and then put the lid back on to steam for a few minutes. It’s even simpler (and more healthy) than a version I published with white rice and coconut cream, and somehow it reminds me of Cindy’s poached banana dessert. Or my favorite Ecuadorian tomato soup with bananas.

The moral of the story is, when you cook with bananas, you don’t need a whole lot of other ingredients. Just a tin plate, a spoon, and good manners.

For years, I’ve been reading about cruising sailors who live without refrigeration. Boat refrigeration is expensive to install and painful to maintain, and it’s the item that uses the most electricity, a scant resource. So I’ve always assumed that we would just learn to live without it.

But living on a boat at anchor and living on a boat on jackstands are two different things. We don’t have nice cool water around our boat, and without masts and booms, we don’t even have any shade. It is hot, hot, hot.

But we have a vehicle, and there are plenty of places to buy ice nearby. Block ice, which keeps longer than cubes, is a little harder to find, but we found the places that carry it. Beaufort Ice, the wholesaler, will sell it to us if we happen to be in town during regular business hours. Once, at the end of the day, they gave us a free block, because we didn’t have exact change. They distribute their blocks to other places, like Captain Kenny’s BP station and the strange and dark mini-mart we call “Skankland,” but of course it costs more.

So we started buying a block of ice for our icebox every day. Sometimes we would go two days, and then buy two blocks. But it’s a hassle. Our friends were using block ice, too, until they got their fridge working. Now, when they see us hauling ice back from the gas station, they just smile contentedly. “You should buy a little refrigerator,” said Gigi. “I saw them for $64 at Kmart, I think, or Wal-Mart.”

She was right. We were spending over $70 per month just for the ice, not counting the gas and the time. I went to Kmart and plunked down the credit card. Returning home, Barry put the new fridge over his shoulder and carried it up to the cockpit. “It sure is light,” we both commented.

Then we plugged it in, and I read the little manual. Wait, what’s this? It’s a thermoelectric model with no refrigerant. It says it can lower the temperature up to 20 degrees from ambient. That won’t work when it’s 95 degrees — who wants a 75-degree refrigerator?

I went back to Kmart and carried the fridge to the customer service desk — I didn’t even need a cart to return it. I should have known that a 22-pound fridge wouldn’t work.

So on to Wal-Mart, where we bought one that weighs 55 pounds. We had to use a block and tackle to get this one up to the cockpit. But it has a real compressor, and a tiny freezer compartment where we can make ice cubes, and although it’s only 1.7 cubic feet, that’s enough room for our milk and cheese and lunchmeat and a few vegetables.

We’ll have to sell the fridge when we launch the boat, and then we’ll figure out how to live without refrigeration on the water. But in the mean time, we’re in cool heaven. And instead of carrying ice up the ladder, we get to carry something better: Ice cream!

For years, the culinary highlight of our annual White Elephant party was a grilled turkey, which served dozens of hungry guests with minimal work. As I once wrote on Adventures with Meps ‘n’ Barry:

Barry discovered how easy it was to throw a turkey on the barbecue grill, so that became the central menu item. He’d take it off the grill as the party was getting in full swing and plop it on a platter in the middle of the table, next to a carving fork and knife. Then he’d walk away.

The guests would stand around, looking puzzled. “Who’s going to carve the turkey?” they’d ask. Finally, someone who couldn’t stand to wait any longer would just pick up the knife and start carving away. And Barry and I would give each other a high-five, since we knew how to cook a turkey, but didn’t want to admit that carving it was beyond us.

This past Christmas, Barry’s mother prepared a turkey on her grill, and we documented the process with the camera. It’s so easy, it’s worth buying a turkey any time of the year!

What you’ll need:

A large kettle-style barbecue grill (such as a Weber)
A large bag of charcoal - regular briquettes, not Matchlight
Lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal starter with newspaper
A rectangular pan (disposable foil pans work, but may leak) to put under the turkey
Optional: Hardware cloth to hold briquettes
Optional: Turkey lifter
Optional: Lid spacers — metal rods or 2×4’s wrapped in foil

1. Before buying your turkey, measure the height of your grill lid from the grate that holds the turkey. If your turkey isn’t small enough to fit under the lid, you can use spacers to gain an extra inch or two. The spacers are illustrated in step #9. (The turkey may take a little longer to cook, but the results will be fine.)
2. Light your charcoal, using either lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal lighter with newspaper.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the turkey. Remove any giblets, wash the turkey, and tie up the wings and legs with wire or string. Rub the outside of the turkey with butter or olive oil. Important: This cooking method does not work with a turkey that’s stuffed. If you want stuffing, you’ll have to roast it in a separate pan in the oven.
   
4. Once all the briquettes have a layer of gray ash on them, they’re ready to use. Using tongs, divide the briquettes into two piles, one on each side of the grill, with the rectangular pan in the middle. There should be about 25-30 briquettes on each side. The goal is to cook the turkey with indirect heat and catch the drippings in the pan. One way to make this a little easier is to create “baskets” out of hardware cloth to hold the briquettes on the sides.
   
   
   
5. Put a little water into the drippings pan.
6. Place the grill on top of the charcoal and drippings pan.
   
7. If you have a turkey lifter, put it on top of the grill.
   
8. Put the turkey on the grill, centered over the foil pan. (in the photo below, the turkey was not perfectly centered, and the left wing was slightly scorched)
   
9. Put the lid over the turkey and set a timer for one hour.
10. Optional: The spacers shown below are only needed if the lid does not fit over the turkey. In a pinch, when we discovered the turkey was too tall at the last minute, we used 2×4’s wrapped in foil, one on either side of the grill. But if you know ahead of time that your turkey is too tall, metal rods like these are an elegant solution.
    
    
11. When an hour has passed, open the grill and add 8 or 9 fresh charcoal briquettes to the burnt-down briquettes on each side. There’s no need for lighter fluid. It’s easiest to do this if you remove the turkey to a baking sheet. When you put the turkey back, check to make sure it’s centered. You may also want to add a little water to the drippings pan.
    
12. Repeat step #9 every hour until the turkey is done. The total time should be about 12 minutes per pound. Use a meat thermometer to be absolutely certain that it’s done.
    
13. If you want to make gravy from the drippings, use a baster to remove the drippings about a half hour before the turkey is done.
14. Remove the turkey to a platter. Let it sit for 15 minutes on the counter before carving. If you put it on the table at a party, it will usually take about 15 minutes of discussion before one of the guests grabs the carving knife.

Barry’s parents have several pear trees that produce delicious pears every fall. Unfortunately, they produce too many of them, and they ripen all at once.

Two years ago, we took as many as we could eat and gave pounds of them away to friends. We made batch after batch of pear sauce. Then I found a juicer at the thrift store. We began to juice many pears each day, tossing in a small lime or lemon wedge, peel and all, to give the juice some additional “zing.” This went on for days, until one day, the thrift store juicer whined and gasped and croaked. It was worth the $3 I’d paid for it, and had almost gotten us through the season.

Last year, we took another huge batch, but we didn’t give as many away. Instead, we borrowed a food dryer, dipping the cored pear quarters into Fruit Fresh and then drying them for hours. The work was interminable and the results tiny. We ended up with about a gallon of little pieces of dried pear skin. Not worth the effort, even if they were chewy and sweet.

This year, we found a blender at the thrift store and discovered pear smoothies. We used at least four pears a day, and the motor on the sturdy blender was up to the task. I stopped in to visit a friend at breakfast-time last week. “I have a treat for you,” she said, “we made pear smoothies this morning.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Not only had I already had a pear smoothie that day, but after two months of them, a pear smoothie was no longer a treat!

