Back to Basics with Bison Burgers!

Well, this is day 5 for me with Bell's Palsy, and very fortunately, I am already starting to see some small improvements. I have learned from reading a super-helpful forum on the subject that 50% of people with BP recover completely in 3 months or less, an additional 35% recover in a year or less, and 15% don't fully recover. A lot of people don't see any improvement at all for 6-8 weeks, so I feel like I am making fabulous progress. I can now close my left eye and drink out of a glass without spilling, and my face is getting more symmetrical. I KNOW this is due to all the positive vibes and good wishes from all of you out there, so THANK YOU, and keep that good energy coming for a speedy and complete recovery!

I am feeling ok, though I am very fatigued. I've pretty much just been resting in bed the past several days. I have been advised to take it easy for the next two weeks, as the nerves in my face begin to regenerate. I went out today to the dr. and the pharmacy, picked up a few groceries, and then had lunch with DC, and was completely exhausted. I guess 3 hrs. of activity was too much! So I took a long nap, and feel much better. So much better, in fact, that I actually cooked dinner tonight!!

This is not really what I would normally consider a "blog-worthy" meal, but under the circumstances I am so excited I'm going to share anyway. We've been subsisting on take-out food for the past week or so, and I really wanted to find a way to get us out of that rut and into some healthier and tastier homemade food. So I am totally cheating this week with some help from my friends at Whole Foods.

I bought some pre-made bison burger patties for dinner tonight, along with some sweet potatoes and microwave-in-the-bag pre-prepped veggies. In order to make all this prefabrication palatable, I figured I would focus on oomphing up the flavor with condiments.

I know I have shown these before, but they are a huge family fave and really easy to make and so tasty and healthy. So here is a quick look at my

Sweet Potato Oven Fries
Preheat the oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with foil. I also like to spray the foil with nonstick spray. Peel 3 sweet potatoes. Garnets are my favorite, and I also really like the locally-grown purple sweet potatoes, which are very high in antioxidants. So today I used a mixture. Slice the potatoes into steak fries. Put them in a really big bowl, toss generously with some olive oil, and add the seasoning of your choice. We love cajun seasoning mix, and sometimes, but not today, I add some generous splashes of Cholula hot sauce. Dump the potatoes onto the prepped baking sheet and spread out in one layer. Bake for 20 minutes, or until tender. I like to turn the oven off and then leave the fries in the warm oven to crisp up for 10-15 minutes while I prep the rest of the meal.

Whoo, that was one hot oven! It totally fogged up the camera lens!


"Lemon-aise" Sauce for Steamed Veggies




DC isn't a huge veggie fan, but I have been able to tempt him to eat reasonable servings of veggies by dressing them up with various condiments. This simple sauce is also a huge family favorite, and is extremely tasty on plain veggies. It couldn't be easier to make!

Squeeze the juice of one fresh lemon into a bowl and whisk in mayonnaise to your taste. Add tamari or Pickapeppa sauce to taste. Crush one clove of garlic into the mixture, and add salt and pepper to taste. Taste again, and add more garlic, lemon, or mayo to suit your taste. Spoon over steamed veggies.

Sweet-Hot Pepperjack Bison Patties

I purchased 3 pre-made bison burger patties and as you know, I love my food spicy, so a sweet-hot combo sounded good to me. Bison tastes similar to ground beef (in my opinion, is actually even tastier) yet is much lower in fat. DC had never tried bison, so I decided to give it a go. I heated up my trusty griddle and sprinkled it with a thin layer of kosher salt, to give the burgers a nice crust. I think these weighed in at about 8 oz. each. I cooked them for 5-6 minutes on side 1, adding a bit of salt and pepper to the tops.

Then I turned them and cooked them for another 5-6 minutes, again adding a little salt and pepper.

Next, I brushed the top of each burger with a delicious product we have just discovered that is locally made, called Num Num Sauce. It is indeed nummy!! Isn't the little bottle cute?

Our WF sells it, and we just love it on salmon. It's a little like East Carolina BBQ sauce, but thicker and sweeter. It comes in Mild and Hot (I always go for the hot, natch!).


Then I added a slice of Pepperjack cheese to each patty and let them cook for another 3 minutes or so. I guess the fact that the cheese didn't totally melt should have clued me into the fact that they were still a bit rare when I pulled them off the griddle at that point and served them. DC liked his as it was, but as I have no desire to complicate my life further with food poisoning at this point, I popped my patty into the microwave to cook it through. Next time I'll know to either flatten the patties out or cook them longer. DC loved his bison burger!

