To Thine Own Self, Be Food

Hey, is anyone else exhausted? Christmas is over, the presents have been unwrapped and oohed-and-aaahed over, and calories have been consumed in excess. It's the circle of life? that Elton John sang about in The Lion King. Today's post will be short, because I am in dire need of a nap.  Then, I'm Date Nighting with my sons to see Star Wars.  But yes, I am continuing with the Kitchen Alphabet Challenge, and I realize I'm way behind. Every year, at my in-laws, one of the "gifts" we bring for my mother-in-law is a meal.  Each of the four brothers and his wife prepare a meal for the family, so that MIL can relax and enjoy the grandchildren.  This year, the hubs and I had Tuesday: Lunch.  And since most of the brothers would be leaving shortly after lunch, we needed to keep it quick and low-key and light. What epitomizes all those things? Hot dogs! Usually, there are no hot dogs in the house unless I'm gone for a long period of time and Brent's ...

Almost three weeks have passed since my last post.  Yeah.  This wonderful, great kitchen alphabet challenge.  And I have fallen off the wagon but hard. I realize I have lost all credibility with my readers.  There is no reason to read Be Food or believe a word I say.  So, while I still write this blog for you, dear readers, I mostly write now for myself. Okay.  At last post, I was enthralled by the whole grain farro.  Which, upon further research, turns out to be sold as a whole-grain...but is a wheat-type grain...bad news bears for any of you gluten-free folk out there (and I know of one). My latest grocery store discovery a couple of weeks ago was this little prize: Freekeh.  I know you want to pronounce it like 'freaky'...but no, it's free-kah.  It sounds so very exotic and Middle Eastern-originating.  It's used in similar ways to farro or quinoa or bulgur or even rice.  I substituted it for farro in a mus...

I'll be the first to admit...my D and E of the Alphabet Kitchen Challenge were really pathetic.  Dark chocolate and deviled eggs?  360 degrees of lame! And I think today, I redeem myself a bit. Frittatas are not that experimental around Chez Nelson; we've had them often.  I like them over omelets because a.) they're easier to make (IMO) and b.) they lend themselves much more to weeding the leftover out of the fridge. So... Fridge Orphans to be Used: Asparagus and goat cheese New Addition: Farro Farro is a grain, one that been around for centuries, but has recently entered our culinary consciousness in the last few years (no doubt with the go-whole-grains frenzy).  Ironically, my local Walmart did NOT have farro (six kinds of quinoa and one box of barley, yes...farro, no), but the local small-town grocery store DID have it. Huh. The farro needs to be cooked before it's thrown into the frittata, and if you follow the careful directions on the back of the b...

I really thought about trying to work Edamame or Endive into the Thanksgiving menu, but alas, it just didn't happen. I hosted Thanksgiving at my house again this year; we've been here the last three years.  This year's feast was attended by my parents, my in-laws, and my brother-in-law and his new wife.  I usually take my audience into consideration when I'm developing my menu, and there have years where I've tried some unusual, non-traditional foods because of WHO was attending.  And everyone is always very polite when the foods get crazy, but I've found with my parents and in-laws, especially, it's simpler to keep it more traditional. But, not without my usual fiddling around, of course.  Last year (no, two years ago...last year was the all-in-one Thanksgiving casserole), I did an amazing cornbread stuffing and it was excellent...but my dad stomped on my parade a little when he said he didn't care for it, and that he just wanted regular stuffing. ...

Yesterday was one of those glorious Saturday such as our family has not had in some long time. For starters, nobody at Chez Nelson had any engagements: no food truck detritus, no soccer, no Boy Scouts, no Student Council, no friends over...NOTHING. And, we'd just received about six inches of snow the day/night before... It was really just the perfect day to stay home, stay inside, and stay in pajamas. Definitely a comfort food-type of day, right? But, not normal comfort food...because when have you ever known me to be normal?  Normal might be chili and chocolate pudding, but to me, comfort food on this snowy, chilly Saturday becomes: shakshuka and chocolate-pinot noir puddings. Shakshuka is a northern African cuisine that consists mostly of eggs that have been simmered or otherwise cooked in a spicy tomato sauce.  It's also popular in other Eastern countries such as Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, etc. While we had it for dinner, it's definitely a breakfast favorite i...

