Entree

Ruth Reichl, the food writer, editor and restaurant critic, once observed that people who say they don’t have the time to cook really just don’t have the time to shop.

To be honest, I’m not sure it was Ms. Reichl who actually said that as I have had no luck in sourcing the quote. But it sounds like something she might have written in any one of her thirty-seven published memoirs about food, cooking and the clown disguises she used when dining at expensive restaurants. If she isn’t responsible for that observation, then whoever is was spot-on. Maybe. We’ll see.

Cooking a reasonable and nutritious dinner for a family of four can be easily accomplished in less than 30 minutes. While that time frame might not allow for beef Wellington, stuffed grape leaves or a fanciful take on roast goose, it does provide for any number of tasty dishes, from flavorful pasta or rice creations and simply grilled steaks and chops, to sauteed fish and a multitude of salads and side dishes. Oddly enough, making dinner can even be faster with a slow cooker…five or ten minutes of prep and your meal cooks while you’re doing other things.

Depending on myriad factors, grocery shopping takes a while longer than cooking.

Shopping is time consuming, or at least it can be. A successful supermarket adventure might begin with the making of a list based on a menu that must be planned, even if only for tonight’s dinner. Then there’s the travel to and from the store, the searching the aisles for the items you need, the standing in line at the deli, the meat counter, the bakery section and, finally, the check-out counter. Bagging your purchases takes a few minutes, as does unloading the goods and putting them all away.

Personally, I am the antithesis of a good shopper. I abhor lists because my experience has been that when I have bothered to make one, it’s typically incomplete and then I either forget to bring it or I lose it in transit. I tend to plan meals at the grocery store, wandering the aisles in search of inspiration.

And I do this almost daily.

I live in a small town and I like the social aspects of going to the grocery store where I am likely to run into any number of friends and acquaintances, most of whom have at least a passing interest in food. I know many of the front-end employees at my preferred market, as well as many in the meat and produce departments. They take good care of me and my needs, and we share news about our families, tell each other corny jokes, gossip a bit, and talk about baseball or the weather.

Because of my dietary preferences, most of my meals begin with an animal-based protein and so I head to the very back of the store. From there it is willy-nilly from side to side: produce, dairy, and perhaps back and forth again as I detour through the aisles of dried and canned goods, the frozen foods and the bulk bins where I can purchase exact amounts of cornmeal, rice and other grains, all the while taking a flawed mental inventory of what I already have at home.

Surveys have shown that my method is both inefficient and a wasteful expense of time and energy, but since I spent the majority of day sitting in front of a computer waxing nostalgic and trying to make myself laugh, it’s not a big deal. I’ve never put much stock in surveys anyway.

So I’m trying to wrap my mind around the whole “meal kit” concept that is based on the premise that people don’t have time to shop, but do have time to cook.

There are almost-countless dozens of these delivery services vying for a piece of the meal-kit pie. Though there are variations on the same theme, the basic idea is that you use the internet to locate a company, read the menu options, decide on three meals for the family, enter your payment method, hit a button, and sit back to await the arrival of your uncooked dinner to your doorstep.

The cost of each meal averages somewhere between $10 and $12. Depending on where you live, this might be the cost equivalent of take-out, except you have to cook it.

Every ingredient (in some cases right down to salt and pepper) is pre-measured and packaged. An illustrated recipe card with detailed instructions is included. You need only basic cookware to assemble a meal for four in 30-60 minutes.

The packaging and distribution might be the scariest part of the whole meal-kit phenomenon. It is an ecological disaster. A cardboard box is lined with Styrofoam and plastic bubble wrap. It is then filled with tiny plastic boxes and bags of parsley and animal proteins and stalks of celery sitting atop pounds of plastic-encased frozen chemical substances. These boxed kits are assembled in, let’s say, New Jersey, with goods shipped in from many geographic sectors and then sent via trucks and airplanes to front doors from Bangor to San Diego.

While the “locavore” movement might have its laughable aspects, the meal kit is pure tragedy.

Many of my friends like to cook and have expressed little to no interest in the meal-kit concept. For most cooks, shopping is half the fun. Indeed, that experience of picking fruits and vegetables, proteins and cheese by touch and smell and sight goes a long way toward making the whole act of cooking–and eating–enjoyable. It’s even more fun when the farmers’ markets are up and running, and you get to visit with folks who actually raise chickens, grow sweet corn and chard, make preserves and pickles.

But meal kits are catching on, though most of the companies seem to be losing money. Grocery stores are disappearing and more than a few fingers are being pointed at Amazon, which recently bought Whole Foods.

Growing up in Chicago my mother shopped at a few stores, all within two or three blocks of our house. There was a butcher shop, a bakery, a dairy/delicatessen, and a tiny corner grocery that sold dried goods and fresh produce. That little grocery also delivered. There was a supermarket a block away that had electric doors–a first in our neighborhood. It was either an A&P or a Kroger but we didn’t shop there, although my friends and I loved playing with the automatic doors.

