Caring. About Food.
A Playing With Food and Mom & Me companion journal
with tips, recipes and musings
about how I tempt my Ancient One's palate.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
 
Even the Comfortable Need Comfort
    Every family, I guess, has a macaroni and cheese recipe, just like every family has a specialty potato salad and specialty dessert recipe. These are the recipes that usually end up at buffets. My family's mac & cheese never went to a buffet. It was a meal, not a side dish, and the only one who made it was Mom, so it was served only when Mom cooked and always hailed. It was straighforward: boiled and drained macaroni, cups of grated yellow cheddar (usually longhorn, on the aged side), browned hamburger, mixed together in the Revereware round aluminum pan that Mom and I still have and use, slathered with ketchup and more cheese and baked in a medium-hot oven for about a half hour. That's not something you want to take to a buffet.
    It also wasn't strictly a Comfort Food dish in our household, since we had it maybe once a month, never on a Sunday, which is the only pretty regular day Mom cooked.
    I use adapted versions of a lot of recipes we ate regularly a in my growing-up home, although there are many I loved and never make, like my mother's Universally Famous Chicken Mexicali (yes, I did get her to tell me how to make it, and I've got it on the other computer). The mac & cheese one, though, was inevitable in some version. It's one of those meals containing something Mom will eat some of when she doesn't want to eat. It's also excellent for raising sodium, and a good source of iron. I've completely readapted the recipe to gather in lots of flavor but get rid of the ketchup, which is loaded with sugar. This is one of Mom's, "Mmmm, we should have this more often," dinners.
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More than Mac & Cheese
Ingredients:
1 7.25 oz box of Kraft "The Cheesiest" Macaroni & Cheese Dinner
8 oz very lean ground beef
6 oz very lean pork sausage
¾ cup chopped yellow onion
¾ cup chopped celery with leaves
½ cup chopped green pepper
1 clove garlic, sliced very thin
1 loosely packed cup grated Vermont White Cheddar
1 Tbl margarine
2 - 3 splashes of Half & Half or whatever milk you use
1½ tsp Old Bay Seasoning
Preparation:
    While boiling water for macaroni, brown ground beef and sausage over medium high heat. Although lean, the meat will produce enough oil in which to saute the chopped vegetables, throwing them in with the meat when you detect only a few pink spots. Lightly saute vegetables and garlic until they are bright, crisp, not yet transluscent. Turn off burner. Continue to stir mixture while sprinkling Old Bay Seasoning over it. Allow to cool while...
    ...boiling and draining macaroni according to package directions. When boiled, drained macaroni has been dumped back in it's cooking pan, add seasoning packet from package, milk, margarine and grated cheese. Stir melted and creamy. Add meat & vegetable mixture. Stir well.
    Serve.
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    I served Mom less tonight than I usually do. She ate all she was served and was satisfied. She arose late today, lagged around, wasn't really even interested in TV, took a long nap, hung out this evening...her urine remains cloudy. I have enough pills to double up on the dosage for the next three days. I think I'll do that. That means I'll have to think of meals to tempt her to stay up long enough not to clash antibiotics with iron. Maybe we'll do a Cobb salad and garlic bread tomorrow...