I seem to be moving along the spice-meat lines here with this alphabet challenge.  Alas. Today's kitchen experimentations involve ingredients which have become more mainstream over the last few years.  One has been recently taken over a big damned fast-food franchise (which shall remain nameless) and one IS the name of another big, damned food franchise. I'm going to set the record straight.  In that relatively ignorant manner in which international foods are talked about by Americans who may or may not know what they're talking about.  Moderation, people, is the key here.  That, and don't believe everything you read. Honestly, try to sort of believe everything you read here.  I try to keep it legit.  It's just, well, chorizo and chipotle are foods native to a culture that I am not...so I won't claim to be an expert.  Long time learner, folks. Here in my hometown, there's a sweet, sweet, sweet, authentic taco truck...and they offer chorizo...

I understand.  This hot mess to the right is hardly discernible as food.  Sometimes (well, a lot of times), I finish a dish, plate it up, sit down with my family for dinner, start eating, and then...ARGH.  I need to take a picture for the blog. By that time, my plate looks like a warzone.  But, everything I do, I do it for you...and there is no other option. Burrata is a cheese.  A fabulous, fun cheese.  It looks like a small, baseball-sized lump of mozzarella...then you cut into it and a creamy, cheesy filling of another sort oozes from the middle.  It's like surprise cheese. And of course, I can't find it around here.  Thus, I traveled to the state capital to purchase.  And then I baked some garlicky, buttery acorn squash and set pieces of this burrata on top of it, hot from the oven. It gets all melty, gooey, and delicious. Gotta have the burrata.

With the more contemplative winter months ahead, my focus shifts from the all-consuming but even-exciting food truck business to this blog and other food-related adventures.  And so, the question is: What goal or challenge can I set? How can I keep myself accountable for continuing to write at Be Food? An ABC Kitchen Challenge!  Are you ready? Several weeks ago, I saw this at my local grocery store.  I don't see this type of thing there very often, so naturally I picked up and put it in my cart.  Somewhere, someday, I would find a way to use this. Achiote is a tree which produces seeds that, when ground, has a very distinct yellow-reddish hue.  Taste-wise, it's not terribly auspicious, which makes it perfect for the food processing industry, because achiote - a.k.a annatto - is a naturally occurring substance that provides a rich color (i.e. for dyeing) and does not alter flavor of the original product all that much.  Score for Kraft, et al. After...

My last post was over a month ago.  In September.  Well. A LOT has happened since then. I opened my food truck business in late September, and most of October was spent working in it, working on it, thinking about it, ordering food for it, etc. I suppose I could put you through your paces and make you read an entire litany of words on how this month went, yada yada yada.  But, I won't.  It's November and that's National Novel Writing Month for me...so I've had enough words for today.  Instead, pictures and brief commentary. For the record, this month of our Grand Opening was simply to just "get our feet wet".  We wanted to see how it went, get our systems and rhythms in place.  To say that October 2015 exceeded my wildest dreams is an understatement.  To better things in 2016! Ham, Swiss, Pickles, Dijon Mustard = The Hamlet (I Am) In addition to Cream of Tomato soup that we offered every week, I made a soup from scratch - and this...

Three months ago, I bought a food truck. Today, WanderLunch (yes, shameless FB plug) opened for its first day of service. To quote the oft-quoted Jerry Garcia, what a long, strange trip it's been. Frankly, I thought this day would actually never come.  Between truck repairs, licensing issues, and general business and food information gathering, I felt like I was playing around for the longest time. Until today, that is. After spending much of Thursday and Friday working on food truck preparation, we rolled out and pulled up to the parking lot of the Cellar Peanut Pub at 8:00 a.m.  Our first order was taken at 10:55 a.m. In the end, five hours later, we'd sold 75 sandwiches, and poured a couple dozen cups of Cream of Tomato soup.  The food truck has no cooling system, so we sweated it out in 90-some degree kitchen heat. And it was so much fun.  We played music, we joked around, we talked with people.  Yeah, I'm wiped the hell out.  My legs hur...