In 1954, there were 13,260 food markets in Chicago and its adjacent suburbs. By 1987, there were 3,630. In 2015, according to the Mid-America Real Estate Group, there were 262. The numbers need wide interpretation: in the fifties, stores were small, independent operations seen on virtually every street corner. By the eighties, the supermarkets dominated. By 2000, independent grocers had all but disappeared, driven out of business by retail behemoths that sell groceries, appliances, clothing and patio furniture.

All of this goes back to the original premise that people don’t have time to shop. I used to buy into that, but after long deliberation I’ve changed my mind.

For the sake of argument, let’s acknowledge that the average American worker spends eight hours a day on the job five days a week, with an average of five hours of travel time. For seven days a week, the average American adult spends almost seven hours–each day!–watching television and sharing cute pet videos and expressing personal outrage over or support for Trump on social media. Many Americans sleep eight hours each night.

Guess what? The average American might not have time to shop, but he or she can make the time. Sorry, Ruth.

RED BEANS & RICE

Six servings

This New Orleans classic dish has been a long-time family favorite. The prep time is about 15 minutes and the cooking is largely unattended and could be adapted to a slow cooker set on high for 5-6 hours. I made this last night. I had all of the seasonings on hand. It took less than 10 minutes at the store to buy the vegetables, beans and sausage (at a cost of less than $7), but that’s only because the meat guy Sam and I had a discussion about the bounce-throw that Cubs pitcher Jon Lester is learning to use to pick off base runners.

1 (1 lb) package small red beans
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
4 celery ribs, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1⁄4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1 1⁄2-2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
3 garlic cloves, minced
8 cups water
1 lb. smoked sausage

Soak rinsed beans overnight or cover with 8 cups water and bring to boil. Boil for 2 minutes, turn off heat and let sit, covered for one hour.
Pour out water and add 8 cups fresh water.
Chop onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic. Add to beans.
Add salt, pepper, thyme, seasoned salt, and Creole seasoning.
Cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for 2 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. When you stir, be sure to mash some of the beans against the sides of the pot. This creates a creamier texture.
Slice the sausage into 1/2-inch pieces and add to beans. Cook for an additional 30 minutes.
Serve over hot rice.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

The dawn of a new year is an opportune time for each of us to take stock of our lives, a time to reflect on our accomplishments, our misdeeds, our trespasses and those SOBs who trespassed against us. It’s a time for rejuvenation, resolution and, quite possibly, revenge. It’s a time for forgiveness, reparations and promises to live a better life.

For many, it’s a time to get rip-roaring drunk or to participate in odd, ethnic traditions and indulgences that frequently necessitates getting rip-roaring drunk. In their own peculiar ways each of these celebratory acts are performed in the hopes for a better future, greater success and good health.

These acts also serve to make us realize that each year we’ve left behind could have been a helluva lot better.

Of course, that just applies to most of us. The one percent couldn’t have had a better year because they can finally—after so many years of deprivation—afford better champagne now that they can write off their private jets.

In much of the Spanish-speaking world a dozen grapes are eaten in the first minute of the New Year and the color of the underwear you’re wearing at that moment will somehow hold sway over your future. In Ecuador scarecrows are crafted to look like politicians and then are burned. (If memory serves, I think we tried that with Nixon in 1972.) In Denmark, people break dishes against the doors of their neighbors and then rush home to leap into the New Year by jumping off chairs. In parts of Italy, people hurl old furniture and appliances from their apartment balconies onto the streets below. This, by the way, is from the very same folks whose ancestors brought us the Renaissance and taught the French how to cook.

The Scots imbibe vast quantities of scotch, march in parades swinging balls of fire, and welcome dark-haired strangers bearing gifts of coal and salt, but won’t open the door for the fair-haired for fear that they might be Vikings come to do horrible Viking things. In Romania folks take to the streets dressed as goats, horses or bears and dance, presumably fueled by whatever it is that Romanians drink.

Because America earned its reputation as a melting pot of the world’s people, we don’t have a single, shared New Year’s tradition, although if push came to shove, it possibly could be narrowed down to college football, watching the giant ball drop on Time’s Square or wearing party hats and blowing hard enough into the mouthpiece of a noisemaker to unfurl a paper tube into somebody’s eye. Yeah, boy, the Scots got nothin’ on us when it comes to partying down.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, in preparation for the secular New Year, Americans with access to media are subjected to endless offerings of Top Ten lists. I’m not sure of the purpose of these lists that reflect only the purview of a single writer, editorial board or marketing specialist seeking improved brand recognition, but they’re harmless enough and they might be handy if you’re wondering which movie to watch, restaurant to patronize or drain cleaner to flush.

At this time of year, I tend to favor year-in-review compilations and end-of-year polls, of which there is no shortage. The first offer capsulized first drafts of history; the second, no matter its range or scope, a sense of what the average American—the Common Man, if you will— is thinking.

The Gallup poll of America’s most admired people was released this past week. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama placed first. By most accounts, the former President has many admirable qualities. He is well-spoken, erudite, elegant in manner and possessive of compassion for the plight of others. Donald Trump, who placed second, is none of those things, unless another’s plight might be one suffered only by billionaires. How he placed at all will forever confound me.

But what I found most telling about the Gallup poll was that about nine percent of the respondents name a relative or friend as the man they admire most, while thirteen percent do the same for women.

