#8 - Fruit

I don’t remember what she looked like, nor do I remember where I met her or under what circumstances this exchange took place, but I’ve been jealous of this woman for over 35 years.  We were probably talking about food, a conversation I have had with everyone I’ve ever met eventually, and she grinned as she said, “I need to eat a candy bar after I eat lunch, so I do.”

Her wry deliverance—“I need”-- and her quick grin have stayed with me powerfully through the years, and when I hear the echo of her voice, I always wish I were That Girl, whoever she was.  Of course, I was an adult when I heard her say that, and even all those years ago, I’m sure her definition of  “need” was much different than the one ringing in my head all the time, but that makes little difference to my feeling that I have to justify myself every time I’d like to have a candy bar.  However, that little mind game is a story for next time.

This time, I’m talking about fruit, whole pieces of fruit served without any preparation or adulteration, and I do indeed think of fruit as something I “need” to eat, whether I want to or not.  Back the 30 years ago before my daughter was born when I was teaching myself to eat healthy (See #7 – A Second Vegetable), I decided that I would eat fruit only if I took the time to do so, and that’s when I devised another of my Supper rules: Fruit is to be served as a separate course, and it must be eaten every Supper time.

I suspect I was influenced by the obviously romantic descriptions read or seen in movies of long European meals eaten in summery orchards or vineyards. After all, it’s easy to imagine yourself eating fruit when it’s juicily ripe and doesn’t need anything but a light wash to make it appetizing. And you’re already sitting down!  How hard can that be, to cut up a peach and share the slices around the table??  We’ve all raised our children to enjoy pieces of banana, just the way my niece was a blueberry eater, and I can still see her bald little head and tiny index finger chasing frozen blueberries around on her highchair tray.  Once they were in her hand, they were smooshy enough to spread all over her face so that she was blue from her nose to her chin, very happily so.  That was too messy for me, so my own daughter never got to enjoy a baby blueberry course.

She did, however, carry the “fruit as separate course” rule with her into college. In their first apartment together during their sophomore years, one evening after she and  her college roommate  had finished their evening meal and cleaned up,  my daughter was standing in the doorway of the kitchen eating a banana.  Her roommate asked, “How can you EAT that?”  My daughter replied, “I need to.” 

Adult fruit servings, particularly in the winter, as we are now, are harder to plan and eat, however.  There’s the apple, nut, cheese thing, matching very nicely with red wine, making everyone linger at the table. . . nice thought, but I really don’t like apples, so it’s not my ideal. I have trouble taking bananas seriously enough to eat them at Supper; they’re sort of a breakfast food in my book.  And this isn’t the season for lush tree fruits or berries.

I will, however, cut up an orange or wait for a pear to ripen on the counter and cut it at the table at the appropriate time; pineapples from Costa Rica have just come to my grocery market, and I will sharpen my big knife and attack a pineapple with abandon, thus having a piece of fruit which lasts several days in the fridge. If I wait a week before I buy another one, I won’t suffer those sore places in my mouth from eating too much citrus!

I will also relax the rule when I can find a way to serve fruit before the meal begins, as a part of an appetizer, for example, so when grapes are in season, they’ll be offered with cheese before Supper.  And this winter, I’ve been segmenting grapefruit (Here’s how to segment a citrus fruit: http://cookblast.com/video/how-to-segment-an-orange-awt-on-itv-s-daily-cooks-552540) to layer with avocado, toasted walnuts, and a lemony vinaigrette on a bed of lettuce.  The Fruit Course is covered, in both scenarios.

On a bad day, though, when eating fruit is just one more damn thing, and it’s one thing TOO much, there are always those Orange Essence Prunes that Sunsweet packages.  Two of them are just perfect when I’m feeling put upon, and then I can still feel good about moving on to dessert!

Next time: Always dessert!

How I cut up an orange without peeling it:

Do the first step of the Segmenting a Citrus Fruit video referenced above, cutting off the ends of the orange.  I do this on a plate so all the juice is caught there, therefore,  I’m definitely NOT using my big knife!  Save those ends; they’re fun to scrape with your top teeth, and the bottom one is the sweetest, so save it for yourself.

Place a flat edge of the orange on the plate, and cut down vertically right through the center of the orange, being sure you cut through that white dot in the center, even if it isn’t in the center of the orange.

Now, leaving the resulting half an orange on the same flat edge, cut down through its center again, again being sure you’re cutting through that white center dot.  Do the same with the other half.  Now, you have four wedges.

This step is where it really pays to keep your knives sharp!  You’re going to cut off the narrowest part of each wedge, keeping each wedge standing vertically.  Doing so guarantees that you’ll take all the seeds with you, but it will be messy, so keep up your courage and vow to sharpen your knife before the next time you cut an orange this way.

Now, cut the neatly-clean, de-seeded wedges in half horizontally, and you’ll have little trapezoid shapes of orange that you can stick in your mouth, orange flesh first, just between your front teeth. Grin, so that only the outside of the orange shows.  Try it; it looks crazy, and the kids will LOVE it.

#7 - A Second Vegetable

“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.