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Monday, January 31, 2005
 
Again, tonight, she didn't finish her meal, although she ate a good deal...
...about ¾'s of what she was served. I don't think, this time, it's illness affecting her appetite. I think her body is refusing carbs, especially grain types. So, for a few days, we'll have meals that don't include a lot of refined carbs. Potatoes, for instance, are okay, so potato soup would be good...but nothing with pasta. Cobb salad would be good. Maybe we'll have that tomorrow night. Hers will be on the small side, and if she eats it all we'll be doing good.
    You may think my 'meal planning' is pretty random, but it's not. It has been helpful for me to record the nutritional contents of my mother's days. I can look backward and forward as I plan what she will be eating from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour...what her body will need, what it won't need. I keep a little bit of something handy in our cupboards for every contingency, including nausea (the metaclopramide certainly helps), as her appetite and her nutritional needs, especially minerals, can change on a dime.
    It helps to have a lot of experience with semi-convenience foods: I.e., using something like Classico Tomato & Basil as a base for a marinara; using Schilling's Brown Gravy Mix as a base for stews and thick soups.
    Just a few days ago I figured out how to thicken and "potato up" a delicious but creamy to a fault potato salad. To 2¾ cups of potato salad I mixed in 3 Tbl mashed potato flakes. These particular flakes happened to be flavored with "garlic and herb". I let that gel in the refrigerator overnight, added some dill relish and lots of minced onion and we were set.
    In case you're wondering about the funny colored phrases that pop up every once in awhile, those are targets from the Table of Contents for Recipes over to the right at the bottom of the floating menu.
    It looks as though some of my writing about Mom's appetite will be transferred over here, as I think of it. I'll mention it over at Mom & Me Too, but keep this in mind.
    I like the idea of sectioning of various aspects of my mother's and my life together. It helps me think more clearly about these aspects in detail, thus it's easier for me to regrasp the bigger picture when necessary. I hope this is the last apologia I write, for awhile.

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The companies mentioned in this and all my journals...
...are not paying for advertising space in my journal. They probably don't know I've linked to them. If you click on company links, you will not be somehow registered, with any esteem, as having come from my site. So feel free to click away.

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This cornbread...
...makes an excellent base for lots of stewy southwestern flavored dishes like chili, bean and ham soup, mmm, like we had last night. If you noticed my mention of her meal at Mom's Daily Tests and Meds, yesterday, you'll remember that I served the Easy Bean & Ham Soup over a slice of cornbread. The following recipe is the cornbread:
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Southwest Corn Corn Bread
Ingredients:
Preparation:
Variations on Recipe:
  1. If you want the green chilis even less hot than leaving out the membranes and seeds, soaked the chopped green chili in water for an hour or so. Mind you, you'll end up with green chili's that taste like green peppers, in which case, may as well spend less on green peppers and use them in the corn bread.
  2. I have used masa harina, a silky corn flour popular in Mexican cooking, particularly in tortillas and tamales, instead of wheat flour. Using this increases the corn over-flavor, which I like but my mother does not.
  3. Sometimes I'll include maybe ¾ cup grated cheese, usually a sharp, strong cheddar. This time I did not because I knew I would be using the cornbread and ground cover for beany recipes; chili, ham and bean soup and such.
  4. This recipe has been adapted to be used at 6,000' altitude. If you are baking at lower elevations, increase baking powder to 2 tsps; the baking soda to full, not scant measure; reduce buttermilk to 1¼ or even 1⅛ cups.
  5. An excellent way to serve a piece of this is to cover it with shredded cheese, sprinkle some kind of southwestern seasoning over it and grill it until the cheese is bubble-melting. Makes a great late evening snack with cocoa.
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    So, I'm going to be going in and out of here, today, modifying how I present recipes, maybe hooking up a Table of Contents over on the right.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
 
The Raspberry-Maple Sauce. Yes.
    It's not that it's delectable, although it is. Maple syrup, as it turns out, is the perfect sweetener for raspberries. No lemon juice needed or wanted, in fact.
    I'm not sure how this recipe occurred. I know I've made sauces by recipe, before. I guess it started by just looking at all these raspberries and thinking, hmmm...why not maple syrup instead of sugar? And happening to have in a lower cupboard a bottle of Chambord.
    I made a similar seat-of-the-pants-in-the-blueberry-patch sauce a couple of years ago, without the benefit of blueberry liqueur (if there is such a thing, although I'm sure there is). Blueberries are significantly higher in pectin, so I was very sparing with the cornstarch milk. And, I used granulated sugar, about half of what is typically called for.
    Anyway, to the recipe; I used frozen raspberries lightly packed in sugar, a 12 oz bag, which is why the directions were written down in the first place:
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Raspberry-Maple Sauce
Ingredients:
1 12 oz bag frozen raspberries pack in light sugar, thawed but cold
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup Chambord or other appropriate liqueur
2 Tbl cold or ice water
3 tsp cornstarch
Preparation:
    Combine the cornstarch and water, which will infuse into a milk. Set aside. You will probably want to remix it before pouring into the fruit concoction below.
    Dump the raspberries in a saucepan. Dump in the maple syrup and liqueur. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently with a whisk to break up most of the raspberries, until the fruit softens and the mixture turns into a paste; a slow simmer is fine.
    Quickly remix and stir the cornstarch milk into the raspberry sauce. The sauce will thicken as it cooks.
    Cook to desired thickness and warmth.
    The sauce will lose a little of it's thickness during refrigerator or freezer storage, but only barely noticeable. It will also thicken a bit less when reheated, so reheat carefully. Its flavor is much sharpened (to my mind, improved) through storage.
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    I used this, two batches, in fact, over the Costco allegedly pumpkin cheesecake. It was superb, tangy, highlighting the tang of the cake. We've had it over Baskin Robbins French Vanilla Ice Cream, as well.