Yes, I just invoked *that* level of intensity. This week is the "make-or-break" week.  Well, no, okay, not really...but it's pretty damned important. First of all, my mobile unit business (aka Food Truck) is very nearly all-systems-go.  One last visit to the truck doctors and WanderLunch will be ready for its Kickoff Week. Yeah, no more messing about.  Time to get real.  Or something. To start, though, I'm catering a private business function on Tuesday, and the menu looks like this: Hummus and Vegetable Cups Butternut Squash and Sage Pesto Bruschetta Caprese Cocktail Meatballs Dulce De Leche Bars Mini-Strawberry Mousse Parfaits For visuals, this is what I mean: thriftyveggiemama.com foodnetwork serestocollars.com my private archives The request was for simple fingerfoods, and the time frame is 4-6:30.  Early evening...which to me, screams for light fare.  Hence, the above.  There's quite a bit I can make ahead an...

Here's your history lesson today.  It's well-known that India was under British control for many years before the middle of last century.  And who knew? Imperialism is a two-way street.  While many Indians adapted and assimilated the English, the Brits found certain aspects of Indian life appealing as well...namely, their cuisine.  Dishes like curry and chicken tikka masala are as common in England as fish and chips.  It's quite interesting, though, that the Indian cuisine popularity did not quite extend across the pond here in the US. Oh, to be sure, curry is ubiquitous here in the States, but not to the extreme that it is over the Sea. I think most people associate curry with spice, and that is true.  However, the spice is different from say, a Mexican habañero spice.  Curries contain spices like cumin, cinnamon, ginger...which give it a more "warm" spiciness as opposed to a complete burning off of your taste buds.  We've been to Indian re...

Almost two weeks since my last post here at Be Food.  Not quite two weeks, but almost.  Still.  Laaaaaame. I'm taking a few minutes to compose today's post whilst my husband and 14-year-old daughter discuss what exactly "watch me nae-nae" means.  Also, he appears to be shocked that photos of him are on her Instagram feed. But anyway. This brief montage pretty much sums up my Saturday.  Puttering in my kitchen and making magic happen.  We're having a teacher friend and her electrician husband over for dinner...as a thank-you for all the incredible good work he's done for us the last couple of weeks. I really dithered over the menu...I mean, it is just friends, but there's still a small part of me that really wants to wow.  However, I didn't want to knock myself out completely in the kitchen and not enjoy the company.  I haven't made the Bolognese for some time, and with the cooler weather as of late, there seemed no better time to ...

Oh, now, don't you just want to read on with a provocative title like that? By nudity, I mean of tomatoes.   The harvest from the garden is ongoing, although things appear to be slowing down a bit.  I have more tomatoes than I can eat fresh without causing my mouth to erupt from overacidulation. I have diced a bunch and made tomato juice...and frozen all of it.  So, today, with the mass that was ripe-n-ready, blanching, peeling, deseeding were the order of operations.  And luckily for me, my two sons pitched in and helped.  The youngest, who's 11, wanted to know what 'blanching' was.  Blanching, of course, is the process by which food is cooked quickly in hot water/oil and cooled immediately in ice/cold water.  Tomatoes benefit from this process because it makes them way easier to peel.  However, blanching is a good thing to do for any food that usually takes a long time to cook (e.g. vegetables).  Once they're cooled down, they can b...