It is both refreshing and comforting to note that Mom, Dad, Uncle Jack and Aunt Betty, BFFs Patrick and Patricia are those who have earned and maintain the respect of the Common Man.

And it is the Common Man—without regard to age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex or sexual orientation—we need to honor. But then I’m a progressive liberal.

The Common Man is that person who holds no high office or particular influence. He (she) works hard at jobs that provide services and goods that are vital and essential that most of us don’t think much about. They pay the bills and their taxes from what they earn as they collect the garbage, build the houses, balance the ledgers, service the cars, clean the rooms, assist the shopper, stock the shelves, grow the food, pave the roads, pour the drinks, haul the goods, flip the burgers, lade the ships, tend the sick, defend the innocent, counsel the troubled, minister the grieving, bury the dead.

The Common Man serves on the school board or the city council. He (she) serves in the military, leads a scout troop, bakes for the PTA, volunteers at the shelter, collects clothes for the needy, docents at the museum, sings in the choir, coaches Little League, fund-raises for many a good cause, shovels the neighbor’s walk, packs the kids’ lunches, finds their mittens, and helps them to tie their shoes.

Aaron Copland, the fine and celebrated American composer, received a commission from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1942 to compose a piece. Copland was inspired by a speech he’d heard by Henry A. Wallace, an Iowa-born Republican who served as vice president during FDR’s third term and went on to form the Progressive Party. That speech envisioned the dawn of the “Century of the Common Man” and led Copland to write a simple, moving fanfare for brass and percussion.

I believe that “Fanfare for the Common Man” should be our national anthem.

Unlike the current anthem, a melodramatic poem celebrating a battle victory set to an impossible-to-sing tavern melody, Copland’s piece is wordless. Its bright tones and percussive emphases evoke chilling emotion and inspire celebration. Stand, salute, kneel, hold hands, raise a fist…each works in honor of the Common Man.

Personally, I’d be okay with “American, the Beautiful” as a replacement for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I like the lyrics, especially as they refer to this land’s natural beauty which is being eroded through greedy exploitation. But the song should never be sung by anybody other than Ray Charles.

Meatloaf for the Common Man

Meatloaf might be the quintessential American dinner staple. Everybody’s mother makes or made the best ever. My mother did not, however. She made an oddly insipid one with Swiss cheese and green peppers that was served cold. We called it discomfort food. The following is my favorite.

1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
2 cups yellow onions, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced
½  tsp. dried thyme leaves
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup chicken stock
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 1/2 pounds ground chuck
1/2 cup plain dry bread crumbs
2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 cup ketchup

Preheat the oven to 325º.
Heat the olive oil in a medium sauté pan. Add the onions, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the onions are translucent but not brown. Off the heat, add the Worcestershire sauce, chicken stock, and tomato paste. Allow to cool slightly.
In a large bowl, combine the ground chuck, onion mixture, bread crumbs, and eggs, and mix gently. Shape the mixture into a rectangular loaf on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Spread the ketchup evenly on top. Bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. Allow to rest at least 10 minutes before slicing.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

In 1967 I arrived at Interlochen Arts Academy, a kind of concentration camp for teenagers with artistic tendencies and temperaments in northern Michigan, to complete my high school education. I had brought my sticks, mallets, cymbals and a favorite snare drum, a handsome shelf of books (many of which had been penned by Herman Hesse, who was very popular with tortured teenagers back then), a modest Tandy Radio Shack stereo, some jazz LPs, my baseball glove, a Dopp kit with a Gillette safety razor for which I would have no legitimate use during my entire two-year tenure there, and a steam iron.

I checked into a dormitory that smelled really bad—a bit like a locker room, but with deeper, more layered and aged levels of rancidity and stench. We were issued uniforms and nodded assent to assure the guards that we would launder them.

Out of habit, mother-inspired guilt (as if there might be another kind), and a highly developed sense of smell, I dutifully did my laundry but learned from a senior, a kid who I remember as being really tall and who sat on the washing machine while it washed his clothes (he was either protecting his laundry from theft or enjoying the spin cycle in a peculiar way), to wear sweaters to avoid ironing altogether.

My iron, still in its box, stood proudly untouched on the floor of my closet, next to a gallon jug of Mott’s apple cider to which I had added sugar and a handful of raisins in an attempt to make Calvados.

I took that virgin iron—virgin in that it had yet to be used—to Cleveland, the city affectionately known as the Mistake-by-the-Lake and where, upon my arrival in the late summer of 1969, its Cuyahoga River happened to catch on fire. Having just turned eighteen and not at all well versed in things scientific (the academic curricula at Interlochen was a bit light on things like math and science, but we did read a lot of fiction) I had not realized that water was flammable.

“Don’t they use water to put fires out?” I asked my father as we unpacked the car. Dad gave me a look that indicated I should shut up. I pressed on. “Do all rivers burn?”

Having graduated from Interlochen without yet knowing if I wanted to make my way in the world by stringing random words together to form sentences or to stand tuxedoed in the back of an orchestra counting measures until it was time to strike a triangle (clearly, Satan perched on each shoulder), I arrived at Baldwin-Wallace College where, according to Judith Lindenau (my Interlochen English literature teacher and one of my life’s early mentors), I would have access to both a wonderful English department and a music department that rivaled those great conservatories that only taught English as a second language.

