The incredible, morphing menu...or, how to keep leftovers from haunting your refrigerator, not to mention your dreams

As I think I've mentioned, I'm single, and usually cooking just for myself.  OK, myself and the fuzz bombs.  (Lest you get the wrong idea about how I feed my dogs, they really don't get a whole lot of people food.  I will, occasionally, give them some of the leftover protein, if it's lean, or leftover rice mixed in with their canned food.  And raw veggies, they love raw veggies...*ALL* raw veggies.  I give them a lot of raw veggies.  And cooked veggies.)  So, over the years, I've gotten very skilled at cutting down and adopting recipes so that I'm not over run with leftovers.  Because, you see....I really don't love leftovers.

Once I've filled a craving for something (and I'm usually very driven in my menu plannings by, "geeeee, I have a taste for....."), then I don't want it again for a good long while.  I certainly don't want it the next night again for dinner.  When I was working, I would take leftovers for lunch later in the week, or the next week, happily.  That never bothered me.  But having the same entree more than once in a week, or month even, just doesn't make me a happy girl.

Since I now have no outlet for "reusing" leftover, completed dishes, I've become very familiar with my freezer.  I have nice, labeled (!) and inventory-listed (!!) plastic containers with single-servings of gumbo, short ribs with a lovely gravy, lasagna, chili, and other goodies, waiting for that craving to strike again.  Baggies of cooked meat too, portioned out into one- or two-meal, amounts, also labeled and listed, live in the deep freeze, waiting to be called into action at a later date.  I also have trained myself to freeze the unused portion of a package of uncooked meat or poultry, if I'm not going to use it before it goes bad, again divided into amounts that I'll likely use at one time.

Sometimes though, as the saying goes, the best laid plans don't always work out.

Brioche, lovely, lovely brioche

When I posted a while back about using up leftover Easter ham, I gave you all a recipe for ham salad, and said it would be good on croissants.  As I was writing the post, I realized brioche would be equally as yummy as the croissants.

Since I really *didn't* want to go to the store last weekend, and since I'm not about to make croissants (scared...yeah....no counter space for the folding and rolling....even more so !) (some things really are better left to the pros), I thought I'd make a loaf of brioche to hold my ham salad when I finally made it.

I'd made brioche once before.  Last Easter, as a matter of fact, and it was dynamite.  But lacking the traditional, fluted pan, I'd instead made it in a loaf pan.  While the taste rocked, I wanted to prove to myself that I could form the traditional, rounded-with-a-top-knot brioche shape.  On one of my thrift-store crawls a while later, I found an actual brioche pan for a whole $0.99 !  A run through my dishwasher and it was in fine shape.

And then summer came, and bread-baking got put on hold (no AC in the little kitchen), and when the weather cooled, other breads beckoned.  But the ham salad got me thinking about, and craving the rich, yeasty, buttery, eggy goodness that is brioche.

Last weekend was it.  Brioche was on my mind, and in my oven.  THIS time, a traditionally-shaped, fluted loaf.  Here's how you do it....

The world's easiest oven-roast beef

A while back, after ruining one too many expensive pieces of beef trying to dry-roast it in the oven, I set out to do some research on the "Interwebs" to see if I could find a consensus about the best technique.

Oh.  Such conflicting theories. 

Start it low, then blast it on the highest heat you can get.

No.  NOT *that* way !  Start it in a jet engine-hot oven, then turn it way down and let it coast.

WHAT ?!?!  Heresy !  NOT *THAT* WAY !  Sear the roast first, then put it in a hot oven, then turn it down.

NO, dude !  Put the roast in a canvas bag, bury it under a full moon, chant over it for 3 nights, then dig it up and roast for a while.  Or a little longer.

OK.  I made that last one up.  But only by a little.

Now.  Just to be clear, I can cook a mean pot roast.  I've got the moist-heat/flavorful broth/long slow braise thing down just fine.

But the dry-roasted, well-seasoned, crusty, but still rare roast of my dreams eluded me.

Methods?  I tried all yer steenkin' methods.  I got, in various iterations, beef jerky, shoe leather, warm, bloody, mooing beef that, while The Girls appreciated it, their Mommydog, not so much.  What I was aiming for was nothing short of (drum roll please)...."The Perfect Prime Rib" (or sirloin, or tenderloin, or whatever...).  What I got, over and over again, was disappointment.

You know the feeling.  The "meet nice" first-date euphoria that fades into the realization that the guy lives with his grandmother and collects belly-button lint.  The "I love this new car smell" goes south rapidly into "crimeny....I'm spending $150 a week on gas".  The "day-um but these shoes make my legs look good" morphs into "I'll do anything to get these "*&$~+&#^" shoes off my feet....NOW".

A word about food...

Since this is a blog about food -- the cooking, sourcing, and enjoyment of it, and the creativity we can all find in its preparation, and especially about the appreciation of the beauty of the ingredients and the finished product, it seems only fitting that we take a moment to think about those in this Country, possibly even our neighbors, who don't have enough of it.

This month, the United States Postal Service, in conjunction with the National Association of Letter Carriers, Feeding America and several corporate sponsors, will be holding their annual "Stamp Out Hunger" food drive.  As you can see, Saturday, May 14 is the day.  This is the 18th year that the USPS and their carriers have participated in this project.  Last year, over 77 MILLION pounds of food were collected by USPS carriers, and delivered to local food banks all over the country.  That's a lot of food, but there's also a lot of need.