Barry and I also took pear crisp or pear cobbler to every potluck, giving us a chance to refine the recipe. Each batch called for three pears, but we doubled the topping and sometimes used as many as ten pears. We made salads that used the pears, along with home-grown apples and cucumbers. Barry made sparkling pear cupcakes, halving the recipe but accidentally leaving the same number of pears as a full recipe. No surprise, they were very moist! Finally, this morning, I was down to the last eight, the tiniest ones. They were too cute to put in the blender.

So I carefully peeled them and cut the cores out, then poached them and stuffed them with cream cheese. As I handled the delicate things, they felt like old friends. But after I ate them, I could only feel relief. They’re gone, and now I finally get to eat something else!

Cast iron skillet with a lid. I inherited two cast-iron skillets from my mother, who’d gotten them from her mother. At the time, Mom had gotten some arthritis in her wrist, so she was happy to pass them along to someone who could actually lift them. I loved them like they were my children — I never washed them with soap, and I always seasoned them with vegetable oil after each washing. Then, several years later, catastrophe! My mother discovered a recipe for blackened fish and demanded the return of one of her cast-iron skillets. It took us months to get a new skillet as well-seasoned as the original, 75-year-old pan.

But it was worth it. We use our cast-iron skillets for everything, and they can easily go from the stove to the oven for dishes like upside-down cake or chillaquillas. Properly seasoned, they’re just as non-stick as Teflon or Silverstone, and a lot safer.

Cuisinart food processor. Christmas, 1990. My fiance was flying from Virginia to Ohio to spend the holiday with me, but he nearly missed his flight because of my present. He had decided to get me a food processor, and after reading Consumer Reports, determined that nothing less than a real Cuisinart would do. The problem was that he blithely planned to walk to the airport, a distance of about two miles. He picked up his suitcase in one hand and the shopping bag with the Cuisinart in the other. A half block into the walk, he shifted hands. And shifted back. And forth. And back. And forth.

With packaging and attachments, that Cuisinart weighed almost 25 pounds. And so he struggled all the way to the airport. When I picked him up on the other end, his hands were still sore, and until Christmas morning, I had no idea why.

That Cuisinart is still going strong at 17. It slices, it grates, it juliennes, it chops. It makes perfect pie crust and apple-cranberry relish to die for. And every time I use it, I think about how much I adore the man who gave it to me.

Second-generation pressure cooker. There are two kinds of cooks in the world: Those who use a pressure cooker, and those who don’t. I can’t imagine life without a pressure cooker, because I love whole grains, dried beans, and long-cooking vegetables like artichokes and beets. I know you can simmer those things on the stove for hours; one of my old black bean recipes specifically mentions simmering for 4 hours. But after having a pressure cooker for 12 years, there isn’t anything I cook on the stove that takes longer than 45 minutes — and the burner is only “on” for the first half of that.

If a true pressure-cooker fanatic is someone with two cookers, I’m a fanatic.

The term “second-generation” refers to the fact that today’s pressure cookers have a spring-loaded valve and additional fail-safes to prevent pea-soup-on-the-ceiling explosions that made the original 1950s pressure cookers infamous.

Countertop salad spinner. For most people, the word “countertop” seems unnecessary, because what other kind of salad spinner is there? For me, the other kind is the big one, the one down in the laundry room.Until 1980, my mother washed her lettuce, always iceberg, and put it on the counter on a towel to dry. Salad spinners had been invented, but were not yet common. Then she read an amazing article in the New York Times that suggested putting the lettuce in a pillowcase, tying the top shut, and putting it in the washing machine on “spin” cycle. In a top-loading washer, when you get the knob in just the right position, it simply spins without spraying any water into the tub, and the centrifugal force is the same as any salad spinner.

The problem was, as the family teenager, the job was delegated to me. It was novel at first, but eventually I became bored with it, because I had to descend to the dreary basement laundry corner and stay there until the spin cycle, which always seemed a lot longer than necessary for a head of lettuce, was complete.

Today, although I have my own washer and my own dreary basement laundry room, I also have a cute little salad spinner from the thrift store. I don’t think I’ve ever used it to dry iceberg lettuce, but I’ve done many batches of romaine, Bibb, red leaf, spinach, and all manner of gourmet greens that weren’t available to my mother. I’ve also postulated that if a washer can be used as a salad spinner, then a salad spinner could be used to dry clothing. As a cruising sailor who believes that every item needs to have multiple uses, I wouldn’t be averse to spinning a few pairs of underwear or socks in it.

Barry, my sous-chef. There isn’t anyone I’d rather play in the kitchen with. He is more religious than I about seasoning the cast-iron skillets (he never really forgave my mother), and more likely to use the larger pressure cooker to create a batch of homemade chili so huge we’ll be eating it for weeks. He also shares “in” jokes with me, like the “shoot” attachment that came with the Cuisinart. They called it a chute attachment, but that had to be a misspelling. Its role in life seemed to be “shooting” food all the way across the kitchen instead of putting it into the bowl.

While the salad spinner could be used to dry socks, he’s so versatile — and kind — that he will also wash the darn things for me.

I’ve downsized from a full-sized house and kitchen to the bare necessities, just enough to fit in a tiny boat galley. These bare necessities have traveled across the country in my Honda Civic, sailed the Intracoastal Waterway, and been used for camping in Newfoundland. They were unpacked into a camping trailer in Washington, packed up again, and moved to an apartment with 1 square foot of counter space. At this point, if I don’t need it, it’s gone — I don’t have room for it!

This is a list of those little indispensables, the items in my kitchen that are always in the to-be-washed or just-washed pile of dishes. If you’re looking for a gift for a friend who cooks, you might just find a few ideas below.

1. Microplane grater. I can’t live without it, because the foods you can prepare with one are the ones that give recipes their WOW factor. For example, fluffy mounds of parmesan and romano cheese. Fresh-grated ginger. Finely-grated chocolate. And something I didn’t even know about until I had my Microplane: Whole nutmeg. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back to the ground stuff. When you’re wrapping up the Microplane as a gift, include a bar of nice dark chocolate and a nutmeg, so the recipient can try it out and immediately experience the WOW factor.
2. Stainless steel graduated measuring cups. I use them constantly as scoops — not just for flour and sugar, but to serve things like yogurt, nuts, and stew. It’s great so know exactly how much you’re serving to each person. And if you’re serving rice or whole grains, you can spray a 1- or 1/2-cup measure with a little oil spray, scoop out a serving, and then place a perfectly-shaped mound on each plate.
3. Big beefy garlic press and rubber garlic peeler. When we first downsized, I got rid of my small, inefficient garlic press. I thought I’d just use a knife — smash each clove with the flat of the knife, peel it, and chop it. But it took me so long to prep fresh garlic, I got lazy and started using garlic less and less. The new tools have remedied that. I can be halfway through a dish and suddenly decide to add garlic. I grab the garlic cloves, roll them in the little rubber tube, and out they come, sans papery peel. Then I pop them into the garlic press and press or slice them directly into the pot.
4. Cheap stainless scissors. It’s amazing what you can use scissors for in the kitchen — they don’t even have to be sharp. You can use them to cut a pizza or quesadillas. Snip some dried fruit into little bits, or snip fresh herbs into a pot on the stove. One of my favorite uses for scissors is to cut wet, sloppy things that come in cans, like whole canned tomatoes or roasted peppers. Leave a pair of cheap scissors on the counter for a few days, and see what else you think of.
5. Silicone baking mat. No longer do I hesitate to bake something, thinking the cleanup is not worth the effort. With one of these mats, cleaning up after roasting nuts or baking cookies, fish, or chicken is a breeze. I don’t know how I lived without one (well, I didn’t always have an oven, so that might explain it).
6. Stainless steel cocktail shaker. Even if you don’t drink cocktails, a stainless cocktail shaker is a beautiful thing, and it’s handy for blending all kinds of things. You can use a large one to shake up a batch of instant pudding, blend milk and flour for a white sauce, beat eggs, or making a smoothie without a blender.