My first attempt at college was fun. It probably wasn’t designed to be by whoever it is that decides what the college experience is meant to be, but what the hell.

No doubt motivated by a desire to annoy my father and confound my mother, I declared myself a philosophy major (I enthusiastically embraced the ontological arguments of God’s existence in 13th Century Italy, while embracing existentialism), enrolled in a couple of English classes (Joyce? Lawrence? Mann? Sartre? Huxley? Seriously? I read that stuff in high school, I advised the professor who didn’t seem to care), studied criminal sociology from a guy who actively promoted open-season on feral dogs in neighboring Indiana, took a couple of music courses I thought I could have taught better, and got relief from the college dorm experience by setting afire a trail of Ronsonol lighter fluid that erupted into a small bonfire at the feet of the elderly dorm mother as she exited her apartment to go to dinner one evening.

Timing is everything in comedy and pyrotechnics.

In the meantime, I had convinced my father that philosophy majors weren’t necessarily those bearded folks clad in robes and sandals who stood on street corners with signs warning of the earth’s end. Most philosophy majors, I assured him, drove cabs.

CLEARLY, I WAS EMBARKING ON A SOMEWHAT silly life, but I did my part as a long-haired hippie agitator to help end the Vietnam war by attending countless demonstrations, marches and sit-ins—most of which had pretty good bands, a certain air about them if you know what I mean, and an abundance of bra-less women. Most of my efforts to end the war were aimed at insisting that the college shut down, for reasons that remain fairly unclear to me, but which it did in the Spring of 1970. Vague mission accomplished.

The Dean of Baldwin-Wallace College was a man I liked, admired and respected, and he liked me enough to be so concerned about my future happiness that he suggested I might want to seek it somewhere else. I, of course, had beat him to that punch by having already joined a rock ‘n’ roll band that would not only stop the War, end every imaginable form of injustice and forever change the world, but earn me untold riches—the only manner in which capitalism seemed acceptable at the time. At last, my love of music and literature would meet! My future was obvious: I would write lyrics about the travesties of life, especially those foisted upon us by an older generation, and set them to melodies that would verily float over the three chords and a relentlessly pounding beat that were the hallmarks of pop music at the time.

After college and I quit each other, my father wished me something along the lines of “good luck” and I moved into an oh-so-slightly converted hay loft over a multi-use barn that cost $12.50 a week. It had running water, a flush toilet and an aroma that made me long for my dorm room at Interlochen. It had no kitchen and I, an aspiring (read: starving) rock ‘n’ roll musician who loved food and found it a necessary indulgence, had no money to spend at restaurants. Using some of my favorite books from high school, I positioned the virgin steam iron upside down between them, fashioned a pan out of aluminum foil, and proceeded to make a plate of eggs, scallions and cheese.

This is how I prepared one or two meals a day—of eggs, scallions and cheese—for several weeks until one day when I carelessly punctured the aluminum foil and the little steam holes of my iron-cum-hotplate filled with eggs, rendering it useless.

My future seemed grim. I was a college drop-out in a rock ‘n’ roll band, I was hungry, and my shirts were wrinkled.

Scrambled Eggs

Eggs frequently appear at the top of the American day, when life is at its most hectic and hurried, except on weekends when we have plenty of time to prepare breakfast but instead decide to go out to brunch, the most hideous of restaurant meals.

What does this say about us as a species?

It is a mistake to hurry eggs in any of the 100 ways there are to cook them—one for each pleat in a chef’s toque, the legend goes—and cooking them in foil on an up-turned steam iron is ideal actually, provided one doesn’t puncture the foil. Ignore the latest warnings about cooking in foil as we’re all going to die anyway.

All of that having been said, melt a goodly amount of butter over low heat in a small non-stick sauté pan. Do not let the butter brown. Add a tablespoon or two of sliced green onions, a sprinkling of salt, some pepper, and let them soften. In a small bowl, lightly beat two or three eggs with some fresh herbs (tarragon, parsley, chives, chervil) if you’d like, and a tablespoon or two of heavy cream. Add the egg mixture to the pan and stir gently and frequently, if not constantly, with a heat-proof rubber spatula. (This takes some time.) When fluffy curds develop, add a small amount (a teaspoon or so per egg) of your favorite cheese. Keep stirring until the cheese is melted.

Your finished eggs may now be topped with caviar or ketchup or crumbled bacon or shaved truffles or whatever you like. Serve with slices of grilled baguette with butter or olive oil. Sauvignon blanc is a great wine for egg-based breakfasts.

If you aspire to make omelets, I suggest you find any one of the three or four million videos of Jacques Pepin making them on the internet. He’s a charming guy with a great accent and smile, and he knows how to make an omelet.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

It was only a week or two ago that I overheard a teen-aged boy waxing somewhat poetic about the failings of his generation to know and understand the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

“It’s my favorite holiday,” he said. “It’s the only one where you can eat all you want all day.”

Nothing rhymed in his poetics and his grasp of the day’s meaning wasn’t quite firm, yet his failure to mention football I thought showed some promise.

