“Life’s a looming battle to be faced and fought,” exhorts Mr. Banks, the papa in Mary Poppins, while Julie Andrews waits calmly for him to finish yelling. He might as well have been the family cook, because that’s the way preparing Supper can feel, even in its hunting and gathering phase. I hike the first pair of grocery sacks in from the car, and even before I dash out for the second set, I unpack the items which need to go in the freezer and the fridge. I drag in the second set, losing both enthusiasm and energy now, and I always wish at this point that I had someone who did this FOR me! I remind myself that I no longer have a car-seated baby or a toddler stopped in the doorway, stranding me on the steps with a badly-packed paper grocery sack threatening to break in each hand and my purse handle between my teeth, but grocery shopping still seems unnecessarily hard.
It WAS hard in the days when my daughter was an infant, and I remember one dark winter Friday night bursting into tears behind the wheel of the car because I hadn’t found her formula at either the warehouse or the grocery stores. She was with me, just seven months old, her car seat in the front passenger seat—this being the days before we knew all the statistics about children and car accidents-- and her little eyes widened at this new development, a visibly crazy mother, crying. Thankfully, I don’t think she was scarred.
But I did that marathon Friday night shopping because I was at school during the week, and getting that sort of errand done on Friday night gave me my best shot at a Saturday spent blissfully at home with no interruptions except the ones we chose, like watching Sesame Street.
It was a similar decision, giving a problem my best shot as my solution, which gave rise to my Second Vegetable on the Supper Plate rule. Back some 30 years ago when I developed my ideas for setting up housekeeping and training myself to eat in a healthy fashion, I could feel the nutrition experts wagging their fingers at me behind my back, mostly because I wouldn’t eat oatmeal for breakfast, couldn’t survive eating fish without that crunchy accompanying “stick,” and screwed up my face in horror at any preparation of spinach. Fixing and eating a second vegetable for Supper was, then, my attempt to do the best I could, and it’s been a part of my routine ever since.
It ain’t easy, however, to think of one that doesn’t break one of my cardinal meal preparation rules, i.e., using as few cooking vessels as possible or keeping preparations simple. This is where I am forced to use great ingenuity OR make something which lasts for more than one meal—gasp. . . a leftover! I’m including a recipe in this entry for a red cabbage slaw which could be used for two meals, and its lovely flourish of toasted pecans could be fixed each night, thereby making it seem as though it were fresh each night.
For a source of continuing inspiration, however, check out Everyday Food magazine: http://www.marthastewart.com/everyday-food?src=footer It’s that little magazine at the check stand with the big color block FOOD on it. It’s published by Martha Stewart’s company, comes out monthly, and uses as its basic tenets that food should be simply and quickly prepared. One of its current sections is called “On The Side,” and there are usually 3-4 suggestions with great pictures. The issue’s contents show up as programs in the PBS series: http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/ or even on Martha’s daily show.
I don’t remember the source of the recipe for the red cabbage slaw, but it’s a go-to for me several times in a month. First, it’s extremely healthy, as are all things brightly colored, except Skittles. Second, it’s easy preparation, and it makes you keep your knives sharp. Finally, it’s a good venue for experimenting with a new vinegar or nut oil, say pecan oil. You can also change out the nuts, substituting walnuts, for example, and wouldn’t that be the perfect time to use the walnut oil languishing on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator door? Indeed! If you’ve never toasted nuts, here’s a nice explanation of how to do it: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/tips-techniques/cooking-basics-how-to-toast-nuts-and-why-062462 And if you really don’t want to do the “salt cure” technique the recipe describes, you don’t have to, but it produces an entirely different texture of cabbage shred, so it’s worth it, and your chicken breast will be done roasting in 30 minutes, anyway!
Next time: The Fruit Course
The recipe:
Pecan Cabbage Slaw
Ingredients: red cabbage, kosher salt, pecan halves, vinegar (red wine or other specialty vinegar, like sherry vinegar), oil (olive or other nut oil, such as pecan oil), freshly ground black pepper
Sharpen your chef’s knife, and cut slices from a head of red cabbage as thinly as possible. As you are doing so, picture how much you could eat at one sitting (maybe 1/2 cup), and cut that amount for every person at the table. You can sort out the thick pieces as you do the next step, but when you finish cutting, you want thin shreds of red cabbage about 2-3 inches long.
Place the cabbage, a layer at a time, in a strainer, sprinkling each layer with a very generous amount of kosher salt. Let the cabbage stand in the strainer at room temperature for 30 minutes. It will give off some liquid as it sits, so place the strainer over a bowl to protect your counter or sink from the cabbage’s purple stains.
Toast some pecans, using your toaster oven or the dry skillet method, 5 pecan halves for each serving of red cabbage you’ve planned.
After the allotted standing time for the cabbage, rinse the cabbage well and dry it so that it will take the dressing. In the serving bowl you plan to use for the salad, pour a scant quarter teaspoon of vinegar for each serving of cabbage; take your whisk in hand, and gradually whisk in the same amount of oil. Once the vinegar and oil have blended, give the dressing a taste to see if you’d like more oil, but be careful. Less is more in this case. Grind in several grinds of black pepper, and turn the cabbage in the dressing lightly. You won’t need salt, because the cabbage has “salt-cured.”
If I’ve made too much dressing, I cut some leaves of romaine lettuce to make a bed for the salad, and mixing the cabbage and lettuce together will absorb the extra vinegar and oil, as well as add another dimension of green to the plate.
Sprinkle on the pecans and serve.
