A Heritage of Humor – Stories from my Kitchens

Post #756 Fluffernutter

November 29, 2020 at 3:59 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Post #756 Fluffernutter

When we were kids living in upstate New York, we lived on PBJs. Peanut butter and jelly was about the only common denominator among the three of us. Even those were subject to various likes and dislikes. My sister would eat just peanut butter on crackers, while my brother and I insisted on our Wonder bread. And white bread only. My sister and brother would eat crunchy peanut butter, the crunchier the better, while I wouldn’t go near the stuff and insisted on creamy. When my brother made a peanut butter sandwich, he laid the peanut butter on so thick he’d use half the jar. I usually put a thin layer, barely enough to coat the bread, but plenty to get the flavor, which to me was what it was all about.

The toppings were as varied as our tastes. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it was jelly/jam. Mom was eclectic in her tastes and in her buying habits so we’d have a dozen different jars to choose from. Most of the time, I went right to the grape. During the fall, we’d have home made apple butter to slather on. Once I remember trying to spread strawberry jelly on a sandwich and having problems with it. When I complained to mom, she pointed out that it was strawberry preserves and I was trying to spread a whole strawberry. The scary part was I almost succeeded. Mom also gave us honey to use, and during one period, I made my teeth ache by the constant use of brown sugar on my peanut butter. But nothing, nothing ever invented, rose to the wonder and joy of the fluffernutter.

We lived in the New England area for about four years or so when I was first starting school. Everyone I knew brought these sandwiches to school at least once a week. The schools served them fairly often, often enough that it was routine. Sandwich bread spread with peanut butter and, wait for it . . . . marshmallow fluff.

Can you imagine anything less nutritious and better designed to wire up any kid under the age of ten? Peanut butter and whipped sugar encased in a handheld package designed to send your blood sugar skyrocketing. And it was delicious!

Marshmallow fluff was nothing new. It had been “invented” in the early 1900s. It’s gone through a century of changing popularity and manufacturers. One of my favorite lines is from the movie Julie and Julia. Julia and Simka are visiting Avis and sitting in the living room talking about their failed meeting with the publishers. Simka looks up from the cookbook she is perusing and in an inimitable French accent asks, “What is marshmallow fluff?” I might be the only person that laughed at that.

One reason marshmallow fluff still enjoys popularity is it makes a wonderful fudge with chocolate chips and condensed milk. I used to make it all the time.

Fluffernutters, though, were its strength. I don’t know if I’m looking back a memory from a half century or more and getting it right, but I seem to recall that fluffernutters were typically eaten in fall and early winter, about the same time as bonfires and roasted marshmallows on a stick.

Mom gave them to us only once in a while. From her perspective, they were sticky, messy, hard to clean up from, hard to wash clothes from, and likely bad for the kids.

When we moved to Arizona, I told one of my friends that I missed fluffernutters. They’d never heard of them. For the first time in my life, I discovered something regional. I asked mom to get some marshmallow fluff from the store, and they didn’t have any. There was no way for me to get a fluffernutter. My friends thought I was crazy.

Years later, marshmallow fluff was available routinely in the stores and I could make one. I discovered it’s a kids’ meal. God, was it ever sweet!

When I was preparing for this post, I did an image search on fluffernutters and discovered that recently the fluffernutter mystique has been undergoing a rise in popularity. The fluffernutter sandwich hasn’t changed much. It’s still a layer of peanut butter and a layer of marshmallow between two pieces of bread. There are now a ton of other things with that flavor profile (like that term?)

Picture a pancake with a strip of peanut butter and a strip of marshmallow rolled up like a crepe. Hell, picture a crepe with a strip of peanut butter and a strip of marshmallow rolled up with chocolate drizzled on top.

I saw a peanut butter pie with a marshmallow topping that had been torched to a beautiful brown crust.

I saw vanilla cupcakes with a peanut butter center and marshmallow frosting. I saw a peanut butter cupcake with mini marshmallows on top that had been toasted to stay in place.

There was a tart shell filled with marshmallow cream and peanut butter chips, and a tart shell filled with peanut butter cream topped with marshmallows.