Admittedly, Thanksgiving is an odd holiday, what with its main attractions being gluttony and the promise that politics will not be discussed at the dinner table, especially with Uncle Earl who has a drinking problem that starts at 10am and who makes Attila the Hun seem like a social democrat.

The holiday celebrations actually begin in the weeks before the actual day with American school children learning to trace outlines of their little hands and coloring them in with crayons to make artless renderings of turkeys, which parents proudly display on their refrigerators for exactly one year when it is replaced with a slightly larger version. Each year’s rendering offers substantial proof of the child’s developing artistic skills or the realization that the best the child can hope for is a future as an insurance agent or government statistician.

Part of this history lesson includes an annual pageant of sorts that involves the children portraying Mayflower Pilgrims sitting down at picnic tables with their classmates portraying Wampanoag Indians in 1621 at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.

At times, the children are asked what they are thankful for. Typically they say stuff like “my kitty,” “Keith,” or “mom’s liposuction.” Every now and then some kid with a highly developed social conscience and a set of parents who sit shiva on each anniversary of the Rosenberg execution, might mention being thankful for the abandonment of public-square stockades that were the primary source of Pilgrim entertainment until HBO began offering original programming.

There are countless flaws of fact in the rich traditions of our Thanksgiving, the first of which being that late November is an unlikely time to have a picnic in the great outdoors on the North Atlantic Coast, especially in 1621. In that time before climate change was widely accepted, it would have been as cold as the inside of a deep-freezer (I really wanted to say, “as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass brassiere,” but I fought the urge) and the prudent and practical Pilgrims would have already stowed the patio furniture, croquet sets and badminton gear in their garages.

That first Thanksgiving, which more likely took place in the windowless basement of the newly erected First Church of Separatist Puritans, was remarkable for its featuring corn-on-the-cob—despite its being served without jalapeno-butter. It was also difficult to eat with wooden teeth.

The history books tend to gloss over the fact that Christopher Columbus, who just happened to be gluten-intolerant, actually came to the New World (about which Antonín Dvořák would later compose a symphony from his summer cottage in Iowa in 1893) in search of the corn he had read about in the very first issue of National Geographic, which also happened to feature a photo-spread of fully-clad aboriginal Siberian women that the courts later found to be neither obscene, provocative nor even moderately interesting, but which nonetheless inspired Hugh Hefner to investigate the concept of “clad.” All of that notwithstanding, the heavily tattooed Chef Chris had envisioned a dish to be made from corn that he called “grits.” The editor of Cookin’ with Chris (Santa Maria Press, Genoa 1497) changed grits to polenta because he rightly sensed that any food that appears in italics tastes better. (In the later translations, grits appears in italics.)

The second Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony had an altogether different tone—not that I’ve established much of a tone for the first one, other than the corn thing. The Wampanoag Indians, after having introduced corn to white people from England, declared war against the white folks because they were busily trying to convert Indians to Puritanism, which Chief Metacomet (whose surname sounds like an event in outer space) found distasteful. The war went poorly for the Wampanoag and their allies, the Narraganset, however, and those who weren’t killed fled for their lives—they could hear the not-so-distant drumbeat that portended the genocide of Native Americans.

But at this time of year, we don’t need to be all maudlin and political and stuff. We need to talk about that all-American, all-you-can-eat meal that we devour before 63.7% of us hit the Big Box Stores to buy cheap goods from China on a day celebrated as Black Friday, which translates to “the only day an actual store can make money” because Amazon.com has the rest of the year covered. Many people are trampled to death on Black Friday; many others spend the entire night before camping out in mock Styrofoam igloos in parking lots waiting for stores to open. The latter group is in desperate need of long-term psychological help.

Calvin Trillin, the great food writer and commentator for the New Yorker has campaigned for decades to make spaghetti carbonara the national dish for Thanksgiving. I won’t argue, although I would suggest that lasagna, which can be made in advance, would be just as suitable and easier to clean up. For either entrée, a green salad, garlic bread and tiramisu for dessert is all you need.

Geri, my wife, plans our Thanksgiving dinner. Actually, she planned it forty years ago and it hasn’t changed, although we are pretty flexible about the time we actually eat. (Each year it seems to get earlier. I figure that in another four or five years, we should be done with the whole damn thing by noon.) Anyway, three weeks later we have the exact same menu to celebrate Christmas.

I have named our Thanksgiving/Christmas meal in honor of Duke Ellington: “Beige, Beige and Beige.” His 1943 suite actually had two additional colors—black and brown—either of which would lend exciting color to the dinner I am obliged to cook twice each year.

The meal—which requires my using every single pot, pan, and serving dish we own in its preparation and service—starts with a fourteen-pound turkey. I don’t stuff it. I season it with salt and pepper. I toss an orange, stabbed multiple times with a paring knife, into the cavity. I sauté fresh sage in tons of butter, add a cup or so of brandy and pour it over the bird, which is then placed, uncovered, in an oven pre-heated to 450º. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I reduce the heat to 300º and let it roast for about 20 minutes per pound. I baste the bird on every Bears’ first down.