    The point of this particular recipe, though, is to meditate on how my mother's tastes have changed since I came to live with her, and why. It would have never occurred to her on her own, for instance, to consider making raspberry sauce, let alone eating it on something, let alone on cheesecake. My mother has always been a "Head 'em up, get 'em fed, with as little muss and fuss as possible" type of cooking Mom. So, convenience was in, rote was in, taste was more or less out, unless it came from one of us daughters' interest in food preparation, or my father, who was very interested in spices.
    Her miserable short term memory ushered in the first change in her eating habits, at least a few years after I came to live with her. She began to forget that she didn't like vegetables. It was a subtle process. I've always been attracted to garden produce, it's so seductive and generally tastes marvelous. But, I completely understand my mother's disdain of vegetables. Although she was raised on a farm, vegetables were seasonal, very rare and best put up and stored against winter. The problem is, everything tasted like the brine or, well, frozen or canned vegetables. I don't know about you but I can't stand canned peas. I can handle pea soup and salivate over frozen or fresh peas, very lightly steamed or uncooked, but don't expect me to like vegetables if they include the likes of canned peas! Some of the others, carrots, for instance, beets and sauerkraut, sometimes green beans, aren't too bad canned. At least they have distinctive preservative flavors. I didn't discover vegetables until I left home and was in The States. I shouldn't be surprised that my mother never wandered through Produce when it had never been worth it.
    When I took on cooking for myself, since I didn't want to eat what she prepared for herself and she didn't want to eat what I prepared for myself, it was hard for her not to notice that my meals actually looked like meals (rather than sandwiches), usually took the same amount of time to prepare and were full of aroma and color. Clearly more interesting than some kind of refrigerated, processed food between two pieces of white bread; with Kraft (had to be Kraft) Sandwich Spread.
    Often, while she was making yet another sandwich or downing a bag of Hershey's Almond Kisses, I was eating a soup loaded with vegetables and added meat, sometimes with 'egg flower'. Or, I'd quickly steam a whole mess of vegetables while nuking a chicken breast, throw both together, season with Italian or Greek dressing and eat, maybe over rice of noodles, maybe not. Or, I'd fry up a small amount of bulk sausage, chop up some broccoli, stir fry it with the sausage, make about a cup of brown gravy, add some ginger, garlic and a little sugar, pour it over the meat and broccoli and eat it plain over rice. Or noodles. Regardless of what I was eating, she'd eye it studiously while she stuffed her sandwich in her mouth. Finally, I'd ask, before she'd headed for the refrigerator, "I'm going to make thus and so for myself tonight, would you like some?" or, "...should I make that for two?" This is how we began.
    She gave up the sugar on her own. When the doctor continued to mention that, even with the heavy duty medication he'd chosen to control her diabetes, her blood sugar level wasn't low enough to keep her sugar haze from taking over, she began eschewing the candy aisle of her own accord. The cutting back on desserts began in the same way. In the way of a confirmed "cold turkey" quitter, she never finished her last bag of Hershey's Almond Kisses. She never finished her last piece of lemon meringue pie.
    Somewhere, between eating for energy (thus, eating sugar) and eating the way I eat, she managed to bring her diet around to probably one of the healthiest diets in our family. Although we don't "do" dessert often, now, when we do we don't often eat it the same day it's offered. Usually, my mother's appetite, now, when it is satisfied, no longer finds sugar interesting.
    Once I was cooking for both of us, I upped the spice stakes considerably because I knew, in order to get through to her nicotine numbed tongue, I'd need sharp, flavorful surprises. This is when I learned that her appetite can be seduced and controlled with aroma.