Next week, in A few of my favorite things, part two, I’ll list some of the larger indispensables, the ones that take up a lot of room in my tiny kitchen. Things like the second-generation pressure cooker, cast-iron skillet, and most important of all: Barry, my sous-chef!

Most of the people I know love fresh asparagus. It’s considered one of the gourmet vegetables, right up there with hearts of palm and artichoke hearts. Even now that it’s become fairly commonplace, the thought of the tender green shoots still provokes “ooooohs” from diners.

Back in the 1980’s, our friends Pat and Larry bought a farm in central Ohio. Their acreage included woods and fields, room for their dogs and cats to roam, space for an enormous barn and a pond. It also had a patch of robust and hearty asparagus, something their city-dwelling friends could only dream of.

Pat and Larry both had a wicked sense of humor and loved to tease people. When the asparagus came up in conversation, they would admit neither of them liked it. They might even go so far as to make retching noises to prove the point. And then, the wide-eyed listener, thinking of asparagus as something akin to green gold, would ask, hopefully, “What do you do with it?” “It makes great mulch,” they’d answer, just to see the shocked and dismayed reaction. In truth, Pat would puree it in soup, or else give it to friends.

Barry and I are not asparagus-averse. We are definitely in the “green gold” category, and we both remember the time we hit the asparagus “mother lode.”

It was a long-distance bicycle trip across Michigan in early June. We happened one weekend upon the town of Shelby, where an asparagus festival was in progress. Everything in Shelby was tall and green, even the Asparagus Queen.

We wandered through town, looking at the asparagus displays, asparagus crafts, and booths selling pickled asparagus. It wasn’t crowded, and our loaded bikes drew as much attention as any of the displays.

We were still fairly new to bicycle touring, and riding many miles each day meant we were always hungry. So we finally got tired of being gawked at and stepped into a dimly-lit pub and restaurant with a special menu for the festival. When the waitress came to take our order, we went all out: Beer-battered asparagus, asparagus-cheese soup, and asparagus lasagna. The waitress was shaking her head as she went to the kitchen. Thank goodness they didn’t have asparagus ice cream, or we would have ordered that, too.

Instead, we picked up a couple more pounds of asparagus from a farmer’s stand and steamed it later, for dinner. We peed green for days…

As we headed north out of Shelby, we rode through vast fields of asparagus. It was being harvested by farm workers, who sat in rows on a low trailer towed behind a tractor. It was kind of kinky: They literally picked the asparagus right between their legs.

Which brings to mind the following asparagus tip from our funniest friend, Minnesota Charles Mickelson.

If you’re at a dinner party that’s become dull, and the conversation lags, don’t despair. Just pick up the asparagus spear lying on your plate, no, not with your fork! Use your fingers. Now, this is the important part. Pretend that you are not holding a drooping, flaccid spear of asparagus, and proceed to tell an unrelated funny story. Be sure not to look at your asparagus spear, just hold it vertically in your fingertips. Every once in a while, punctuate your speech with a lively wave of the green wand.

Everyone will be watching the asparagus spear, practically holding their breath. They’ll be wondering, what are you doing with that asparagus spear? Are you going to eat it? What does it have to do with the story?

Eventually, someone will get the giggles, which are contagious. You can enhance the spread of laughter by pointing the asparagus at the giggling party and asking why they are giggling. Presto! You will have converted a dull dinner party into a lively, memorable event. All thanks to your friend, Mr. Asparagus Spear.

The Foodie’s favorite asparagus recipes:

Roasted asparagus: Toss asparagus on a cookie sheet with a little olive oil. Roast at 400 F for 10 minutes.
Chicken and asparagus in red sauce
Parmesan-crusted asparagus
Rhubarb and asparagus with mushrooms
Wilted asparagus and apple salad
New! Warm asparagus and apple salad with rhubarb and hazelnuts

Foodie Gazette bread machine recipes

Guest Columnist: Tara L. Narcross

June 23: The Beginning

It began, quite innocently, at a yard sale. There it was, a practically-new bread machine. I remembered all the wonderful things my friend Patty had told me in the past about her bread machine — it’s so easy to use, we love it, the smell of baking bread is divine, and so forth. And this one was only $10. As I looked at it, I had visions of loaves of warm bread; I could almost smell the incomparable aroma of freshly baked bread coming from my very own kitchen.

True, the machine had neither box nor instructions; however, Patty had once promised me her help if I ever did decide to get a bread machine of my own. So it came home with me and occupied a chair in the living room for the first two weeks. During that time I alternated between excited anticipation and despair that what was supposed to be so simple would not prove to be within my grasp.

June 26

Patty found the instruction manual for the machine on the company’s web site. I’ve printed it and it’s sitting next to me on my desk. While I’m excited about the whole prospect of baking my own bread, my nerve is a little shaky, and I still haven’t actually started reading the manual. Patty continues to promise that I’ll love it — the machine, that is, not the manual.

It can’t be that bad, right? After all, both of my grandmothers baked bread all the time, and they didn’t have a machine to help them do it. For a very long time, they also didn’t have refrigerators, electric stoves, or running water, either. So I should be way ahead of the game.

July 9

The bread machine has been moved from the living room chair onto the spot that has been cleared on the kitchen table. I still haven’t cracked that manual, though. I did, however, carry it to and from work for three days, in hopes of reading it while eating lunch.

I know that part of the hesitation is rooted in my previous attempt (the first and, to date, the only) at baking yeast bread. It was something called “Bubble Bread”, and was supposed to be so easy that if you had opposable thumbs and could follow a recipe, the bread would turn out perfectly. Hah.

Even though I had never baked bread before, I just knew something was not quite right as I put it in the oven. Call it a premonition. When I took out the finished product, I was fairly sure that the pan was actually heavier than when I put it in.

So it (whatever it was) began to cool on the rack, and was still warm when my (first) husband, his father and his uncle came in from work.

“Homemade bread! Great!”

The husband had a little bit of it and refused to eat even a full slice, vehemently proclaiming it to be completely inedible. (I’d had a bit of it by then and was in full agreement, but he didn’t really have to be that way about it, you know.)

The father-in-law ate a full slice and then gosh, he wasn’t really hungry, thank you very much. (He’d just come in from a full day of roofing and he wasn’t hungry? However, I appreciated the polite lie at that point.)

The uncle, on the other hand, said it was fantastic; he ate a little over half the loaf. Of course, he was stoned at the time …

Unwilling to subject myself to another attempt right then, I turned my attention to cooking other things and figured that I was not meant to bake the wonderful loaves that my grandmothers (and countless others) turned out with such apparent ease. Now, a little more than 20 years later, I am finally willing to give it another try. After all, by this time I am more mature and more skilled at cooking in general. Also, I know that my husband, Derek, will not respond in the same way as did the previous husband.

July 11

Today Patty brought over a grocery bag in which she had compiled a bread-making beginner’s kit for me, with whole-wheat flour, buckwheat flour, soy flour, yeast and a plastic container with a sourdough starter in it. We patted the bread machine and admired its unsullied almost-newness.