We can all help by leaving bags or boxes of non-perishable food items by our mail box on the morning of May 14, 2011.  Make sure that the donation is placed there before your mail is delivered.  Items donated should be things like canned meat, fish, soups, vegetables, fruits, juices pasta, cereals, dried beans and grains.  Items that are shelf-stable and do not need refrigeration.  Also, no glass packaging, and no expired products (this is not an excuse to clean out your pantry).  I would take it a step further, and hope that the food you choose to donate is also nutritionally sound....salt free, or low sodium, fruits in natural juices, not heavy syrup, and no sugar bomb cereals.  My bag has some rice, some dried pinto beans, some no-salt canned peas and corn, tuna in water, canned milk, etc.

I'm giving you enough notice so you can do what I did.  In these economic times, I fully understand it can be tough to get our own food budget stretched far enough to cover our own needs, let alone the needs of others.  But, by taking a dollar here, and a dollar there, over the next couple of weeks, most of us can fit in a few "extras" to help those in need.

Here's a link to the official  "Stamp Out Hunger" website.  You can get more facts and information there, as well as some downloads to get your kids involved.

I hope you'll join me in this effort.  You'll feel good about yourself, and you'll fill a need (not to mention some tummies) that is far greater than we all know.

Thank you.

Got ham?

OK.  If you celebrated Easter, you likely have leftover ham.  LOTS of leftover ham.  And by this point in the calendar, you're really, really tired of ham sandwiches.  I have some ideas.  Unfortunately, no pictures, because, well, *I* cooked my Easter ham on Wednesday, so I've only had ham sandwiches once, and this weekend I'll be dealing with the face-off with the leftovers.  You guys are probably already into a smackdown mode with 'em.

So I offer a few suggestions.

First of all, don't toss that ham bone.  If you're not wanting soup right now, or a pot of beans, wrap that sucker securely in plastic wrap, then foil, or...better yet, vacuum seal it, and toss it in the freezer.  In September, when the weather chills, a pot of split pea soup, or Navy bean soup, or red beans and rice will fit the bill, and you'll have a hammy, meaty treasure stashed away to jump start that meal.  And for goodness' sakes (literally), leave some meat on the bone.  That'll REALLY give you hammy, meaty goodness in that soup or pot of beans.

Then, you can always freeze slices of ham, again, well wrapped in freezer bags, or vacuum bags, for when you want a quiche, or frittata, or pasta with ham sauce, or pizza topped with ham, or....whatever your imagination conjures up.  Ham lends a smokey savoriness to so many things, it's always great to have a baggie or two of ham slices in the freezer.

For the short term, however, here are a couple of tried and true recipes I'll be making in the near future.  In fact, I see the...

My troubled relationship with leafy greens

I have a love/hate relationship with leafy greens.  I *love* salad greens -- all of them, even the bitter ones like frisee, arugula and radicchio.  The soft ones, Bibb, Boston, oak leaf, limestone lettuces ?  Love 'em.  The crunchy ones, Romaine, Cos, even humble old Iceburg...yeah, love them too.  Leafy, soft, bitter, crunchy, they all find their way into my salad bowl, my tacos, my burgers, and my meatloaf sandwiches.  Love cabbage, slaws are one of my favorite veggie side dishes, and I even have a warm spot in my heart for cooked cabbage.

Even as a child, I loved spinach (yeah, I was a weird kid).  I loved it even more when I grew up and discovered mid-20th Century spinach salads.  But then, what's not to love about a salad with a dressing made with hot bacon grease?  That would make a pair of sweat socks taste good....

But the "hearty" greens ?  Yeah.  Not so much.  Part of my hesitancy to embrace them was that I didn't grow up with them.  Collards, kale, chard, mustard/turnip greens were not something that ever entered the culinary radar of my Mom's kitchen, so I wasn't exposed to them.  I have vague memories of eating hearty greens cooked Indian-style, at restaurants, and when co-workers would bring in home-cooked food for me to sample.  But they were never something I sought out on my own, or would ever dream about ordering in a restaurant.  Actually, not 100% true...on a trip to Atlanta, we ate at a "traditional" Southern restaurant, and of course, collards were on the menu.  I was...not impressed.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

If you grew up in Southern California during the 50's and 60's, you have two very strong memories of local bakery operations which you fondly revisit to this day.  Talk about "taste memories", these two companies built 'em deep and strong for us Boomer SoCal-ians.

One was the Helms Truck.  Think of ice-cream trucks, only with baked goods.  Back in the day, you put a sign in your window, and the Helms truck stopped and Mom ran out to buy bread, doughnuts, cookies, rolls, whatever.  Or you, as the snot-nosed kid, ran out when you heard the "TOOOT-TOOOT" whistle, and watched in awe as the uniformed Helms Man, who also wore a tie and a jaunty hat, (much like a police officer's dress hat), pulled out drawer after wooden drawer filled to the brim with cookies and doughnuts and brownies and jelly rolls and Danishes and other delights, all lined up like sugary soldiers in neat rows.   To me, those drawers were magic.  I can see them still in my mind's eye.  The wood working on them was stunning.  Highly varnished, with dove-tailed joints, and lined with parchment, they stretched the width of the truck, and slid out, smoothly and soundlessly, from the back.  It was absolute nirvana for a kid.  A bakery on wheels !  At your door !  What could possibly be better?

Sadly, as times and consumer habits changed, along with the milkman, the Helms Man passed into memory.  Delivery service stopped in 1969, and Helms products were never offered in supermarkets.   So, when delivery service stopped, Helms sadly faded into the ether of nostalgia and childhood memories.

The other local baked goods icon still exists in a limited form; at least it's brand name does.  Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery.  Their logo was, of course, a windmill, and it was bright blue, on white packaging.  These products WERE sold in supermarkets, and back in the day they had Van de Kamp's Ladies in the stores, who were sort of what we'd call "brand ambassadors" today.  I think they stocked the display shelves, and answered questions about the products.  The ladies wore starched, white pinafores over bright blue dresses, and they had prim, starched white lace hats.  They all looked like your Aunt Helen.