A LOAF OF BREAD, A JUG OF WINE, AND Y'ALL

My families are a mixture of Italians and Southerners, so family recipes were always pretty interesting. Here's one my grandmother used to make. She lived alone, but she always cooked meals for herself and would sit down with a nice plate to enjoy her food. I loved that about her.


Nona's Telephone Road Relish

1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped olives
1 pickled green jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 unpeeled piece of garlic
Olive oil
pepper and salt

Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl. Take the piece of garlic, put it on a cutting board and then take a big chef's knife and cover the garlic with the wide, flat side. Give the knife a couple of hard smashes using the heel of your hand (you can cover the knife with a towel if this scares you). Take the peel off the garlic, then toss the garlic into the bowl. Stir well, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and stir again. Transfer the mixture to a jar, like an old pickle jar or mayonnaise jar that has a screw-on lid. If you don't have a jar, a glass bowl will do. Pour olive oil over the mixture until it comes up to the top of the vegetables. Screw the lid on tightly (or cover the bowl with some plastic wrap) and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.

You can serve this relish with hamburgers and sandwiches. I like to add about 1/4 cup of it to a 14-ounce can of tomatoes and simmer it in some of the oil from the relish. This makes a nice sauce for pasta with shrimp or tuna.



My other grandmother was from a once well-to-do Southern family. She was an only child, and I don't know who taught her to cook but it must have been my great grandmother. They both had some wonderful specialties -- my mom still moans over the fact that she never got Mama Hallie's lemon meringue pie recipe. Here's one my grandmother taught me how to make.

VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP

1/3 - 1/2 lb. Beef scraps (steak bones, leftover steak, or two oxtail bones from the grocery store)
1 onion, diced up
2 pieces celery, diced
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes
1 14-ounce can tomato sauce
1 cup of each:
diced carrots
green beans cut to 1"
whole-kernel corn
green peas
1/4 cup barley
1 14-ounce can cream-style corn
pepper and salt

Put a big soup pot on the stove over medium heat. Add some vegetable oil to the pan, enough to barely coat the bottom. Cut up the steak into little bite-size pieces. Add it to the pot along with any soup bones you're using and let everything brown evenly, stirring frequently. Next, add the chopped onion and celery and cook until it's softened. Then, add the tomatoes and the can of tomato sauce. Fill each of the empty cans up with water and add the water to the pot. Break up the tomatoes with the back of a spoon as you're stirring. Season with pepper and salt, about 1/2 tsp each. Cover the pot and let this simmer for about 30 minutes over low heat.

After 30 minutes, uncover the pot and add the remaining vegetables and the barley. Cook for another 30-45 minutes or until the barley is tender. Last, add the can of cream-style corn and cook until the soup returns to a simmer and is bubbling hot. It should be thick, but not as thick as a stew, so add some extra water to loosen it up if you think it needs it. Remove the soup bones and serve.

THE BRATS FROM SHEBOYGAN

There are two guys in my band from Sheboygan, Wisconsin -- let's call them the Two Guys From Sheboygan. After many missed invitations, I finally got myself over to Cory's for a real Sheboygan bratwurst cookout, complete with his parents visiting from Sheboygan.

Now, I live for stuff like this. Little ol' foods from places that specialize in those little ol' foods. Cory's parents brought the sausages, hard rolls, and even some 4-year aged white cheddar, fresh from 'Sconnieland, and you can bet I was taking copious notes. This is the kind of food you can't get just anywhere, so when you do get it, it's glorious.

You think you know what bratwurst tastes like? Not if you buy it at the grocery store. And if you can't get all the way to Munich or the German Alps for the real thing, you'd do well to fly some in from Wisconsin and give your friends a fantastic treat. This bratwurst, cooked outside on a grill, doesn't taste smoky or garlicky or any of those other flavors that tend to make sausage all taste the same. And there's no liver in it, so give that idea up, too. It's just quietly savory, and all the flavors balance together into something you can't really figure out.

And the brats are only half the experience. The other half is the rolls, which although they're called "hard rolls" are anything but. They're as light and soft as a fresh piece of French bread, but more satisfying and chewy. They're not sausage-shaped, either, which is cool.

Sheboygan brats are served on a buttered hard roll with good mustard, ketchup, slivered red onions, and a side of coleslaw. If you're up to it, put two sausages on there, but Cory's mom said you can also just slice one sausage longways in half to cover the roll. And they're great left over: Warm them up in a skillet. Butter the roll and heat the halves face-down in the skillet til the butter melts.

