food

Late Summer Suppers

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments
Feng Sushi

Feng Sushi

It’s 10:15 and I just finished eating dinner.

I love late summer suppers.

This time of year, I’m too busy in the garden after work to think much about food (or laundry or housecleaning or bill paying or much of anything). When the sun starts slipping, I settle into the lawn chair with a glass of something and ponder the universe until the solar lights come on.

It’s about then that it occurs to me that I’m hungry.

My childhood was punctuated by late summer suppers. I inherited the after-work gardening gene from the folks. We ate late from about March to October. Daylight hours were spent outside.

In 1973, my father went through a spell where he was determined to perfect his spaghetti sauce – we all thought it was already perfect, but he wasn’t satisfied. We had spaghetti every twelve minutes or so. Fortunately, we liked spaghetti.

Daddy did this and Daddy did that – the sauce got better and better. But it also got later and later. As a starving teenager, by the time plates were set on the table, I was ready to chew on the formica.

That spaghetti – hot summer day cooling into a nice evening, sweat drying, ice tea glasses dripping, and the mosquito coil sending up spirals of smoke – digging into a steaming plate of perfect, tangy pasta with even better garlic bread – Lord, it was good.

The fullness of a heavy pasta and the exhaustion of an active day, the contentment of a good meal when ravenous – all of it engendered a sense of well-being that no psychotropic drug can mimic.

Today was hot. I’m making a point of trying to remember to eat, so on the way home from work, I stopped at the Kroger for something light. I ended up with California roll sushi, melon, strawberries, and Merlot. I also procured my father’s birthday cake – in this case, cheesecake. I ate dessert first (by several hours) and just now finished dinner.

We’ve all read that slogan – eat dessert first! I never do. But tonight? Tonight, I did. It’s a fine way to ingest the daily calories.

As I sit here thinking about 1973 and the following years, I’m awash in memories of all the late summer suppers I’ve had – at tables, on decks, at campsites, in restaurants. The joy of eating seems maximized in the summer – vegetables and fruits are fresh, the iced tea is cold, and, after the sun goes down, coffee is a miracle.

A few years ago, there was the naked lobster dinner. Last year, there was the rooftop North African dinner. Two weeks ago, there was the steak dinner (with art) on the deck.  I’ve had roasted venison by campfire, grilled trout by candlelight, and hamburgers under a yellow, bug light.  Dessert has been s’mores, cheesecake, a mango, and, on one memorable occasion, banana splits sitting on the side of a hill watching interstate traffic outside of Morgantown.

I love late summer suppers.

Tell me about yours.

Bread and “it’s a big ol’ goofy world”

/ wvfurandroot / 10 Comments
Bowl, Spoon, Mascot
Bowl, Spoon, Mascot.

Jamie over at Life’s a Feast just blogged about bread baking. Memories of my early efforts are flooding my brain. Even with something as mundane as bread, I’m reminded that it’s a big ol’ goofy world.

John Prine is a peach and most of his songs are national treasures .(I have no idea why I own no John Prine – I must rectify this.)  The title alone of It’s a Big Ol’ Goofy World is a phrase I use often.  My life seems to have taken more twists and turns than can possibly be normal.  It’s a big ol’ goofy world.

In 1972 or so, I decided that no self-respecting hippy wannabe could call her self an Earth Mother without bread making on her resume. (Candle making and macrame are also required, but I never got around to those two.)  So, I pulled out my mother’s ancient cookbook, inherited from an even older relative, and set to.

It was, in keeping with early times of the cookbook, a recipe for basic white bread – the kind of bread that for years and years housewives made weekly to supply the household. It was assumed, I think, that one pretty much knew how to make bread.

Treasured walnut wooden spoon.
Treasured walnut wooden spoon.

Most people need either really, really good directions on the technique or they need someone to show them. Good bread is less about ingredients than it is about how you go about combining those ingredients and working them.

After the lump of Pillsbury flour brick came out of the oven and even the dog wouldn’t eat it, I went on a quest looking for the perfect recipe. I was just 13 and my range was limited. Brick after brick, I didn’t lose enthusiasm for learning how to do this, but I was supremely aggravated. ‘Course I was in the throes of puberty and spent most of my time aggravated about something.

At the time, my parents were in the process of turning a screened-in-porch into a family room. My dad hired one of the Marines under his command to do the wiring – seems the guy was a licensed electrician as well as a grunt.

He was an odd character. One afternoon, I was fussing with bread bricks when he wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. I fussed and fumed and probably threw a few bowls around. He told me I was going about it wrong. One thing led to another and the kind-of-odd, crusty gunny sergeant/electrician showed me how to make bread. Somewhere during the process, my mom wandered into the kitchen and sat at the table watching.

There was great success. I’m sure I celebrated by heading to my bedroom and listening to this:

Here’s the recipe:

2 pkgs of yeast (regular, not fast rising)

¾ cup of warm water

2 cups of lukewarm milk (scalded then cooled)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon butter (softened)

1 tablespoon of salt

7 to 8 cups of white, all-purpose flour (or 6 to 9, it depends)

Besides the bread bowl, you’ll need two standard bread pans, a wooden spoon (for aesthetics because any kind of big spoon will work), measuring spoons and cups, a stove, an oven, dish towels, rolling pin and a stereo.

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