Once again, I wonder what has possessed me to enter into this overly emotional commitment with a machine instead of just continuing to get my bread from the bakery section of the grocery, like the sensible woman that I normally am.

And why do I, a professional, reasonably intelligent, grown woman with a Ph.D., find myself intimidated by what looks to be a fairly simple machine? I love computers and I’m reasonably clever with electronic gadgets, if you will please overlook the fact that I haven’t the least idea which buttons on the remote to press to make the DVD player work. The bread machine has only a half dozen buttons on it, so it should be less frightening than the remote, despite the difference in size. However, logic doesn’t seem to play into this. It’s entirely emotional.

I wonder if there’s a word for a phobia about the possibility of embarrassing oneself in front of a bread machine?

July 14

It’s Bastille Day. Does this mean my first attempt should be French bread? No, no, no. Start simple. And tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow will be The Day. Really.

July 15

Today. I’ve committed myself to it. No getting out of it now. I’ve read the instructions. I have the ingredients. I’ve tidied up the kitchen, so I’m ready to start.

Whole-wheat bread looks fairly simple. Let’s see … whole-wheat flour—check. Water—check. Yeast—check. Brown sugar … oops. No brown sugar.
Well, let’s look at the recipe for white bread, then. Flour, water, yeast—check, check and check. Dry mlk … dry milk?

What is dry milk? Is it the same as powdered milk? I have some nice dry wine, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be a useful substitute.

By this point I’m so committed that I must continue with making bread of some kind. I am also rattled enough that I completely forget the resources at hand, including various cookbooks and, of course, Google.

So it’s back to the wheat bread. We’ll substitute white sugar for brown. It’s a small enough quantity that it shouldn’t make too much of a difference … I hope.

After that, it’s almost painfully simple. Put the ingredients into the machine in the order listed, press the buttons as indicated in the recipe and leave the machine to its job. Fortunately, there’s a window in the top of the machine that allows one to peek at the work in progress. And when it’s done, there should be a squarish loaf of bread. Edible bread. With luck, even good bread.

And it was good bread! Very good bread, if I do say so myself. And like the mature woman I am, after making Derek come look at the loaf, and then taste it, I called my mother and my best friend to share my glee with them.

Dinner that night was bread, soup, bread, salad and bread. And a big helping of satisfaction.

July 22

I’ve now made three successful loaves of whole-wheat bread. I’ve conquered my fear of breadmaking. From here I can branch out into other types of bread whenever I wish; I have a whole book full of recipes.

Moving past that old fear was a very liberating experience, but I didn’t do it alone. Patty, Derek, my mother, the friends who patiently listened to my raptures over that first loaf and, of course, the neighbors with the yard sale all played a part in helping me realize this dream. Who knew it would take a village to raise a loaf of bread?

As any of my readers can see, I’m not a fan of keeping recipes secret. This past weekend, I participated in a foodie event, hoping to get some new recipes. Just my luck — the one I want is a secret recipe.

The event was the 21st annual Puget Sound Cruising Club Circumlocution of Bainbridge Island. It’s a very unusual sailboat race, with three awards.

Not first, second, and third. As a matter of fact, no award goes to first place. Nobody even pays attention to the boat that crosses the finish line first, except to avoid hitting them in the rush to take second place.

That’s because the boat that crosses the line second is considered the winner and gets their name on a brass plaque. The only reason anyone bothers to cross first is because they’re ineligible if they won in the past few years.

[Photo: Osprey and Panta Rhei didn’t win, although Osprey crossed the finish line first.]

The joke is based on the fact that in 1851, watching the America’s Cup, Queen Victoria once asked, “Who was second?” The famous answer was, “There is no second, Your Majesty.”

Another award is given for perseverance, which is a story in itself. You have to suffer greatly to get that award, like leaving the dock at 8 am and arriving 13 hours later after all the food is gone.

And the food is the real reason to participate. Because the most important award is the one for Best Horror d’Hoover, which is how some people pronounce “hors d’oeuvre.” Most of us just say, “appetizer.”

Every year, after the sailing race, we create a giant raft-up. That’s where a few boats drop anchors, and then the rest of the boats tie onto them, making a floating party. We all rush to our respective galleys and try to out-do each other creating the most amazing Horror d’Hoover.

Like the race, there’s no handicap system. Some galleys have microwaves, convection ovens, freezers, refrigerators, and blenders. Others have a sink and a stove. Some don’t even have the stove.

This year, at 1700 hours, the eating commenced aboard Ponderosa, a large Valiant near the center of the raft. Carefully balancing their offerings — one hand for the ship and one for your horror — crew came from all the other boats and laid them on the deck, and we sampled each one.

There were beautiful dishes that tasted plain and plain dishes that tasted beautiful. There were hot dips and cold dips, meaty offerings and vegetarian ones. There was a lot of shrimp, in dips and spreads and balls. There was a gorgeous smoked-salmon pizza with capers, some of which rolled merrily off my plate, onto the deck, and plopped into the water. I hope fish like capers.

We circled the deck as though we were playing musical chairs, tasting as we went. Some folks went around three or four times, narrowing down the field of favorites. At the end, we each cast a vote for one favorite appetizer.

[Photos: Barbara brought Claudia’s Cheese and Peppers (left), Karen made both Lox Pizza (right) and a Cucumber Dish that I didn’t get to photograph.]

The grand winner (drumroll, please) was Nora, who had prepared sweet-and-sour meatballs. Nora says she never wins anything, but now I don’t believe her. She was on the boat that took second, too.

The frustrating thing about the meatballs was, she refused to give out the recipe. I was right there, on the boat, when she pulled the Rubbermaid container with the magic winning meatballs out of the icebox. I was right there when she reheated and taste-tested them, adding a pinch more chili powder to balance the sweetness. At the time, she made excuses for her “lame recipe,” saying, “This is going to be our dinner, so I wanted to make sure there was something with ’substenance’ to it.”

But when I ask what else was in there, Nora just clams up, and shrugs. The meatballs and the sauce are a family secret, kept locked in a safe. She’ll pass them down to her children someday, so they can take awards at Horrors d’Hoovers contests.

Sadly, I didn’t even take a picture of the award-winning meatballs. But I did get a great photo of the Commodore and the proud winning chef, the one with the secret recipe.

So now I have to put out a request to my readers: Does anyone have a killer sweet-and-sour meatball recipe? It may take me a few years, but maybe someday I can replicate Nora’s award-winning meatballs.

And then I’ll take them to the Horror d’Hoover contest, and I’ll finally get my name on the plaque with the crossed forks. In my dreams.

===
Check back later, and I’ll see if I can capture some of the other recipes. They were all yummy, even if they didn’t win. Here are some more photos of the beautiful entrees:


My own submission was pretty, but couldn’t hold a candle to the meatballs: Coconut shrimp balls on top of sliced palm hearts, below.

In 1977, I was young enough that any restaurant was a special treat, even Pizza Hut or Burger King. That year, my parents and I drove to Miami for Christmas. We spent the morning at Vizcaya, an Italian Renaissance and Baroque estate on Biscayne Bay. Built in 1915 by James Deering of International Harvester, Vizcaya has over 70 rooms, filled with 16th- to 19th-century furniture and art, and 10 acres of lush gardens. In short, it’s a palace.

It would be hard to follow Vizcaya with our usual picnic or burger lunch. Instead, my parents took me to the Versailles, a restaurant with an elegant exterior, almost worthy of Vizcaya. Located on Calle Ocho, or 8th Street, there are elegant awnings with the restaurant’s name, a fancy railing on the top, and concrete cherubs above the doors. When you walk in the door, you’re first overwhelmed by the size and bustle — the place seats almost 400 — and the large chandeliers and unusual backlit mirrors.