Don't wait for football season to try them. Baseball and brats are the ticket. Get yourself to Sheboygan online. Some of the best local factories don't ship their sausages, but the following vendors do, and they're Cory-approved. Johnsonville sausages are widely available, but according to him they're not quite as good.

Miesfeld's
Sheboygan Bratwurst Co
Fresh Sheboygan Hard Rolls
Johnston's Bakery
Bake Your Own Hard Rolls

And how 'bout some local brew?
Leinenkugel
Huber

EATING LIKE CRAZY

Look, I'm sort of tired of the Food Conundrum. Bored with it, really. For most of my lifetime Americans have been whipped around on issues of Bad Foods, calorie counting and nutrient management. Meanwhile, the rest of the well-fed world kicks off their shoes and hunkers down with the same delectable cuisine their people have been enjoying for millennia without rotting their guts out or going diabetic by age 10.

Food is a problem, but I don't think it's THE problem. I think Americans are just vulnerable. We have a culture that offers and encourages innovation to great effect, but the downside is that we're constantly re-inventing and questioning basic life processes like what to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and that oh-so-American anomaly, the Snack. (I don't think any other country could feed the third world on the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish stuck to its carpets and car seats.) Our economy is driven by our willingness to doubt ourselves, try new things and gratify instantly, but it's had an unfortunate effect on our appetites -- and its gotten our goat in ways we didn't see coming.

I took my mom out to lunch yesterday and ordered a BLT. They brought me a gorgeous, cinematic plate, toasted artisan sourdough with that ruffly green leaf lettuce peeking out from piles of perfectly charred bacon. The sandwich wasn't huge by New York deli standards, but it was easily two full-size sandwiches disguised as one. I could have eaten one of the halves and been more than satisfied. But what did I do? I ate the other one, too, most of it anyway, unable to leave the gorgeous, cinematic food on the plate to go to waste or cart it off in styrofoam to ossify before I could eat it later.

See what I mean? And I don't blame the restaurants. That'd be like blaming Judas Priest for those teen suicides. Restaurant food is entertainment, and good restaurant food is art -- so in some way it has to be larger than life. I picked up a restaurant trade magazine once and flipped through it to find concepts like "optimal plate coverage". A bit of research into this is good for chowhounds -- it helps to know where both your food and its preparers are coming from.

In educating ourselves about how to eat well, it'd be great if we could just stop questioning the basics and get on with the enjoyment of eating, with our appetites and impulses strapped down safely in the back seat. To do this requires questioning not what we eat, but our own habits and impulses, and the rationality of our behaviors. Eating everything on my plate when my plate is too full is, well, crazy. I admit it. And it makes my body crazy, too. Eating only raw foods or fat-free foods or macrobiotic foods or vegan foods....Draw your own conclusions about these forms of exclusion, but to me when the rest of the race is still thriving, after thousands of years, on the same endless interpretations of nature -- healthy balance, artful variety and moderation -- I'd rather be hedonistically omnivorous right along with them. They seem to know what they're doing.

I read somewhere that the rational brain is always contending with the emotional brain for dominance -- and because the emotional brain is bigger and stronger, it can usually bully its way to the top. You have to be smarter and more patient to outfox your irrational brain, especially when it comes to hunger -- which, along with the other appetitives like, um...sex...can absolutely give you a run for your money. This is one reality the food industry is way ahead of the rest of us on. Protect yourself. Get smart. Stick it out. It'll be worth it.

And I've got some ideas...

Cheese that goes "BOING!"

I just discovered that Cotija cheese doesn't melt. Can't melt. Won't melt. I was hungry for a grilled cheese sandwich, so I dug out the Cotija, which I normally use to grate over pureed black beans (my beau likes these -- says they remind him of his medical missions to Veracruz). Anyway I sliced some up, and the texture of it made me curious. It has that spongy, tight, curdy texture like Halloumi, the Middle-Eastern cheese that you can grill like fajitas and it'll practically bounce off the countertop like rubber. So instead of putting the Cotija on bread, I buttered a skillet and put it in there. Little slabs of it about 1/4" thick. And you know what? It turned the most gorgeous golden-brown color. I flipped it and did the other side. Then I ate it, and it was buttery salty heaven.