There was a fluffernutter made with equal amounts of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff then grilled in a panini press so it was toasty and crispy, and the filling oozed out slightly.

But it still seems to be a regional dish. I don’t see it featured anywhere but here in New England.

Do you all know of any typically regional dishes you’ve enjoyed? Share with us all. We’d like to know.

As always,

(a fluffernutter)

Post #755 Spatchcock That Bird!!

November 23, 2020 at 11:41 AM | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

It’s time for the first of the big end-of-year feasts. In my family, Thanksgiving marked the beginning of The Time of Turkey. It was my favorite time of the year, and probably everyone’s favorite time of the year. Turkey was plentiful, tasty, and always at hand. Turkey wasn’t to be had any other time of the year, at least not in our house.

Mom started the turkey early in the morning, around 3am on a very low temperature. She always got the biggest bird she could find, counting on the leftovers. She jammed the cavity with onion stuffing so hard it leaked out both ends of the bird. She spread butter over the outside and sprinkled salt and pepper over it all. Once it was in the oven, she went back to bed. A few hours later, we would all wake up to succulent aroma of roasting turkey.

I know that every family and every culture has its own traditions for any feast day, but for us it was turkey. Fall and winter feast centered around the bird. Every family I knew for my entire growing up period had the same tradition, no matter where we lived. The constancy was comforting, something we could count on. Dad (when he was home from deployment with the Marines) would carve the bird, cussing and fussing the whole time. Or mom would, cussing and fussing the whole time. We watched other fathers on television carve a bird with no muss, cuss, or fuss, but the reality was different and unchanging.

I’ve watched many demonstrations on how to carve a bird, from a chicken to a turkey to a penguin, and I never can replicate it. I’ve almost given up. One thing I did give up on was roasting the bird the way my mom did.

I don’t start it at 3am with a cavity so full of stuffing it’s like a brick. I don’t cook it at a lower than low temperature and wait forever for the thing to cook. And we have turkey several times a year rather than just twice. So what do we do?

First, since there’s just the two of us, now three, we start with a small bird. Turkey can be had all year round now in various sizes, and a small bird not only cooks faster, it reduces the amount of leftovers so there’s still room in the freezer. Then rather than roast it intact, we spatchcock the bird. I know most of you know what that is, and some of you might even be familiar with the term. For those who don’t and aren’t, let me explain.

First, it’s a real cooking term, and isn’t filthy as it sounds. It refers to removing the spine of the bird and flattening it out.

Removing the spine can be problematic. If you have heavy duty kitchen shears, it will go easier. First step is to remove the wishbone from the breast. When you look at the large opening of the bird, the well-formed V is the wishbone. Use your index finger to locate the bone, then use a sharp knife to loosen the bone from the meat. I usually just make a small incision at the top and run finger under the bone on either side. Be careful because the bone is fragile and can break easily. Cut the bone away from the bottom of the bird where it connects to the spinal area, then lift gently to remove it from the sternum. You should have a complete bone intact that you can dry out and make a wish on.

Next, flip the over and feel the ridges of the spine. The ribs connect here, but there’s a line about a half-inch on either side where the ribs can be easily cut. If you don’t have kitchen shear, use a heavy duty sharp butcher’s knife, but be careful. Start from the large opening of the cavity, and cut the spine completely away all the way down and through the small end, including the triangular-ish nubbin of fat sometimes called the Parson’s Nose. Do this to both sides of the spine so it comes away from the bird in one piece. It looks kind of repulsive, but there you are. The spine can be used to make soup stock if you want.

Finally, flip the bird back over so it’s resting on the opening where the spine was. Depending on the size of your bird, you might have to use a large roasting pan, but gently spread the bird on a baking sheet with side rims to contain the cooking juices. If the bird hangs over the edges, line the sheet with foil wide enough to catch it all. Once the bird has been spread, place your hand on the sternum, or breast bone, and push down until it cracks. This will make the bird lay flat. Tuck the wings in, and prepare the bird any way you choose. This method will cook the bird faster and more evenly. Keep an eye on the internal temp, it should read 165-175 in the thickest part of the thigh and breast.