Cranberries, whether cooked with sugar, orange zest, fresh ginger and white vermouth or simply pushed through a can, provide the only unalterable color to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, unless you count the Beaujolais that I find to be the perfect wine for this November holiday.

In 1621 the Pilgrims had run out of sugar and so, according to legend, they ate unsweetened cranberries which they found to be both bitter and disgusting. The Natives, who didn’t eat the raw cranberries because they knew better, found the Pilgrims’ retching reactions amusing. The following year there was still no sugar but Ocean Spray had established itself by then in the as-yet-unnamed territory of Wisconsin and Stolichnaya had become the leading vodka import. Though the word cosmopolitan had no meaning whatsoever to modest Puritans desirous only of bathroom privacy stalls, the cocktail of that name quickly became a favorite of those rogue Pilgrims with an affinity for disco and polyester jumpsuits, as well as access to triple sec and fresh lime.

The meal continues: Dressing of bread, with onions, celery and chicken stock (the dark side of beige). Green bean casserole, turned beige with the addition of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and Durkee’s onion rings. Baked yams turned beige with a thick covering of marshmallows. Mashed potatoes might fall within the realm of beige. We like sauerkraut, which I’ve been led to believe is a Maryland thing, but as a Bohemian from Chicago I’ll claim it as mine. It too is beige, however. Some people serve roasted chestnuts (beige and certainly not worth the effort). Pearl onions braised in cream (a whiter shade of beige) are a nice addition to the menu. Mashed roasted parsnips and carrots shows that beige can have an orange tint. Gravy? Uh, dark beige.

Nobody I have ever known has had corn at Thanksgiving, despite its historical standing and promising yellow for color contrast, nor peas (green) because we already have green beans (rendered beige, as noted above) and who wants to overdo it on the whole vegetable thing anyway? Salad? Kale? Swiss chard? Broccoli? Oh, give me a break. If you’re going to go that route, you might as well sculpt a turkey out of tofu, or, as we like to say, “soybean curd,” which not only sounds and tastes bad but might contain enough toxins and disruptive plant estrogens that could seriously damage one’s thyroid, possibly by Christmas. Oh, yea!

As an afterthought, it should be noted that Thanksgiving dinner, in all its beige-ness, is disturbingly, yet unapologetically, wet.

I once read President Obama’s White House Thanksgiving menu and it included macaroni and cheese. I’d never heard of such a thing at Thanksgiving, but because I like macaroni and cheese and would enjoy having dinner with the Obamas, it made me wish for an invitation. (Barry: PM me on FB for my #)

In an effort to add some color to my family’s Thanksgiving I make a side dish of Brussels sprouts that has led many a person who claims to hate those bitter little cabbages to say, “Hey, these aren’t too bad.”

Brussels Sprouts

3 cups Brussels sprouts
4 Tbs. pure maple syrup
4 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. Dijon mustard
1/2 cup walnut oil
Grated nutmeg

Carefully clean and trim Brussels sprouts, discarding discolored leaves. Cut a small “X” in the stem of each sprout, cutting deeply enough to penetrate into the middle of the sprout. Steam the sprouts 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the remaining ingredients. Toss with the drained sprouts and serve.

Photography and food styling by Courtney A. Liska

Knowing that he reads this blog is what made me just a tad apprehensive when I met him for lunch at our usual place, a roadside diner-like joint where the food is barely passable but where the staff and management don’t seem to mind our sitting for three hours drinking tap water while we address—if not actually solve—most of the world’s problems.

You might recall that I had written a rather unenthusiastic, yet decidedly inspired blog about barbecue (not my preferred cuisine) and in the process had given pretty short shrift to Texas. I don’t take the concept of “short shrift” lightly, mostly because of its inherent religious connotations that I don’t understand. And actually, it was pretty much no shrift at all that I gave to the state by merely mentioning that beef is the preferred meat in Texas barbecue. My sole reference to Texas was not meant to be either mean-spirited or dismissive; it was merely an oversight, but was widely interpreted as a slight. A similar reaction might be expected had I written about lobster and only casually mentioned Maine.

My Texan friend, a retired newspaper editor-cum-mystery writer, is from Michigan—where the culinary tradition seems to focus on a hot dog called the Flint Coney Island Lunch, which makes no grammatical or gastronomic sense. My friend lives in Texas most of the year and celebrates barbecue. Fly rod in hand, he spends his summers in Montana where many of us are rumored to live on roadkill and whatever can be made out of huckleberries—provided you get to them before the bears do.

My friend is an erudite and thoughtful gentleman whose politics just happen to mesh with my own. We like to swap war stories from our newspaper days, drop a few names of the famous and the infamous we’ve known, and discuss what we’re currently reading. (He seems slightly obsessed with biographies of Mark Twain, of late; I enjoy doctoral theses about fruit pies.) We always talk politics, which lately focuses on various paths to impeachment. We frequently find sports to be a worthy topic for discussion and reminiscence (neither of us got to realize our dreams of playing shortstop in the major leagues, but at least we aren’t bitter about it). We usually manage to talk about food (neither of our mothers were very good cooks).