    Now, she considers a Cobb salad (with everything) a sinful delight, and eats every bit, even when she's not eating every bit of other meals. I have become so attuned to flavor and aroma, in fact, that I am going to haunt the Farmer's market downtown this coming season. I'm beginning to notice that even our local 'natural foods' store, which is a wonderful store, doesn't present the best of organic and local produce.
    I am inordinately proud of the way she's turned her eating habits around. Food, I think, is especially important as an adventure for those whose lives are winding down. I am pleased, in fact, that she does not recall, throughout her life, ever being particularly interested in food, eating it or knowing about it. Thus, she gets a real kick out of doing this now, when someone who enjoys cooking oversees her nutrition.
    My mother is a delight to cook for, too. She exclaims, "Oh, doesn't that look good!" with genuine delight at every plate I place before her. Since I am an honest cook and tell her what to look out for, if there should be any problems (like the marinara I burnt last week but which still tasted good, if unusually smoky), her feedback is always honest; but, her palate is easy to please.
    Up until about a year ago, she remembered "left overs" and remembered, from bad experiences of which I can only guess, that "left overs" are "no nos". During that period we stocked up on a lot of frozen entrees and dinners. She ate most of them. They were middling nutritious. During her severe bouts with anemia when her appetite was in hiding, these entrees saved her life and kept her electrolytes up. If she didn't feel like eating, she could always nibble at macaroni and cheese. During this period, too, we ate fast food or at neighborhood restaurants at least 3 times a week, not necessarily always dinner.
    Our eating habits rarely include fast food, anymore, or restaurant food. I can't remember the last time I bought a frozen entree. I threw away a 2 year old DiGorno personal pizza a couple of months ago when looking for freezer room. That was the last of the frozen entree era. Truthfully, I think Mom is getting to the place, again, where she can imagine "eating out", so I think that practice will revive, to which I say, good.
    She is, since her health has evened out and her appetite has returned, easily lured into eating well, again, and her body is handling it.
    The roast ham, for instance: When I mixed up the packaged maple-sugar glaze for the latter stages of roasting, I added 2 tsps. of plain old off-the-shelf curry powder to it. Delicious. Mom noticed, and approved of, the difference. "Coulda used 3 tsps," she suggested.
    Tonight, the bean and ham soup is a cheater's paradise, and full of good-good stuff. Essentially, simmering in a pot on the stove as I write is 8 oz roast ham, 1/3 yellow onion chopped, 1/2 green pepper chopped, 1 cup chopped celery with leaves, all sauteed in about a Tbl bacon grease with two large, minced cloves of garlic, and maybe a Tbl of MPBIL's Southwestern Fire seasoning, oh, with 3 15 oz cans of Ranch Style Beans.

    I cut and stored the rest of the ham, today, in the freezer. Realized, as well, another trip to Costco is necessary. We're down to one egg and could use another box of Large Depends.
    Anyway, I'm thinking, I should probably establish some sort of place to compile a floating Recipes Contents on the template of this journal for easy recipe access, in case you're interested.
    I don't, by the way, mean this to be a journal of how to feed an Ancient One. It is, though, a journal about how I feed my Ancient One and the dynamic place food has in our lives.
    We are, now, more than ever, naturally eating low carb with lots of meat and vegetables. High to very high in fiber and natural oil. This is good for us in so many ways, not the least of which is that it keeps her interest in food up. Nourishment means life, at any age, and pleasure anticipated is always a reason to cherish life, even and especially if the result is nourishment.

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