What we do is spatchcock the bird on the counter. Then we put a pile of stuffing in the center of the baking sheet and put the bird on top of that. We loosen the skin and spread the internal meat with a mixture of softened butter and herbs. As it roasts, the butter bathes the meat in flavor, the skin turn crispy, and the cooking juices soften and cook the stuffing.

You can see from the picture that carving this bird is a much easier job than before.

For this year’s feast, we’re having our small turkey, stuffing, gravy (jarred that we bought, but a good quality one), roasted root veggies, and a couple of desserts. Partner/Spouse is making mincemeat tartlets, mini pecan pies. I’m making brownies with high quality chocolate. And there will be wine, and other libations. Our weather up here this week is chilly and wet so hot chocolate is likely going to be on the menu somewhere.

I think we all have all our holiday gift shopping done so that tension is gone. Due to the pandemic, we’re not doing any visiting or partying this season except via computer. It’ll be a different holiday, but still a warm one filled with the closeness of family and tradition.

I hope and wish yours is the same.

As always,

Post #754 I Really Miss Cheesecake

November 17, 2020 at 1:16 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I had my first taste of cheesecake when I was in high school. A friend and I were talking about desserts, cuz what else do young teenagers talk about? She mentioned she’d made a cheesecake the night before, and I said I’d never had it. The next day she brought me a piece and it was heavenly. The next time my mom and I were grocery shopping (a task I hated at the time) I saw a boxed mix for one and asked if we could get it. Mom wasn’t a big fan of cheesecake (the reason we’d never had any up to then), but she bought it and I made it that afternoon. We all went crazy for it, including mom.

I was just starting my culinary “training” at the time, so I went to my cooking bible, my mom’s Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and read the recipe. That seemed like a whole lot of work when the box mix was simply add milk and chill. So I stuck with the box mix for years.

Of course, as time went by, I experimented with the basic recipe. My results were mixed because I didn’t really know the ins and outs of making a cheesecake, except making the crust was easy. Then someone, I don’t remember who, bought me this:

And I learned all kinds of things. If you like cheesecake and want to learn how, this is a really good way to do it. I started ordering cheesecake as dessert in restaurants all the time.

Then I went to The Cheesecake Factory and learned about whipped cheesecake filling. What an eye opener! I’m not going to go into detail about the different types of cheesecake (and there are many), but the basic types are cooked, and chilled/frozen. Cooked cheesecakes tend to be denser, richer, and more custard like. Chilled cheesecakes tend to be lighter, airier, and more mousse like. Flavors for both are limited only be what’s on hand.

After I’d eaten my fill of cheesecake, I pulled back from it and started looking at the “best” cheesecakes. Partner/Spouse introduced me to one from Harry and David’s store. It was a chocolate cheesecake which I’d had before but not like this one. It started out baked, then was frozen for shipment, then thawed for consumption. Except most times, I didn’t want to wait for the last step. Mostly I ate it frozen. It was tangy, tasty, and decadent.

When we moved to Vermont, we chose “our” grocery store and scouted through the whole store. He picked out a couple of desserts for us. I was happy to see a large piece of cheesecake covered in cherries! Until I bit into it. Then I was ecstatic! It was a combination of a whipped filling, a slightly sweetened sour cream top, and at least a quarter cup of cherry pie filling. It was so large I couldn’t finish it in one sitting so I got to save half for the “next time”.

Somewhere near the beginning of my cheesecake journey, someone gave me a huge chunk of a light cheesecake of the chilled variety. It was delicious and easy to make, according to them. I loved this dessert, but over time lost touch with the person and the dessert. Every once in a while, I’d think about it and wish I had the recipe. I remembered it being one of those “church lady” type of desserts.

Then someone posted it in FB and I got to see it again! I had no idea it was “Woolworth” dessert, despite the many times I’d shopped there.