“You do know that Texans take their barbecue pretty seriously,” he said, looking up from his menu. It was less a question than an understatement of fact that I would have no choice but to acknowledge.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied, my confident tone indicating a deep understanding of a relationship between food and man that could only be rivaled by the relationship many Texans have with football, ten-gallon hats, Lone Star beer and revival meetings.

“There was just so much to cover there,” I offered by way of apology, suggesting that whole books—dare I say, volumes— could be written about the varieties and vagaries of Texas barbecue and its being the very essence of the culture of Texas.

His mere expression told me that several books already had been written about Texas barbecue. And not just Texas barbecue in general but the four major styles of Texas barbecue that I had ignored—East, Central, West and South—and that have each been afforded several treatments between hard covers. Many little dusty towns have been given such literary treatment as well, based solely on their distinctive barbecue flavors, smoked-or-grilled philosophies, myriad sauces and residual grease build-up, the latter of which provides the flavor base that is the purest expression of umami.

I was losing traction in this culinary quicksand, backsliding into a mire of molasses-based sauce that, like crude oil, flows so freely in South Texas. I could sense that no good could come of this. I had to find a way to recover. I had to find a way to stop mixing metaphors.

But all I could think about at that awkward moment was a dinner at a Dallas restaurant in 1988 (this date gains significance starting in just eight more words) when a waiter told me that my $38 steak could be had for $36 if I chose to cook it myself at the open-pit grill that dominated the center of the dining room. This dinner was a meeting of seven high-powered cable television executives trying to decide if a channel featuring round-the-clock coverage of international weather could be profitable. I was the eighth wheel at this gathering and a total skeptic about the public’s interest in barometric pressure. I was low-man-on-the-totem-pole at this dinner, but even my suit was an $800 Armani and I wasn’t going to cook my own steak. “How much is the salad if I make that myself?” I asked the waiter. He didn’t answer.

At this juncture any telling of that odd dining experience in Dallas to my friend could only be interpreted as yet another slight—however unintended—against Texas. I feared that I had already “messed with Texas,” which all the guide books warn against doing.

“Barbecue is a lot more serious in Texas than I could have ever imagined,” I offered, my tone apologetic. “After all,” I added, “I’m from Chicago and we’re really only serious about hot dogs, Italian beef and politicians named Daley.”

He told me about several hole-in-the-wall barbecue discoveries he’d made in little towns all over Texas and the competitions that occur incessantly in pastures on the outskirts of those very towns. Except during football season, Texans spend their weekends rating brisket.

“And real Texas chili doesn’t have beans,” he said.

I had missed whatever led up to that segue from barbecue to chili, but I viewed it as salvation.

“Oh, I know,” I said, shaking my head knowingly and adding, stupidly, “I always put pinto beans in mine.”

Someday I’ll learn to shut up. Actually, at this stage of the game that seems unlikely.

Chili con carne

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium yellow onions, diced
1 medium red bell pepper, diced
6 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 cup chili powder
1 Tbs. ground cumin
2 pounds lean chopped beef
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (14-ounce) can tomato sauce
2 (15-ounce) cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup coarsely chopped pickled jalapeños, drained

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onions and bell pepper, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 8 minutes.
Add the garlic, chili powder, and cumin, stir to coat the vegetables, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the beef and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and cook until the beef is no longer pink, about 7 minutes.
Transfer the mixture to a slow cooker, add the diced tomatoes and their juices, tomato sauce, and beans, and stir to combine. Cover and cook until the chili thickens and the flavors meld, about 8 hours on low or 6 hours on high.
Stir in the jalapeños. Taste and season with salt as needed. Serve topped with a good cheddar cheese, chopped scallions, and sour cream (optional).

Oddly enough, I have another friend from Texas who was the editor of the Dallas Morning News and is an accomplished mystery writer whose mother was a lousy cook.  I am a huge fan of coincidence. Not to be confused with my lunch mate, Ralph Langer is the author of Not Guilty, a page-turner of a novel that I highly recommend. It can be found at amazon.com. I also wish to applaud the success of The Weather Channel.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Some of you might remember when telephones were joyless, boxy black appliances with a dial, a handset and a couple of cords. They were almost impossible to lose and it took a concerted effort to drop one into a toilet. When one of them rang you actually had to answer it to find out who was calling. If it happened to ring in the middle of the night, you just knew the news was going to be bad and a list of those relatives most likely to have died in the last three hours raced through your mind.

By the fourth or fifth ring you would have already looked to the heavens and asked (maybe aloud even) to nobody in particular, “Why call in the middle of the night? Whoever died will still be dead in the morning.”

“Hello,” I answered. I could hear what sounded like a party in the background. Did I miss the wake? Couldn’t be; we just cover the mirrors.

“Jimmy! It’s Dave, Dave Pell. You’ll never guess where I am!”

He was right. And it was a challenge I wasn’t up for, nor was it a game I wanted to play at the midnight hour.

“I’m in Chicago with the Octet and we’re at Carson’s, having some real Chicago barbecue. I just knew that would make you jealous, Jimmy. I had to call.”

That he didn’t need to have called in the middle of the night topped the short list of things I wanted to tell him. I didn’t have the heart to say that I wasn’t jealous because I had never heard of Carson’s or, for that matter, “real Chicago barbecue.” I wondered if it might be some kind of slick marketing ploy like “Chicago-style pizza.”