At that point, DS returned home from having dinner with his dad and immediately came into the kitchen to ask what smelled so good! He has really been missing my cooking since I've been feeling sick. It has broken my heart, but lately every night around 9ish, he pokes his head into the family room and asks hopefully, "Dessert?" Well, tonight he didn't have to be disappointed. He even had a choice! WF had Ben and Jerry's ice cream on sale 2 for 1, so I bought some vanilla and also the Cinnamon Bun flavor DS has been wanting to try. I also bought some vanilla cupcakes. Frosting vs. ice cream?? The cupcakes won, hands down! Even though I didn't have the energy to make a homemade dessert, I still managed to put a smile on DS's sweet face.

Here is our very simple, yet delicious meal of Sweet-Hot PepperJack Bison Burgers, sweet potato oven fries, and steamed broccoli and cauliflower with lemonaise sauce:



It felt SO good to get back into the kitchen, even if I didn't really "make" the food!

My Mama's Soul Food

It's been cold, really cold for NC (below freezing) for the past several days. As I was planning the week's menus last night, I thought back to the rich, comforting taste of my mother's homemade soup. One of the most delightful memories of my childhood is coming home from school, cold, hungry and tired and asking Mom, "What's for supper tonight?" The answer almost always made us happy, but nothing made us happier than to hear her say "Soup." Unless she said "Spaghetti," always my big favorite; while my sister's favorite was always soup. We all knew what she was talking about when she said soup, since it was the only kind of soup she ever made.

My mom was a utilitarian cook; her meals were plain, but they got the job done. She never cooked from recipes. Somehow she just always knew how to cook everything. I'm sure it was quite a challenge to stretch our meager food budget to suit everyone's tastes and needs (I was widely known amongst our large extended family as being a "picky eater"). My mother really didn't enjoy cooking, but lucky for us, she was a good cook even so. I always told my friends at school, "My mom is the best cook in the world."

Unfortunately, we never thought to get Mom to write down any of her recipes-- except her recipe for soup. I also have her recipe for what we called "Spanish rice," which I dragged out of her because I wanted to take it to a church potluck. (Thank God she still remembered how to make it!) Actually, I remember that day very well. I was home from college on Christmas Break, and I had asked my mom if she'd give me the recipe. She said she'd try to remember. When I woke up the next morning, Mom had gone to work already, but stuck to the fridge (our family's time honored way to communicate with each other) was her handwritten recipe for the rice dish. I still have that handwritten note. The Spanish Rice was a huge hit at church.

If my mom's squash was the taste of summertime, her soup was the taste of winter. But it was the taste of so much more: of comfort, warmth, and love: the taste of home. When my sister went off to college, my mom went back to work as a nurse. That meant that she cut back on long-cooking foods like spaghetti, pot roast, and of course, soup. But when my sister came home for vacations, Mom always made a big pot of soup for her. This recipe is not fancy-- it is very simple and has unfashionable ingredients to our sophisticated palates today, like cabbage and rutabaga. Ingredients which must have been economical and allowed Mom to stretch her precious food dollars and delight us at the same time. My mom may not have been a fancy cook, but she knew what was good.

Today my mom, Elsie Brooks Brown, is almost 79 years old. She lives in a retirement home in Durham. She's in pretty good health and is still able to drive. We are very blessed to have her still with us. She pretty much gave up cooking about 30 years ago. My dad was working a lot of overtime at the plant and I was busy with all my afterschool activities, so we were rarely all home at the same time-- hardly worth the bother for my mom to cook actual meals.

But just one spoonful of Mom's soup takes me back to the days when we were all together, when our parents were young and happy. It reminds me that however hectic and chaotic and full of teen angst life may be, as hard as it is to juggle work and home, this is the good stuff right now: the times we'll look back on with fondness. Of course, the "empty nest" years will have their own particular sweetness, so there's plenty of good stuff ahead, too: just different good. And I do treasure this time. I know how fast the next three years are going to pass. Then my son will be off to college. Of course, he'll be home for vacations, and I'll cook all his favorite foods-- but he'll never really live at home again.

This soup is my mother's soul food. It is food that now feeds my family's soul. It will always be the taste of home, of my mother's love.

This simple soup shows that you don't need lots of seasonings to make a good soup.