Mini-bacon quilts, that is. If every small child and homeless person had a quilt like this when they were cold and/or scared, they would stop being that way immediately. The inspiration for this came in the form of an subscription email from Food & Wine.  The Mad Tips guy, Justin Chapple , complained that most BLT sandwiches have one major problem in common.  The bacon is in strips, and doesn't lay properly in a square sandwich...meaning, and this is a big deal, it's nearly impossible to get bacon goodness in every bite. For the record, I'm really not into bacon that much.  I don't go to Baconfests, I don't drool over bacon-wrapped stuff, I don't even have it in my house that much.  However... and if I'm going to do BLTs...then boy howdy, I'm going to do it right.  Enter Chapple's tip about the bacon weave.  Bacon in every bite.  Tomatoes from the garden, and lettuce from the fresh food co-op basket.  That's summer, folks. T...

Two meanings, for me, that particular phrase: I have three children, that's three separate incidents of labor...they are my fruit, so to speak. And the countdown is on...less than a month until my special little fruits return to school.  Get this: I will have two children in high school and one in his last year of elementary.  Most of the time, I don't really believe it...I don't certainly feel that old.  Anyway... I have a garden, and it is that time of season to begin the harvest and reap the fruits of those labors, so to speak. My father-in-law calls me yesterday and asks if I'd like sweet corn.  Sharing the fruits of his labors, as it were.  Of course I say yes, all the while wondering what the Bejesus I'll do with all this corn.  Remember, we planted three rows in my parents' garden and we are now picking all those as well.  And there's only so much sweet corn one can really eat before the ol' digestive system just shuts down. In my humb...

The Phantom Menace Attack of the Clones  Revenge of the Sith  A New Hope The Empire Strikes Back Return of the Jedi The Force Awakens All Star Wars movie titles.  Pretty succinct, but with enough wordage to pique your interest, yes? That's kind of what I was going for with today's blog title...and while it doesn't really fit in with the jargon of the SW franchise, it's got that same edgy terseness. At least, I think so.  Just agree with me for now.  It'll make me feel better. So.  You've heard that saying, "it's not what you know, it's who you know"? or "things happen for a reason"?  How about this one: "Oh, dear gods, what did I just do?" Well... Less than a week ago, I purchased a food truck.  No, I don't plan on carrying on Fred Hickory's legacy of Original Ozark Mountain BBQ.  I do plan on driving around, though, and feeding people out of this truck.   I'm learning a lot about filling o...

Today was one of the hottest, most humid days so far this summer here in Iowa.  Pretty unbearable, really, until I decided to take my two youngest kids to the local pool. The first time I go every year always gives me pause because I'm really looking at two things: swimsuits and tattoos and the trends I might notice in each. If I were to write about my own personal history of swimsuits, it would be very simple: no bikinis, two maternity swimsuits, a host of forgettable one-pieces, a MiracleSuit, and then in my 30s, I began to wear the Lands' End look popular for many, many mothers across the nation: Thank you, Lands' End.  She is lovely. Don't get me wrong, this is a cute outfit.  I love the color and paisley is one of my favorite patterns.  The straps are adjustable for comfort, and the underwire supports big boobs. The bright pattern distracts from the baby pooch leftovers, and the comfy shorts provide upper thigh coverage so that a.) other swimmers don'...

I admit, caramelized onions don't sound terribly appealing.  Probably because onions are juicy and pungent and a bit spicy.  And it's hard to get past the word caramelized without seeing the word caramel , which brings a sweet, brown candy or sauce to mind.  Hard to put those two things together, I grant you. In the culinary world, caramelizing is a process to bring forth the natural sugars found in most fruits, vegetables, and meats.  It's what happens when you cook a hamburger or a steak - why the red meat turns brown.  It's why bread browns when it's baking.  And it's why onions get delicious. A note: Chop more onions than you think you'll need.  They'll reduce and cook down quite a bit, and you'll look at the amount and think: but I cut so much more than that! Yeah, you did, but still. I julienned my onions for this process, but really any way will work, as long as it's fairly thin. A mandoline is a great tool for this, as you'll ...