Food, Family, and Memory

chef-giada-de-laurentiis-cookslaraine newman cameo lgBetween watching TV, overeating, avoiding walking the dog and playing Jewel Quest 2, who has time to plan meals? Not me. But lately I just can’t stand it anymore. Also, the overeating has brought me to my knees. Literally. My knees are killing me! What I’ve been doing lately is watching the various cooking channels while foraging in my pantry in order to approximate ingredients.

There’s always a show or a cookbook on how to keep a well-stocked pantry and I’ve learned from them.  Yesterday this served me well when I created an after school meal for my starving teenage athlete who refuses to buy lunch at school because of the ‘long-ass line’ at the cafeteria.

As I watched the adorable Giada De Laurentis whip up a pasta dish I was inspired to create one of my own with the ingredients I had at hand.  The day before, I’d gotten some gorgeous boletus mushrooms from the Beverly Hills Farmers Market. They were sitting on top of my toaster oven in a brown paper bag. I’d never cooked with them before and the surfer dude who mans the stand at the market always gives cooking tips that I suspect are one size fits all so I wasn’t entirely confident but I figured with enough garlic and maybe some butter it would be alright. Well, it was more than all right.

Read more ...

cauliflowersoupWhen I was a young girl, my mother and father packed up the rented mini van and took  us four children and usually a few friends for my older brother and sister,  my widowed,  Aunt Else, on the ferry from England to Norway. We stayed at an idyllic hotel called The Strand Hotel for two weeks every August.

We spent our days fishing for our lunch in a little wooden boat and cooked our catch on a remote island, over a fire, made from collected twigs and dried seaweed.

My parents always said we were too many to feed every meal in a restaurant, and so when supper time came, the prepared hotel feast was always a relief and absolutely delicious after a somewhat usually chilly, but fun day catching fish and swimming in the sea that never dared to go above 65 degrees.

Supper always began with soup. My favorite was the cauliflower... Usually a tasteless soup, but this one was utterly scrumptious. Here is my own, very simple recipe, my comfort food.

Read more ...

carrotcakewholeSo, we had this awesome carrot cake down on Cumberland Island last November for our father’s birthday…the cake was baked and smuggled onto the island by Julie, Daddy’s wife and our new personal gourmet chef! This cake is unbelievably good and it is one of those dishes that lingers in your mind long after the last crumbs have been eaten. Obviously so, since I had the cake back in November and I was still reeling about it come February. I had to make the cake…I had to make the cake Julie’s way, so, I did. I followed her tweaks and tips for a successful cake and boy oh boy was it!

One of her tweaks on the traditional carrot cake recipe is to soak the carrots in cinnamon for three days…THREE DAYS!!! I thought this was crazy, but I wasn’t going to improve upon such a phenomenal dessert. Four cups of shredded, cinnamon soaked carrots, along with oil, flour, sugar, soda, eggs, additional cinnamon and salt constitute this cake. It is easy breezy to make, but takes some thoughtful culinary twists to enhance this dish to the next level.

Another tweak is the garnish…toasted and salted pecans. Now I could eat my weight in pecans, but toasting these and any nut for that matter brings out the flavor and enhances anything they complement. Butter and salt…good butter and sea salt mind you. No skimping there. The sweetness of the cake matched with the salty pecans is delectable.

Yet, the cake’s sweetness isn’t so much of a sugary sweet, but an earthy sweet brought on by the carrot and cinnamon love fest created three days prior! What else could this cake need…well, the perfect icing…a frosting of cream cheese lightly sweetened and buttery to perfection.

Read more ...

greenspotlogoMy sister and I have a pretty terrific food store called The Green Spot we have owned or more accurately been the worker bees at for many years., It has an energy all it's own. It’s a gathering place for people to come to when they are happy and it is a place people run to when they need good solid honest advice of the non-food type, if you know what I mean.

Each day we never know what will unfold when it is time to open the doors at nine o'clock. One thing, or well maybe two things, that we do know is that it is sure to be interesting without question and second what every figurative ‘fire’ needs is dousing. And we surely know how to do that with grace.

A few years ago Lucy Dahl who summered on a lake not too far from our store said that her Mother was coming to visit for a long weekend and she was excited to introduce us. Like anyone expecting company we wanted our store to be perfect because Patricia Neal was coming to visit. Oh my, Patricia! How proud our mother would have been because she admired her tenacity and talent so much. Patricia Neal was coming to our food store in a little town in central Maine. I was humbled and speechless!

Read more ...

mushroombakeWhen I was growing up, my parents took me and my sister to all kinds of restaurants but rarely ones with "kid's menus." We regularly came into San Francisco to eat Chinese food, tried sushi long before it became popular, and celebrated birthdays and school graduation at fancy French restaurants. Unlike many kids who probably longed for Taco Bell or McDonald’s, I enjoyed eating at The Good Earth, a casual restaurant near my house. The menu had a mix of salads and sandwiches and some very unique entrees. It wouldn’t necessarily be considered “health food” by today’s standards but there were quite a number of vegetarian dishes.

At The Good Earth, pretty much anyone could find something they would like to eat, and that made it perfect for dining out with everyone from my teenage girlfriends, to my grandmother. The Good Earth was famous for it’s spicy cinnamon tea which you can buy to this day. Although the restaurant chain was sold and very few restaurants remain, I remain haunted by the memory of Walnut Mushroom Casserole. It was my go to dish.

Read more ...