Back when my parents first took me to the Versailles, it had only been open for about five years. Even then, it was the place to see and be seen, the place to make business deals and big plans. Thirty years later, the place always seems full, with Cuban immigrants and their children brushing elbows with cruise-ship tourists. My place is somewhere between the two. I’m not just a tourist, I have a small connection to this vibrant culture and cuisine. My father’s mother was married to a Cuban for about ten years. My Midwest-born mother, who visited Cuba before meeting my father, was an adventurous cook who served the family picadillo and arroz con pollo instead of meatloaf and spaghetti.

We were seated by an efficient hostess in a green pantsuit who handed us the multi-page menu. The prices are surprisingly affordable, with many entrees and specials under $10. There are too many choices.

Although some tourists opt to return to the Versailles every day of their Miami stay, we only had time for one midday meal there. I wanted to try the Ropa Vieja (”old rags,” or shredded beef), the roasted pork special, the shrimp and grouper. Instead, I ordered a Cuban sandwich, because the Versailles is also a bakery, and I knew I couldn’t reproduce either the bread or the filling at home.

After I handed back my menu, I looked around. That’s when I realized why the prices are so reasonable.

The tables are formica. The placemats are paper. And the chairs are stick-to-your-bare-legs vinyl. The exterior facade is just that, a facade. Inside, the decor is kind of like an embellished Denny’s.

Still, the Versailles serves good, plain Cuban food. Dad had the red bean soup, a medley of complex flavors, and Arroz con Pollo, a platter of chicken piled high with yellow rice. Barry had picadillo in a plantain pie crust. My side order of fried sweet plantains was a carmelized show-stopper, and since the plate was next to his elbow, Barry couldn’t restrain himself.

We did manage to leave room for dessert, with the help of a to-go box for about two-thirds of Dad’s gigantic meal. He ordered the Dulce de Leche, a carmelized pudding made from milk and sugar. I tried a tiny bite and nearly sent my pancreas into shock — this is something for only the most dedicated sweet tooth. Barry had the Versailles Custard, a creme brulee with a hidden bit of Tres Leches cake in the middle. I opted for a simple dish of ice cream — because where else but South Florida can you get mamey sapote ice cream?

The efficient army of waiters and waitresses moved rapidly, carrying large trays and tiny cups of thick Cuban coffee. I ordered mine “con leche,” or with milk. It reminded me of the joke, “I like a little coffee with my milk.” Instead of a large cup of coffee and a tiny pitcher of cream, the waiter brought me a large cup of warm milk and a tiny pitcher of coffee. It was the perfect ending to my meal.

I don’t know when I’ll travel the 2,756 miles again. I just know I’ll be back, because the food is good, the decor is amazing, and the people-watching can’t be beat.

A few stops later, a young woman with a magazine got on and sat across from me. Luckily, she spoke English, so we settled into a pleasant chat as the sun set and the scenery rushing past the window was replaced by darkness. Was this our first trip to Portugal? What had we seen? What did we like best?

And most importantly, “How do you like the food?”

Barry and I looked at each other. “Welllllll…” we dissembled.

The truth was, we absolutely loved some of it. We are normally not coffee-drinkers, but several times a day, we would stop at a cafe for a galão, which is a small shot of espresso served in an 8-oz glass with a lot of steamed milk. Occasionally, I got brave and ordered a meia de leite, which is similar, but served in a coffee cup. It has a little more coffee than the galão.

We also loved the pastries, and every bakery had dozens of choices (this photo shows the one from Pasteis de Belem, a restaurant dating back to the early 19th century). It was so hard to choose, and then harder to order. First, I’d mangle the pronunciation of the coffee, and then I would point to my pastry. The person behind the counter would take out a white ceramic plate, put a paper liner on it, put my pastry on it, and hand it to me.

Then Barry would point out his pastry, and they would repeat the process. The problem is, he usually eats half again what I do. So he would be ready to point at a second pastry, but they would have turned around by then. It’s a cultural fact: In Portugal, it’s one person, one pastry. So there was Barry, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to get their attention to order another one, and that wouldn’t fit on the tiny plate, anyway. When he finally did communicate his wish, they’d be looking behind us, wondering where was the third person?

We also had discovered the wonderful cheese and cheap artisan breads available throughout Portugal. In Evora, we had bought sausage, olives, and oranges — all delicious items to have for a mid-day snack or lunch. Then we ran into another cultural “issue.”

In Portugal, people do not walk around with Doritos or 32-oz Big Gulps or Frappucinos. As a matter of fact, the only people we saw eating in public were the ones sitting at sidewalk cafes. We had just emerged from the market, triumphant, with our bread, cheese, garlicky sausage, olives, and oranges. But we had a problem, having already checked out of our hotel room. Where could we actually sit and eat this stuff?

Barry suggested furtive orange-peeling or sausage-slicing on a park bench in a city square, but I vetoed that. I finally dragged him, frustrated and starving, to the city park, where we discovered dozens of picnic tables, deserted in the middle of winter. Aha! Where there are picnic tables, it must be OK to have a picnic. It was a memorable one, sitting in the shadow of a medieval wall, watching flocks of migrating birds and one lone butterfly.

So we were able to tell the woman on the train that our breakfasts and lunches were delicious. And we raved about the wines we had tried, usually a 375 ml half bottle that cost a whopping $3.

She pressed us for more. Had we eaten bacalhão? What other dishes did we like?

We’d had excellent food for New Year’s eve … but it was at a French restaurant, Les gouts du vin. Our first dinner in Portugal was a home-cooked meal, prepared for us by Carlos, our friend in Lisbon. But Carlos called it “Italian fast food,” so that wasn’t Portuguese, either. It was a terrific alho e óleo, garlic and olive oil tossed with pasta. Carlos’ version included broccoli, one of my favorite foods, and grated cheese, one of Barry’s favorite foods.

Away from Carlos’ help with language and cultural interpretation, though, our meals were often more surprising than tasty. We would walk round and round, trying to figure which restaurant wasn’t a tourist trap. Once seated, I’d be juggling my glasses, the menu, and a tiny pocket dictionary while the waiter stood over us, impatient for our order.

Every meal began with bread, and then the entree was served with both rice and potatoes, and not a green vegetable in sight. It hardly seemed worth it to order a salad and face the iceberg lettuce and out-of-season tomatoes. In one place, I ordered a Brazilian (not Portuguese) feijoada, then gobbled the collard green garnish with more delight than either the meat, beans, or white rice.

The dishes that were tastiest were the ones drenched in cream sauce. There was migas, a sort of stuffing made from bread crumbs and cream sauce. And we loved the bacalhão, the dried salt cod, when it was prepared as an au gratin dish with potatoes, cream sauce, and cheese. At one restaurant, I asked for the recipe for that one. The cook not only wrote it down, she took me into the kitchen and showed me how it was made. Not bad, considering my lousy Portuguese.

In Coimbra, Nelson took us to a place called Ossos, which means “bones.” I had trouble reading the menu, because it was handwritten in a very old-fashioned script. Although we share the same Latin alphabet, I’ve often noticed that people from Europe write some of the letters and numbers differently.

Anyway, the three of us decided to have the signature dish, ossos, as an appetizer. Nelson was placing our order for the appetizer and three entrees with the proprietor when the man became rather agitated, letting loose a torrent of rapid Portuguese I couldn’t understand.