So I guess I got my grilled cheese. But it started me thinking of other ways you could serve grilled Cotija -- which, although not as interesting or exotic as Halloumi, costs about three times less. It's a popular Mexican cheese down here. I haven't tested any recipes yet but here are my ideas:

Lime-garlic marinated Cotija, fire grilled with peppers and onions
tortilla-crusted fried Cotija
Cotija french fries with habanero ketchup
Cotija 'croutons' for salad
olive-oil cured Cotija with tomatoes, fresh oregano and lime juice


Now for the bad news. Cotija has 120 calories per ounce, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of protein and 480 milligrams of salt. So let me add one last recipe idea to the list, just to round out the cast:

Fried Cotija with chocolate fudge sauce

How do you take your sugar?

A friend forwarded me a link to a lecture on high-fructose corn syrup. It's not the newest news that this form of sugar is insidious in many/most processed foods in grocery stores and restaurants. But, it's a reminder that if your shopping cart -- and your belly -- is still mostly filled with commercially-made groceries, you'll want to start policing the labels of those foods.

And not just snacks and desserts. Here's a list of foods you might eat every day; commercial brands can have some form of sugar listed in the top three ingredients:

Granola, raisin bran, and other "healthy" cereals
Whole-grain breads
Crackers
Peanut butter
Ketchup
Bottled salad dressings
Mayonnaise products
Flavored yogurt
Canned soups
Jar pasta sauces
Pickles

People with high-sugar diets are developing the same diseases as heavy drinkers are (diabetes, hypoglycemia, liver and heart disease) because the sugars are chemically identical. It also talks about the USDA’s role in selling food, both at home and abroad, that’s been stripped of nutrients (like fiber) in order to extend shelf life. In moderation these foods aren't toxic -- but we were never meant to consume them in daily and ubiquitous doses. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole lecture, here’s a recap of what he advises for children and adults to return to sensible levels of sugar consumption. Again, it's not about eliminating any or all of these foods from your diet -- it's about having them in moderation and reading labels so that YOU can choose how you want to take your sugar.

For kids:

1. Sweetened drinks (including some baby formulas) are the biggest dose of sugar in kids’ diets -- and the easiest to reduce. Keep water and milk in the fridge, and limit sugary drinks to a treat, not every day (including and especially fruit juice!)
2. If your kids are more sedentary, match active time with sedentary time (i.e. Play outside for 30 minutes to get 30 mins of computer or TV time)
3. Have kids wait 20 minutes before eating seconds
4. Pair the sugar and carbs in their diet with some fiber (i.e., whole fruits are good, whole grains are good) Fructose in nature is usually packed inside fiber, which limits absorption of the sugar, helps the body feel fuller, and aids digestion.
   

For grownups:

1. Eat more fiber-rich foods in their natural state, both sweet and savory. It increases satiety, nourishes, and wards off diabetes. Examples: fruits, legumes, whole grains like brown or wild rice, leafy and cruciferous green vegetables, sweet squash like butternut
2. Exercise to burn stress, not calories. Exercise increases your metabolism and helps your body process toxic stress chemicals. Don’t obsess about “burning off” a cookie - calories will take care of themselves, even while you’re resting, if you eat wisely. Stress and sweets love each other, so try to control both in your daily life.
3. Pair your sugar or carbs with fiber — save fiber-free desserts and carbs for now and then, not every day, and stop keeping them in your pantry to tempt you. If you have a tough habit to break, start by making your own junk foods from scratch (French fries, cookies, cheese straws, etc). They'll be less processed and you won't want to go to all that trouble every day. Once you're weaned, you can slowly re-introduce the faster versions into your routine on a rare-treat basis. You'll crave them less as you eat them less.
4. Sodas, lattes, Gatorades: if you'll kill these from your everyday diet, you'll knock out a huge part of your sugar consumption. Sugar substitutes screw up your brain-stomach communication -- they can scramble satiety signals so that you end up hungrier. Let yourself have the real stuff, just not every single day.
   

This is all an argument for moderation. Yet it's hard to moderate sugar when you don’t know it’s hidden in most “convenience” foods. If anyone else has tips for savvy eating, please share them!

One trick I like is sweetening my own foods. I choose plain yogurt and flavor it with really good vanilla, or add my own fruit and a natural sugar. You can also buy unsweetened peanut butter, or use the grinder in the bulk aisle, then add a touch of honey to round out its flavor. It's also preservative-free, so you can buy smaller amounts and always have it very fresh. SO much more delicious.