Here’s the whole recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 3oz box Lemon Jell-o
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 box graham cracker crumbs (3 cups) more for thicker crust, divided
• 1 half cup (one stick) melted butter
• 1 8oz box cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh is best
• 1 can evaporated milk, well chilled OR 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream well chilled

Instructions

Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water. Cool until slightly thickened.  Mix 3/4 graham cracker crumbs and melted butter until well blended, press into bottom of the 9 X 13 pan to form a crust. Save rest of crumbs to sprinkle on top of dessert.  Beat the Evaporated milk/heavy cream until fluffy.  In a separate bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and lemon juice with mixer until smooth.  Add thickened Jell-O and slowly mix in whipped evaporated milk.  Spread filling over the crust and sprinkle with reserved graham cracker crumbs on top.  Chill at least 2 hours and up to overnight, store covered in refrigerator.

It makes a lot of cheesecake, so I can see it being the star of a lot of pot lucks. I can’t wait to try this again, but due to the difficulty I’m having trying to get my system to work with fats since I lack a gall bladder, it might be a while. But I can dream.

By the way, I still don’t like potato soup.

Just looked out the window and we have a small snow flurry flurrying by.

Hope you all have a pleasant rest of your week. Let me know if you try this and if it’s as good as I remember.

As always,

Post #753 Potatoes Are Confusing

November 14, 2020 at 12:22 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

I saw the meme above on FB recently, and couldn’t get it out of my mind. Potatoes and I have not had a good relationship throughout the course of my life. My mom used to joke there was no way I could be Irish since I disliked potatoes so much.

I grew up and discovered there were other kinds of potatoes than russets, and found that I liked them. So it was really just my mom’s potatoes I didn’t like. She was Irish so we had potatoes every single day. She had three standard ways to cook them: boiled, baked, and mashed. All three involved copious amounts of butter which I also didn’t care for. And many times there was gravy which she made from a roux which is a flour and butter paste that’s cooked and thinned with milk. Another substance I seldom allowed to past my teeth.

However! If butter, gravy, or milk wasn’t involved, I’d eat potatoes like the rest of them. Potato chips I’d eat till I threw up. French fries would be gobbled down with a bucket of ketchup.

Once in a while mom would make potato soup. It’s basically hot milk with cooked potatoes and onions in it. Three of my least favorite things when I was a kid. Guess how well that turned out for me. Back then, we ate what was on the table. Not eating wasn’t an option. Mom didn’t waste anything. I was always the last person at the table still stuffing bread or crackers in my mouth while choking down a cold soup I despised.

But mom’s go-to potato was mashed. She and dad loved those things, and I became quite adept at making them from scratch when I was a teenager. I didn’t like them. When I put a forkful in my mouth and chewed, my teeth would click together. I didn’t like that. The texture was too thin, and butter and/or gravy didn’t help. But I ate them. Once, and only once, I refused to eat mashed potatoes. While we were living in upstate New York, my dad, who was a Marine, and since it was the 60s, got posted to Viet Nam. That year, some friends invited us to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. It was a treat since we all liked them, and they liked us, and they were a huge family. We all sat down at a long table with barely enough room to hold the food, much less the number of people sitting around it. And my mom plopped mashed potatoes on my plate. I ignored them while I ate turkey, and stuffing (which was another iffy dish for me if it had onions in it), and cranberry sauce, and veggies of various kinds. When dinner was over, my plate sat with a lump of mashed potatoes. Our hosts said I didn’t have to eat them, but my mom insisted. I went stubborn to the max, so mom said no pie until I ate those potatoes. I decided no pie was worth it. I never considered how embarrassed my mom was until we got home. I snarkily said, “Now can I have some pie?” Her reply was “Absolutely not. You can just go to your room, put your pajamas on, and got to bed.” One of the worst punishments ever.

Now, of course, I eat potatoes all the time. Like most things I hated as a child, I discovered it wasn’t the potato itself I disliked, but the preparation. When it’s done “right”, I like nearly everything, potatoes too.

So, the meme above got me to thinking about potatoes and how they’re good for any meal. Then I remembered the movie The Martian and how he ate potatoes and they kept him alive.