Elsie's Vegetable Soup

2-3 lbs. of boneless beef short ribs
1 lb. beef marrow bones
1 rutabaga, quartered (peel first if waxed)
1 small head green cabbage, tough outer leaves and core removed, sliced into ribbons
1 onion, chopped
2 14 oz. cans Hunts diced tomatoes
3 stalks celery, sliced
3-4 carrots, sliced
6 0z. pasta (elbows, pipettes, etc.)
3 qt. (approximately) water
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the short ribs, marrow bones, rutabaga, cabbage, onion, celery, carrots, and tomatoes 1 t. salt, and black pepper to taste in a large stockpot. Add water to cover generously. Bring to a boil and cook at a slow boil, covered, for 1 1/2 hrs., or until meat is tender. Taste the broth. If it tastes too watery, remove the lid and bring to a rolling boil so that some of the liquid can evaporate. If the broth is flavorful, add the pasta. Boil for 10 more minutes, or until the pasta is tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove the marrow bones and the rutabaga.

My blissful soup making experience turned out to be different than I expected.

The first challenge I faced was that Whole Foods did not have any boneless short ribs. Usually the butcher offers to cut some for me, but not today. I was stuck getting the ones with the bones. I was able to find some very nice marrow bones, however.

The next thing that happened was that my timing got completely thrown off when I arrived home at about 6:30 p.m. with the groceries. DS called from his band's rehearsal to say he needed a ride home, which I hadn't expected. I rushed home, and DC helped me drag the groceries into the house. And then I had to go pick up DS, which took about 20 min.

By the time I got the groceries put away and was finally ready to start cooking, it was almost 8.

So I decided that to save some time, I'd cook the beef and bones in the pressure cooker for 25 minutes or so while I was getting the veggies ready to go.

Short ribs in the pressure cooker

Adding the marrow bone


After adding water, salt and some oil to help de-scummify the pressure cooker so it won't clog.


Beef simmering in the pressure cooker at high pressure.



A closer look at the pressure guage


For those of you who have never seen one, this is a rutabaga. It's kind of like a cross between a turnip, a carrot, and a potato in flavor. This one had wax on it, so I had to peel it.


Peeled rutabaga in the veggie pot


This is how I cut the carrots for this soup


Carrot, celery & rutabaga in the pot


My cabbage was not very green. I had already removed the tough outer leaves.


You can see the core in the center of the cabbage


I've removed the core from one half of the cabbage and cut it into two pieces


Almost done slicing the cabbage into ribbons. This was a pretty big cabbage, so I only used 3/4 of it.


Cabbage and tomatoes added to the pot


Veggies are simmering

Something pretty amusing happened while I was cutting up the veggies. Huckleberry, our dog, was keeping a watchful eye on me, in case I needed him to police the area. Proving that he has unshakeable faith that anything that falls from the counter is utterly delicious and much better than dog food, he actually ate the rutaba peel I dropped on the floor enroute to the trash can.


Huck eating rutabaga peel

My timesaving scheme would have worked well, except that I added too much water to the vegetables. So once the beef was cooked, and I added it and the beef broth to the vegetables, it was WAY too watery. Which meant that I had to spend the next 1/2 hour or so boiling the broth down. It would have been a great idea to boil down the beef broth by itself, since there was less in that pot, but I didn't think of that until too late!


Beef is done and ready to add to the veggie pot


The soup was kind of pallid tasting so I added the bones to it so it would get more flavor while cooking down

And then, once the soup was done, I had to pick all meat and bones out, so I could separate the meat from bones and that kind of yucky connective tissue that attaches it to the bone. It was hot so it took a while. I also cut the meat up into smaller pieces (that would fit on your spoon better!)


The soup is done; I've removed the marrow bones and the rutabaga


HOT meat and bones to separate!


Meat ready to add back to the pot

Again, I'm pretty lucky: my guys are usually pretty patient while I'm in the kitchen. Although DS did ask so many times when dinner would be ready I finally said, "Look, I don't know-- it's not as if the soup and I have a contractual agreement!"

I had plenty of time to make some from-scratch buttermilk biscuits while I was waiting, and I will post about them shortly.

But in the end, the soup finally got ready, and it was delicious! Worth waiting for.


Finished soup


Homemade soup and from-scratch buttermilk biscuits: YUM-O!

Been Through the Mill?

I'm actually talking about the food mill. I love kitchen tools-- there are few things more enjoyable than finding the perfect tool for the job: a microplane grater for citrus zest, a vegetable peeler that is tough enough to remove skin from butternut squash and still feel good in your hand. Although I really hate to buy a tool that only performs one function, if I really need it, and will use it often, I'll get it. My citrus reamer, or garlic press, for example.