“Fill me in when you’re back in town,” I said.

“Who died?” Geri asked as I crawled back into bed.

“Pigs,” I answered, “lots of pigs.”

Suggesting that barbecue is not my most preferred cuisine might be viewed by some with the same scorn as if I had taken a knee on an NFL sideline last weekend or implied that there was nothing particularly American about apple pie. I’ll take my chances.

It seems to me that there is an excessive number of ways to make barbecue, most of which have to do with sauce, all 637 varieties of them. The meats are pretty straight-forward: pork everywhere, beef in Texas, lamb in Kentucky, chicken in both Kansas Cities and pretty much everywhere else. (Perhaps it should be noted that NASCAR is really popular in all of these places as well.) The red meats can come in the form of sausages, ribs and roasts, the latter of which are typically pulled, shredded or sliced.

Geri and I used to enjoy devouring the goat ribs served at a six-stool diner-like joint that wrapped around the front of the old Parisian Room jazz club in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. When Geri found out they were goat ribs I began dining there alone. She won’t eat any protein that was cute, wild or has spent its life in water.

In Virginia and North Carolina the sauce is vinegar-based, as it is in South Carolina where they add mustard to get that sweet-and-sour flavor that I don’t find particularly enticing. In the Midwest, the sauces tend to be tomato-based and sticky sweet from the addition of molasses.

I asked my wife, who has yet to meet a processed food she didn’t love, if she liked the vinegar-based or the tomato-based sauce. “I don’t know. I’d have to read the label on the bottle.”

Most barbecue is cooked off-flame over low heat or it is smoked. Memphis barbecue offers “wet” (basted) and “dry” (a dry rub is applied before cooking and served without sauce). In St. Louis, the meat is typically grilled with a sweet sauce lacking any hint of smoke. Also at St. Louis barbecue joints is the iconic pork steak, a cheap shoulder cut that, once thoroughly cooked in a braise, is grilled. I guess one just can’t be too careful when it comes to pork in the Show Me state. (Chef’s tip: Trichinosis, which basically no longer exists, dies at 117 degrees; flavor at about 130.)

In Santa Maria, California, the barbecue is grilled beef tri-tip that has been heavily seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic. It is served with a tomato-based salsa and Pinquito beans. There was a time (the town has more than doubled in size since 1980) when no other style of food was readily available in that coastal town. Now you can find shawarma and pho at certain places, as well as faux Italian at the Olive Garden.

For whatever reason, barbecue restaurants tend to lead the pack in fun names. Although there are places that might be trending to a more upscale crowd with names like Heirloom Market, Four Rivers and Jac-Que, Bubba’s still leads the list for barbecue joints. It’s joined by several others: Big Daddy’s, Kiss My Ribs, Piggy’s, Bone Daddy and (my favorite) Squat & Gobble. Some might even take pride in promising to be “bib wearin’, sauce slatherin’, old-school Southern joints that wouldn’t pass a health inspection in most cities.” That’s a marketing campaign I’d be hesitant to endorse.

Barbecue has been immortalized in such songs as “BBQ Song,” “Barbecue Blues,” “Barbecue Bess” and Meathead’s iconic “You Can’t Hurry Ribs.” It is my fervent hope that I never have the occasion to hear any of them.

“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” is a classic Louis Armstrong-Lil Hardin composition from 1927 that has nothing to do with food and everything to do with, well, never mind. It’s a little saucy, but a helluva good song.

Tuscan Ribs

We spent a week in a villa above Florence, Italy, many years ago. On a Sunday morning I awoke to incredible aromas drifting from the courtyard where tables for a hundred or so had been set. A cook had a 30-foot long wood-burning grill loaded with dozens of chickens and rack after rack of baby-back pork ribs in preparation for a first communion celebration.

When I asked in my broken Italian about the ribs, he answered in his broken English that you “season them and burn them.” Maybe that’s what he said. I’m not sure.

Anyway, this is how I like to cook baby-back pork ribs. I serve them with soft polenta.

3 Tbs. fresh sage, minced
2 Tbs. fresh rosemary, minced
2-3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1-1/2 Tbs. coarse salt
1 Tbs. black pepper
1 Tbs. red pepper
3 racks of baby-back ribs

Extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves fresh garlic, sliced
2 tsp. red pepper
3, 15 oz. cans of diced tomatoes
1-1/2 Tbs. Worcestershire
1-1/2 Tbs. Tabasco
1 cup white wine
1 cup water

Combine seasonings and rub the mixture on the ribs. Refrigerate for 24 hours.
Preheat oven to 475º. Place seasoned racks in a shallow roasting pan and roast, uncovered, for 30 minutes (until slightly browned). Turn ribs and cook another 30 minutes.
In the meantime, heat oil in a large sauce pan over medium heat, add garlic and red pepper. Add tomatoes, Worcestershire and Tabasco. Simmer for 30 minutes.
Add wine and water to the sauce and pour over the ribs. Cover and cook for 30 minutes. Remove cover and cook for another 15-20 minutes.

Illustration by Courtney A. Liska