So, breakfast potatoes don’t have to be hash browns, although that’s reason enough to eat breakfast. In our little corner of the world, hash brown patties are hard to come by, so when we find them, we grab them. So simple and so easy. There’s just something about potatoes fried in oil till brown and crispy and sprinkled with a little salt that makes them irresistible. We also make hash browns by shredding potatoes and frying the whole mess, flipping several times to get the crispy potatoes mixed in with the soft and creamy ones. But don’t neglect the home fries. Big chunks of potatoes fried on the grill (read that skillet) till brown and crispy on the outside, but soft and tender on the inside. Throw some onion in there while they’re cooking then top with cheese and bacon, and it’s a whole meal.

Fast food potatoes are french fries. Drive throughs and diners appropriated them and that was all she wrote. Until tater tots appeared. I can never decide which I like better. We’ve cooked tater tots in the waffle iron many times to create a big pattie of crispy potato goodness. Just make sure they’re thawed before you put them in the waffle iron.

Snacks are potato chips. Flavored or not, salted or not, thick or not, it’s the one we reach for in our house. The only alternative is tortilla chips but that has more to do with where we grew up than taste. When I was a kid, I longed for those little cans of potato sticks. They looked so cute and delicious. Turned out they were just annoying potato chips. I could fill my move with potato chips. I had to eat those sticks one by one. So I didn’t.

Fancy dinners with a baked potato? Nope, not here. Fancy dinners need Potatoes Anna, thinly sliced potatoes layered in a skillet and baked for an hour until tender throughout. Inverted onto a plate and cut into wedges for serving, it’s visually stunning and epicurially fantastic.

Even mashed potatoes can be served at a fancy dinner if you do them up right. Mash a bunch of roasted garlic into them with a sprinkle of salt and pepper on top, and no one will turn them down. We also make potato boats with mashed potatoes. Add one egg and a cup of flour to leftover cooled mashed potatoes, then scoop onto a greased baking sheet in half cup portion. Hollow out the center and bake until hot throughout and golden brown on top. Fill the center with whatever you like. At the holidays, this is one of my go-to meals for the leftovers. Fill the center with turkey, veggies, and gravy.

We also have baked potato meals every couple of weeks. Bake the critters till done, then top with whatever you like. My favorite is chili and cheese. Partner/Spouse loves gravy and meat. FiL is a simple butter man, but adds the hottest spices he can find on hand. Mom and Dad used to make what they called a Corn Meal where they made corn in various ways and chowed down. We do that with potatoes once in a while.

One of my favorite breads to buy (when I don’t make my own) is Martin’s potato bread. It’s made with a blend of wheat flour and potato flour. At home, I make it with mashed potato and flour. It’s a strong loaf that will stand up to anything, but lasts a long while before going stale. Even when it’s stale, it can be used quite easily for bread pudding, french toast, or croutons.

So, apart from potatoes, what are some of your favorite versatile ingredients? Share and let us know the fun things you do.

Oh, and by the way, I still don’t like potato soup.

As always,

Post #752 Hot and Cold

November 9, 2020 at 12:10 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

When I was a kid in up state New York, once some friends and I (brother and sister included) went for a day hike. The appeal of this, besides hiking around the country side, was the promise of a hot lunch. We figured it was going to be hot dogs over a campfire and we were excited. To our surprise, they pulled out a package of bacon, some bread, tomatoes, and lettuce. Then they assembled a home made camp stove they’d made themselves. They were as surprised at us not knowing what was going on as we were by what was going on.

The stove was comprised of two pieces, an inner can and an outer can. The inner can was a tuna fish can that had been scrubbed clean. They had then cut corrugated cardboard to fit snugly inside the can. They rolled the cardboard tightly so it was almost a solid piece of cardboard inside the tuna fish can, then they melted a candle and poured the wax onto the cardboard which absorbed it. When the cardboard wouldn’t hold any more wax they allowed it to puddle in the bottom half of the can. That was set aside. The second part of the stove was the “cooktop”. They took the largest coffee can they could find and scrubbed that out. Then they used a nail to punch holes randomly around the side of the can without denting it.

