recipe

Jes’s Cranberry Sauce

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

Step One:  Buy a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries.  Follow the directions on the back. You’ll need sugar and water and a pan and a stove. That’s it Takes 15 minutes if you dawdle.  Pour into the turkey shaped tiny soup tureen reserved for cranberries.  Put the lid on and chill.

OR

Get curious about cranberry recipes that you see on the Internet that involve orange, cinnamon, and ginger.

Step One:  Solicit recipes on Facebook for tried and true.  Never mind that you loathe cranberries.  You love ginger, cinnamon and orange together.  Besides, your mother loves cranberries.

Step Two:  Enjoy the comments from people who are in one of three camps:  loathe cranberries, love Ocean Spray canned sauce with the ridges they use to guide sliced portions, or make sauce from scratch the way grandma did.

Step Three:  Buy a bag of cranberries, cinnamon sticks, a knob of ginger, and a bag of oranges – the great big really pretty orange ones that look good in a cobalt blue bowl, Hyperventilate at the register over the cost. 

Step Four: Send Jes a private message asking for clarification on her recipe.  Wait for her response.

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Spam (and scalloped potatoes)

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

Comfort Food

It’s really stupid, but I particularly like Spam.  Yes, Spam –the luncheon meat – spiced ham. I was raised on it.  And then when we moved to Hawaii, we discovered it was like the state food.  I think their Spam consumption rivals their pineapple consumption.   Hawaiians eat Spam by the truckload.  You can get a Spam breakfast sandwich at the McDonald’s.  There is Spam sushi.  I am not making this up.

I like it fried with eggs.  I like it right out of the can at room temperature.  An old friend of my mother’s used to grind it up and make a ham salad sort of thing with it.  That was good too.

But I particularly like my Spam with scalloped potatoes.  That’s how my mom served it.  But she used Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup to make the potatoes.  Later, she started buying the boxed kind.

When I was 15 or so, I went on a tear to learn how to cook things from scratch.  I was given the Betty Crocker Cookbook.  I still have it.  I still use it.  Their scalloped potato recipe is to die for.  Really.  Well, it is with some modifications.  As I learned to cook, I also learned that most recipes geared toward the general populace are lacking in spice and pizazz.  I am very fond of savory foods. And pizazz.

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