The waiter walked away, and Nelson turned to me and Barry, laughing. “He says two entrees is plenty of food, and he wouldn’t let me order the third dish!” Luckily, we were planning to eat family-style. The bones — actually pieces of vertebrae — had meltingly tender meat, and the chanfana (kid) and Portuguese feijoada were excellent. The waiter was right, it was plenty of food.

Perhaps the woman on the train was expecting us to say, “It was great! We loved every bite!” Instead, we really considered our answer, and it gave us a chance to think about the experience. The lack of fresh vegetables was seasonal — after all, it was winter. The servings of rice, bread, and potatoes seemed shocking, because we’ve been avoiding such processed carbohydrates lately. But people in Portugal seemed healthy and trim, so it must not be a problem for them.

The main problem was just the surprise factor, not being quite sure what we were ordering. As a result, our experiences were hit or miss — one night, Barry would have some lovely casserole, and I’d have a dry pork chop. The next night, he’d have a piece of fish full of bones, and I’d have a delicious stew.

Luckily, there was always dessert to set things straight. From a simple piece of fresh cheese slathered with homemade jam to a piece of honey corn cake drenched in port, the desserts were stellar. Our dinners in Portugal may have been hit or miss, but the desserts never, ever missed.

It was brought about by green Jello.

I grew up with a lot of Jello. My Mom made it often, dissolving the packet of raspberry or strawberry Jello in boiling water, then stirring in fruit cocktail and cold water. And then she put it in the refrigerator and waited for it to jell.

Watching her put the bowl of bright red liquid in the fridge, I developed a deep-seated fear. What if, this time, the Jello didn’t jell?

None of my fears came to pass. Mom’s Jello always jelled. I’d open the refrigerator door, and there would be a happy little bowl of the stuff, jiggling as if to say, “Welcome to the fridge!”

Potluck nightmares

When I was in high school, Mom fixed a Jello fruit salad for me to take to a school potluck. It was a hot, humid spring day in Ohio, and over the course of the evening, my offering melted into a puddle of fruit cocktail and red liquid. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to abandon it! I knew I had to take the bowl home, so I slunk over to the potluck table with my head down. I was afraid people would point at me and say, “Oh, that one was yours?”

The joke that backfired

A couple of years later, I was a college student living on the cheap. Free food was always welcome, so when someone gave me a box of lime Jello, I made it and put it in the fridge.

My two best friends were coming over for the afternoon, and when Robert arrived, we came up with a practical joke to play on Dave. I was to give him a welcoming hug and in the process, slip a Jello cube down the back of his shirt.

Somehow, Robert and I thought this would be funny.

But Dave did not think it was funny, and his reaction was like a bucket of cold water. His puzzlement turned to dismay and then to a very gentle anger. After removing the offending blob of green Jello, he put his coat back on and left, shaking his head at the immaturity of his so-called friends.

I learned my lesson. I would never do something that dumb again.

Scaring my spouse

The story above explains why I was laughing so hard last night. Last night, I made a batch of plain green Jello for the first time since that incident in 1982.

Barry was in the other room when I made it, but when I took it out of the fridge, he came into the kitchen to see what I was up to. Often, when I’m rustling around in the kitchen, it means something yummy for him, so he has a kind of Pavlovian response.

The Jello came out of the fridge, in its green, jiggly glory, looking for all the world like congealed Kool-Aid. Barry looked a bit disappointed.

But I had a completely different reaction. First of all, I was delighted to see that it had jelled, alleviating my deep-rooted childhood fear. Second, since I hadn’t eaten Jello in so long, I was actually looking forward to tasting it. Without thinking, I reached in the pan and picked up a piece with my fingers.

What a wonderful feeling! Sort of squishy and solid at the same time.

But I had committed a major tactical error, because Barry was still standing next to me. Had I used a spoon, he wouldn’t have freaked out. But he had heard the story of Dave and the green Jello, and here I was, picking up a cube of the stuff with my fingers.

Barry panicked. First, he backed across the room. Then he buttoned his shirt all the way up to his chin, and just for good measure, zipped his fleece up all the way, too. He stood across the kitchen, keeping the table between us and looking like a deer in the crosshairs.

That’s when I started laughing so hard I got a jaw cramp. The truth is, I had no intention of putting it down his shirt. I simply wanted to snarf a piece of Jello with my fingers!

There’s something really hilarious about standing in the kitchen, holding a jiggling blob of green Jello in your hand, and watching your spouse run away in terror. At that point, he started laughing, too. But you know what? He laughed a lot harder after I ate my blob of Jello and put the pan safely back in the fridge!

These next three are Midwest favorites, but how can they call them salads?
Pineapple Cream Salad
Mandarin Orange Salad
And my favorite recipe with Jello, Fluffy Salad

We may think of Jello as 1950’s (or 70’s) retro, but it actually goes back much further than that. These boxes, in a Newfoundland museum, date back to the early 1900’s. As a result of intensive advertising (I’ve seen one of the ads in an old Harper’s magazine), Jell-O sales in 1906 reached $1 million.

I’m hoping that the transfer of these recipes from mepsnbarry.com to foodiegazette.com will not be traumatic. But if you find anything amiss, please let me know!

When I was 19, I was a kitchen helper at Sherwood Forest, a summer camp on the Long Beach peninsula in Washington. Between camp sessions, the cook and his assistant, who were saffron-garbed Rajneeshees, went to the Ranch to see the Baghwan and get some free love. I don’t know what held them up (maybe it was the free love), but when it was time to cook dinner, the cooks had not returned.

It was time for trial by fire.

As a kitchen helper, I knew how to chop and stir and wash dishes. I did not know how to cook. But I somehow managed, on the first day of the session, to make enough meatloaf and potatoes to feed 50 cranky children and their (cranky) counselors. In over 20 years since then, I’ve never cooked for a tougher crowd. Whew.

At the time, I was one of those obnoxious teenaged vegetarians, the kind that whines at anyone who eats meat and says “Ewww, gross,” a lot. (I’ve gotten over that now.) So meatloaf in particular was kind of a stretch.

How did I do it? I just followed a basic meatloaf recipe.

Since then, I’ve become a reasonably accomplished cook. As I discovered on that fateful day, anything is possible if you have a recipe.

So, way back then, I started saving recipes. I clipped and sorted and filed them. When I got a computer, I started typing them in. After many years, I published the first 300 on the web, just because I needed a convenient place to store them. Now, there are almost 700.

Then I discovered that I am not alone! Because they’re on the web, other people use my recipes, too. I love knowing what people are searching for: “Robert Redford better than sex cake” or “mashed cauliflower” or “cake mix brownies.”

I love to cook, and I love to take photographs, and I love to write. Here, on the Foodie Gazette, I get to combine my passions (speaking of which, do try the passion fruit mousse sometime).

And if you ever need to make enough meatloaf for 50 cranky, homesick children, please, don’t look here. Until today, I had successfully repressed the memory. So I don’t have that recipe.

Place 3 tablespoons of sugar in a heavy saucepan, and heat it over medium-high to carmelize. When the sugar is browned and liquid, very carefully and slowly add 1/2 C water. Stir in a thinly sliced lime, a teaspoon of whole cloves, a 2-inch piece of cinnamon stick, and a small chunk of ginger. Simmer this concoction for a few minutes, then remove it from the heat.

If you’re the designated driver, stop here, stir in a cup of water or juice, and enjoy. Your friends are lucky to have a responsible, sober driver like you.

If you are not the designated driver, stir in a cup of cachaça and create a killer Brazilian toddy that really warms up your insides and makes you want to dance non-stop.