My food mill, on the other hand, is very versatile: it creates velvety smooth purees and sauces, can be used to de-seed berries, such as blackberries or raspberries, is indispensible for certain kinds of tomato sauces, and you can make babyfood with it, too! That's actually how I acquired my first food mill, a small, mostly plastic model. My sister sent it to me to make babyfood for DS, back in the days when he was mostly toothless. It's a "multitasker" (to use Alton Brown's term) par excellence.

My old plastic mill has long since bit the dust, and I can't remember when I acquired my current stainless steel industrial-strength one. I know it looks a little intimidating, with all its parts and mangle-y things. It's actually less complicated than it looks and is simple to use. And when I need it, I've got it-- so I feel it was worth every penny.

First, most food mills come with a variety of disks to force the food through, from coarse to fine. Mine has three:

Papa bear (Coarse), Mama Bear (Not So Coarse) and Baby Bear (Fine).
You insert a disc, "pointy-side up", in the bottom of the bowl. Like so (this is "Baby Bear"):


The other parts are the bowl and forcing blade.

My bowl has a handy little grabbing handle opposite the long skinny handle, so you can get better traction while working.

Finally, the forcing blade, which is spring-loaded for oomph and has little slots that lock into the little attacmements on the side of the bowl, plus the "easy-crank" handle.

It looks like this when you get it all put together:


One of the best uses for the food mill is making wonderful homemade applesauce, which is nice to serve with pork or of course you can eat it just as a snack or a healthy dessert. Applesauce made with a food mill contains a lot more pectin that regular applesauce, and also more nutrients and flavor since you can cook the apples in their skins.

I was inspired to make applesauce today because I had some apples that were starting to get a little spotty and I wanted to use them up. As with making an apple pie, it's best to use a variety of apples for applesauce. You can toss in some eating apples too, that normally you wouldn't cook with, like Fujis.

Besides your foodmill, a good knife, and a cooking pot, here's what you'll need to make
Fast and Easy Homemade AppleSauce

3 lbs. assorted apples (5 or 6 apples)
1/4-1/2 c. sugar
1/4 t. salt
1/2 c. water
Juice of 1 lemon, freshly squeezed

That's it!

Here are my apples. I had a Granny Smith, a Golden Delicious, 2 Jonagolds, and one of DC's Galas that he loves for snacks, that was getting a bit sad looking for eating out of hand.


Once you round up your apples, wash them very well.
Then cut them into quarters, peel, core, and all. (I do toss any loose seeds or stems.)


Next, put the apples in the cooking pot. I'm using a 4-qt saucepan (with a lid) here. You need a lid.

Next, add the water, 1/4 c. of the sugar, and the salt.


Bring the pot to a boil over high heat.


Now, turn the heat down, cover and simmer over very low heat for about 30 minutes, until the apples are very tender. Stir every 5 minutes or so.

Here are my apples at the 15-minute mark. Definitely getting soft!

And at 30 minutes: Done!


My particular food mill fits best in something that has a narrow top. In this case, my cooking pot would work perfectly. But first I have to pour the apples out into a bowl so they can be processed. My medium size bowl is in the dishwasher, so I used this honking big one.


Now to put the food mill together. So that the applesauce does not acquire the dubious texture of babyfood, I am going to use the coarsest disk. (Of course, if an actual baby is going to be eating this, I would use the finest disk!)

Here, I've put the coarsest disk (Papa Bear) into the bowl pointy side up.


Next, put the forcing blade in and lock it in place:

Now, I put the assembled, ready-to-go food mill on top of my now-empty cooking pot.


Now, pour the apples into the food mill:



And start cranking!


Finished!


What the foodmill does is to effortlessly separate the skins, cores, seeds, etc. from the apple pulp. The peels, seeds and cores are too big to fit through the holes in the disk, and they stay behind in the bowl. Meanwhile, the now-pureed apples come out the bottom:


Now, taste the puree. Does it need sugar? If so, add up to a 1/4 c. Fresh lemon juice is delicious in applesauce, so I added the juice of 1 fresh lemon.



And here is my pot full of delicious homemade applesauce. You can see that it is much richer in color than storebought applesauce. It also has more pectin, since we cooked the skins and cores along with the apples.


Time to eat! This is still warm, and you can see it's just a bit loose. As it cools, it will set up and get thicker.


Bon appetit! !Buen provecho! Dig in!