To use it, they lit the cardboard. The wax burned, not the cardboard. The coffee can was placed over the tuna can and allowed to heat. The bacon strips were cut into sizes the coffee can cooktop could accommodate and were soon sizzling. Once all the bacon was fried, the sandwiches were assembled and we all ate with gusto. It didn’t hurt that it was a chilly Autumn day.

It was the same basic principal as a can of Sterno heating a chafing dish. And I don’t recommend using it on a wood surface.

I never forgot that fun little adventure, and during the course of my kid years, I made several of those stoves and showed them off to other friends who’d never heard of them.

Years later when I was backpacking and hiking a lot, I had a portable backpacking gas stove, and I hated it. The thought of having something fiery and explosive on my back made me nervous. I used it only when I was forced to. I ate a lot of cold sandwiches, cold cans of beef stew, and since I don’t like coffee, I’d have cold water in the morning. Plus, I seldom hiked during truly cold weather.

But one time I did. And it was to try out a new stove. It was called a Hurricane stove and the major selling point for me was it used burning materials for fuel. Anything you could find on the forest floor was fuel. The main innovation for a stove in this case was it had a wind chamber powered by a small fan which itself was powered by a battery. The wind caused the fire to burn hotter, the same principle as blowing on a fire to get it started. It left very little ash behind, and it could boil a half gallon of water in under five minutes. I loved that stove.

One day in January, I called a buddy of mine to see if he wanted to look over his favorite overlook in winter. He was ex-army, in reasonably good shape, and game for anything typically. So he said yes and on the appointed day, we set out.

We were hiking about two miles on the Virginia Blue trail until it connected with the Appalachian Trail (affectionately called the AT by hikers.) A one mile climb to a semi-hidden branch off, another 3/4 of a mile and we were looking out over the Shenandoah Valley and watching the river flow by several miles away. It was spectacular.

Then I turned to my friend and said, “You ready for a surprise?”

“What,” he asked. He never knew what to expect when we went hiking. His favorite comment was “You always kick my a** on the trail. You’re like the Energizer Bunny. You just don’t stop.”

“Just watch the view and don’t look.” I quickly assembled the stove and got it going. Once it had caught, I got water on to boil and brought out some home made hot chocolate mix, enough for three cups. Once that was set up, I got out some grapes, and some home made chocolate chip cookies. He’s not a terribly big guy, just two inches taller than me. But he was addicted to my baking treats. So there were a lot of cookies.

“Okay, you can look now.”

He looked at the spread with a grin. “How is it that you go hiking and make a meal like I’m at my grandmother’s house?”

I smiled smugly. “It’s what I do.”

There’s something about food “cooked” outdoors that makes it special. Hot chocolate on a cold day will warm you from toe to top. You don’t even mind the first burn in your mouth.

I make the hot chocolate mix by following the standard recipe on the cocoa tin but I multiply it by the number of cups I’m going to be making. I put the ingredients in a bowl to mix them up. Since I don’t keep milk in the house, I use the correct amount of dried whole milk so I can just add water. Once the dry stuff is thoroughly mixed, I add a half teaspoon of vanilla for each cup and stir like crazy to get a good distribution. Then I add chocolate syrup until I think it’s right. This turns it into a sticky mess that goes into either a jar with a tight seal, or a double/triple layers of zip lock baggies. The reason I the double/triple layers is I snip a small corner off the baggie and clip it closed. I want to be certain that no chocolate mess gets in my pack.

You put approximately two tablespoons into a cup and add hot to boiling water up to three quarters full. Stir until dissolved and drink it up.

Being in the woods in winter helps make it a little more delicious. And home made chocolate chip cookies does, too. Wrapping cold hands around the hot-warm cup starts the warmth in your fingers and takes it all the way up your arms into your core. Wonderful feeling.

I miss that stove. Somewhere along the years, it got misplaced and I didn’t notice. By the time I thought of it again, it was gone. But, I’ve done internet searches, and have found they’ve taken that technology and refined it. I can get the same benefits without the battery, which was always the basic flaw in the design.

They haven’t changed the hot chocolate, though. And just for grins and giggles, here’s the hot chocolate mix we use when I don’t feel like making it.

Just add a small squirt of chocolate syrup to it. Cuz that makes everything better.

As always,