Cachaça is Brazil’s ubiquitous cheap distilled liquor, used for all manner of mixed drinks down there. It’s made from sugar cane juice, as opposed to rum, which is made from molasses. Up in the U.S., cachaça is rare and expensive, so we substitute vodka, light rum, or even a mixture of half light rum and half tequila. Cachaça is also used to make the other quintessential Brazilian cocktail, the caipirinha.

To satisfy the need to dance brought on by quentão, look around for some rockin’ forró music from northeastern Brazil. Forró was originally played by country bands, and it only required three instruments: An accordion, a triangle, and a zabumba, the big base drum. It’s a high-energy style of music with a danceable, thumping beat. David Byrne calls it “party music.” My favorite artist is Luiz Gonzaga; many of his CDs are still available, even though he’s been dead for years.

Between the quentão and the music, you might have a party on your hands! It’s just the thing to transport you away from a rainy, gray day and down to someplace sunny and tropical.

Today, I took a bus to downtown Seattle for spent the entire day today shopping. Not at Macy’s or one of those chi-chi clothing shops in Westlake Center. I was continuing my scavenger hunt for pantry items that are absent or dear at my local grocery stores.

The challenge with this type of shopping is that there are two excellent places to get food ingredients in downtown Seattle. But unlike the QFC and Albertson’s near my home, neither one offers cheap and convenient parking.

So I armed myself with a large backpack and a canvas tote bag and took the bus.

My first stop was the Pike Place Market, well-known to tourists as “the place where they throw the fish.” Many retailers in the market target the tourists, selling them dried fruit, nuts, or jam — items that are easy to tuck into a suitcase. They’re priced like souvenirs, not like food, so I avoid them.

Instead, I head to The Souk, a middle eastern grocery with a wide array of spices, curries, and Indian foods. I picked up items you can only find in a tiny, custom grocery, like a can of stuffed grape leaves (a perfect appetizer for emergencies) and some pappadums. Earlier this year, I’d hunted through six grocery stores for pappadums and, in desperation, ended up buying them from a Pakistani restaurant. Now I’m stocked up again.

At The Souk, I also got a bag of Chickpree, roasted spicy chickpeas. Back in the early 1990’s, in Arlington, Virginia, I lived two blocks from an Indian grocery called “Indian Spices and Appliances.” The name sounded like a bad translation, but when I went inside, I fell in love with the exotic and inexpensive grocery items. I’ve been hooked on Chickpree ever since.

Other things, like pumpkin seeds and turmeric, were simply cheaper at The Souk than anyplace else. At the prices regular grocery stores charge for spices, it’s amazing that people can afford to use more than a tiny pinch.

About a block down, I made my second stop at El Mercado Latino, one of several Latin stores in the Pike Place Market. I was specifically looking for Bijol, a simple Cuban spice blend of cornflour, cumin, annato, and food coloring. It brings back childhood memories of my mother’s famous Arroz Con Pollo, and my jar is getting low. The same crisis had happened to my mother in the 1970’s, when we left the New York metropolitan area for the hinterlands of West Virginia. In those days, decades before the internet, it was a crisis when the family Bijol jar got down to the last teaspoon. Luckily, my father did find a mail-order source.

At the Mercado, I also bought Cafe Bustelo, vaccuum-packed Cuban coffee. It makes a great cup of coffee, although I have to cut it with cheap grocery store decaf in order to avoid hitting the ceiling. During a recent trip to South Florida, I was amazed to see entire aisles of this stuff in the regular grocery store — guava paste, Mexican and Cuban fruit juices, convenience foods from Goya. Down there, it costs half as much, but I don’t mind paying extra. I’m just happy to find the stuff way up here in Seattle.

A few blocks up the street, I picked up a free bus down to the south end of town. My next stops are in the International District, known to Seattle residents as “The I.D.” It’s the place to go for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores, and the prices are the cheapest in town.

I stopped in at Chinatown Market, on Jackson Street, for black and white sesame seeds, cheap cans of coconut milk, and tiny dried shrimp. By now, the backpack was starting to get awfully heavy, and I almost skipped the uphill walk to Rising Produce, located on the east side of the freeway on King Street.

But I wasn’t done yet, and Rising Produce has the cheapest vegetables in town. You have to pick over their produce carefully, but it’s worth the effort to save 50 to 75% over regular grocery stores. I also worked my way carefully to the back of the store (my backpack and canvas bag were bulging by now, and maneuvering was getting difficult), and bought five pounds of raw, shelled peanuts for a mere $1.25 a pound.

After using up my carrying capacity, I caught a bus back home. Now it’s time to figure out what to do with all this stuff, some kind of Cuban-Indian-Chinese fusion? Thank goodness for the Web, so I can search for recipes for all this stuff. In the meantime, I think I’ll just eat some pizza.

This spring, as we’ve been getting to know Bob Knosp, I discovered that South Beach is not just a fad. I never asked Bob how old he is. I just know that he’s got a grandchild, and he doesn’t look old enough for that. He credits South Beach for a lot of his health and vitality.

About a month ago, we went on a weekend sailing trip with Bob. I did the shopping, picking up things that would work with his dietary restrictions. Barry and I decided that we’d been hitting the sauce a bit too much lately, so we warned Bob that we were not going to bring any wine or alcohol. He said that was fine; Bob’s a very light drinker, and the diet doesn’t allow much besides a little wine, anyway.

Raftups with the Puget Sound Cruising Club are usually pretty wild floating parties. There’s often a potluck, with too many people crowding onto one boat, lots of decadent cheese- and sugar-laden dishes, and too much wine, beer, or tequila. I figured our plans to eat healthy and eschew alcohol might cause some eye-rolling among our friends.

Mike and Nita, on Odessa, tied alongside us. Nita is a fabulous cook who’s recently discovered that she’s allergic to wheat. I’d kept Nita’s allergy in mind as I planned my potluck dish, but I was totally surprised by her latest announcement.

“We just went on the South Beach diet,” she said. “We’re not allowed to drink this weekend.”

“Woo hoo!” Instead of a negative reaction, I was delighted. “Great! We’re not drinking, either!”

We ended up having two potlucks, with the five of us plus Rob and Anita from Decatur. They seemed taken aback by the South Beach dieters, but admitted that they were actually following a very low fat diet, required by Rob’s doctor after some heart trouble.

It was a wonderful weekend, with good company, great conversation, and excellent food. Who would think that giving up sugar, alcohol, and processed carbohydrates could make a party so much fun? If South Beach is the latest diet fad, please, Dr. Agatson, sign me up.

Note: The South Beach diet has recently gotten very commercial, with a subscription website and lots of commercial products in the grocery story. However, if you’re interested in learning about it, your best bet is to pick up a copy of the book at the library and read the first half. It’s only about 100 pages, and it can do wonders for your health, especially if you have a family history of diabetes or heart disease.

If you’ve never had a smoothie, it’s simply a fruit-based beverage prepared in a blender. They range from high-fiber and healthy to completely decadent, high-fat, and sugary.

I usually make smoothies for breakfast, since it’s a good way to get fruit, fiber, protein, and vitamins all in one easy package. When I worked in downtown Seattle, I’d go out with coworkers and order a smoothie for an afternoon pick-me-up. In the evening, a smoothie can substitute for a light dinner or be served as dessert, with or without alcohol.

Although there are thousands of published smoothie recipes and entire smoothie cookbooks, I’ve never followed a recipe to make one. Creating a smoothie is an art, not a science. I just look at the ingredient lists for ideas, and then I toss in a little of this and a little of that, blend it, and taste the result. It’s kind of like making soup.

Here are the four components of a delicious fruit smoothie.

Fruit

The old standby is the yellow Cavendish banana, which you can use at any stage of ripeness (a good way to use up over-ripe bananas). Strawberries are also common, as are other berries, such as blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Peaches, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon are all good, and speaking of melons, smoothies are a great way to use up excess (and there’s always excess!) watermelon. Tropical fruits are divine; consider mango, papaya, pineapple, guava, or passion fruit.

While you’re cleaning and cutting up the fruit, consider putting some in a bag in the freezer. When you’re in a hurry, you can toss a handful of the frozen pieces directly in the blender without thawing it.

In the winter, when you run out of frozen fruit, try making a smoothie with applesauce or even canned fruit.

Liquid

You’ll need some sort of liquid to turn your fruit into a beverage. Yogurt is my preference, but I’ve also tried milk, cream, soymilk, and water. You can also use tea (lemongrass tea, spiced chai, or peppermint tea add a lot of flavor) and coffee.

I keep fruit juice on hand just for smoothies — try mango nectar, orange juice, or pineapple juice. Pomegranate and grape juice are loaded with antioxidants and great for your health. If you’re trying to pack in extra calories, use coconut milk or chocolate milk.

I often add a splash of lime or lemon juice, but only if there’s no milk. A curdled smoothie is an ugly thing.

Flavorings

I have a habit of gilding the lily, throwing in ingredients that give my smoothies a little extra zing. My favorite are ginger and lime zest prepared on the Micro-Plane grater.

Sometimes I throw in cinnamon, another powerful antioxidant, or a tiny pinch of cayenne. You can also add chocolate syrup or powder, coffee, honey, sugar, maple syrup, and any flavor of sugar syrup, the kind used to flavor lattés. If you have an herb garden, try mint, rosemary, or lemon thyme.

One class of flavorings can elevate your smoothie to a whole new plane: Extracts. The old standby is vanilla, featured in the Orange Julius: Orange juice, sugar, ice cubes, and vanilla. Other extracts can also add a huge amount of flavor without changing the texture. Try a few drops of lemon, coconut, or orange.

Additions

To turn your fruit smoothie into a meal-on-the-go, add some protein. We’ve used protein powder, cottage cheese, sour cream, tofu, and cream cheese. Toasted, ground nuts or natural peanut butter are also delicious. Boost your energy level by adding nutritional yeast, chock-full of B vitamins, flax seeds, or powdered vitamins.

If your fruit is not frozen, you can toss in a few ice cubes to give the smoothie a nice thick texture. You can even add sherbet or ice cream, although that sounds suspiciously like a milkshake instead of a smoothie.

Assembling Your Smoothie

It doesn’t get much easier than this: Clean the fruit and cut into chunks. Pour the liquid into the blender, add the fruit, flavorings, and additions, and blend. Stop and taste it, and adjust the flavorings. I often find I need to add more zing in the form of lemon juice, ginger, or a teaspoon of sugar.

If the result is too thick, add more liquid, 1/4 cup at a time. If it’s too thin, add crushed ice or more fruit and blend it some more.

You can even make a smoothie without a blender at all! Choose soft fruit, like very ripe bananas and berries, and put it in a large, deep pot or bowl. Pour in plenty of liquid, roll up your sleeves, and mash the heck out of it with a potato masher. I ran across this solution at the Oregon Country Fair, where an outfit called LuLu’s Smoothies was producing hundreds of gallons of smoothies without electricity. Their secret? Young, healthy employees with strong arm muscles!

• If you need a little more direction on what to put in the blender, see my list of Smoothie Ideas.
• A lassi is a kind of smoothie from India. I wrote about yogurt and lassis back in January. Try a Creamsicle Lassi or a Pink Lassi.
• In Brazil, you can buy a suco on many street corners. It’s their version of a smoothie, made from one of the over 75 varieties of fruits that grow in Brazil.
• If all this is too healthy for you, skip the fruit and just make a milkshake (includes recipes for vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and cookie).
• For a series of life’s lessons learned through my blender, see My Blender, My Teacher, on Adventures with Meps and Barry.

The menu for our gathering was completely cheese-based. We had stilton, camembert, minted cream cheese, and something that smelled like dirty socks. There was a green salad with feta and a pan of baked macaroni and cheese. And for dessert, no-bake strawberry cheesecake tart.

As far as I’m concerned, there are two categories of cheese: The Good Stuff, and rat cheese. Not that I don’t love rat cheese! It’s a name we picked up from our friend Norm, who said that where he grew up in Texas, plain old yellow cheese was actually labeled that way.

Rat cheese can be colby, cheddar, or co-jack. We even call Monterey Jack or Mozzarella rat cheese. It’s the cheese you buy at the grocery store in large packages and use as an ingredient in macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches (also known as cheese dreams), and cheese-and-peas salad.

When I had my own refrigerator and freezer, I’d buy rat cheese in 3-pound blocks. A pound or so would get whacked off, carefully wrapped, and kept in the fridge. The challenge was stretching plastic wrap around the cheese so that no air could get in and allow mold.

The remaining pounds were grated, spread on cookie sheets, and placed in the freezer for a couple of hours. When it was frozen, we’d break it up (easy to do if you spread it out before freezing) and transfer it to large zip-lock bags. When a recipe called for a bit of cheese, we could grab a handful out of the freezer.

But living on a boat, or living without refrigeration, my cheese habits changed. Now I couldn’t keep pounds of cheese from molding, I had to buy little 8-oz packages. The price per pound difference gave me sticker shock.

As long as I was going to spend that much money on cheese and get only a small amount, why buy rat cheese? Why not buy The Good Stuff?

The Good Stuff is the kind of cheese that’s sold in wheels, not rectangles. One advantage to such cheese is that it can be rolled, as they do every year in a contest in Gloucestershire, England. Those who leave the event with broken bones and spinal injuries, however, may not consider that such an advantage. Especially since first prize is only a wheel of cheese that’s been bounced down a steep hill with hundreds of people rolling after it.

Rather than chase my gourmet cheese, I buy it, in small amounts. No longer do I buy 48 ounces of rat cheese, now I buy 4 ounces of gorgonzola. A small wedge of camembert can satiate my cheese needs for the week. I pick up small quantities of tangy feta, sweet gjetost, and creamy brie. My trusty Micro-Plane grater turns asiago into fluffy, artful shavings, and 2 ounces can last over a month.

Turning from the computer and looking into the fridge, I note that the smelly sweat sock cheese is gone, as is the goat cheese we used to stuff chicken breasts. There’s a bit of camembert left, a small bag of grated rat cheese, and a new chunk of parmesan.

What shall we do if we run out?

No problem: We’re just down the street from the Fremont Rocket. We’ll fly to the moon for some more!

Barbie had developed an Easter morning tradition, a special dish that her family loved and anticipated. It was called Goldenrod Eggs, and guess what? It used up a bunch of colorful hard-boiled eggs!

With a flock of chickens in the yard, you’d think that’s where the eggs would come from. But Barbie never hard-boiled her own eggs, because they were too fresh. They couldn’t be peeled; they’d have to sit in the fridge for six weeks before boiling them. Doesn’t that make you wonder how old your grocery store eggs are? And where they’ve been sitting?

So, despite a surfeit of fresh eggs, Barbie had to buy a few dozen at Easter-time, in order to make Goldenrod Eggs.

One day, when it wasn’t Easter, Barbie decided to get some store-bought eggs and make Goldenrod Eggs. Lucky me! I was the recipient of that beautiful, tasty breakfast.

Nowadays, I like to make them for Barry once in a while, even when it’s not Easter. Because everybody deserves something beautiful on their plate, first thing in the morning.