Ask Not For Whom the (telephone) Bell Tolls...

This started out to be my official GYO post for June.

However, my well organized midday stint in the kitchen yesterday was interrupted. A home cook is often subject to unscheduled breaks, and the resulting missteps can sometimes take a well planned mise en place and turn it into something more resembling a disaster area. The GYO Post resulted, but not quite as directly I as had originally planned.

What follows immediately may seem to have nothing to do with food OR fun, much less a GYO offering. But trust me, like trying a new recipe, all the ingredients finally come together - eventually.

Here in Texas we all just expect folks "of a certain age" to obsessively talk about the weather. In a state where most folks used to ranch or farm, knowing about, anticipating and/or coping with the weather used to play quite a dominant role in financial success.

As the years passed, cities grew, the economy changed, and now so few folks are directly involved in agriculture, that most of the time when older Texans gather, their weather talk takes the form of a "top this" exchange of inclement weather stories.

It typically plays out as a variation on this theme: "I remember when I lived in (name of city/town) and it (description of some sort of natural disaster). "Yup!" starts the next turn. "It started to (weather action verb) so hard a (heavy inanimate object) was sucked through/shoved over a (large geographic feature)!".You get extra style points for severity adjectives and if you can remember the month and year of the event, you win that round and the game begins again. The only addition to the rules of "top this!" is that now, if you have a first person Katrina experience, you automatically win the entire exchange. Fair is fair.

All this by way of explaining how it came to pass that when our insurance adjuster, a guy venturing into that "certain age" category himself, called today about the eventual (think:hopefully during our natural lifespan) replacement of our hail damaged roof, he began and I nearly automatically responded with a typical Lone Star style back and forth about places we had lived, and bad storms we had seen.By the way, if there were ever need in a court of law to establish beyond any shadow of a doubt that I have personally crossed that territorial divider between "slightly older" and "geezer-in-training"? No need for birth certificates or calendars either one. This slip into "top that weather story" domain would grant an automatic "dotage" verdict from any jury, any day.

So, today, I spent more minutes than I care to admit on the phone with an insurance adjuster (a nice guy, don't get me wrong), reminiscing about bad weather I have personally experienced.

And while I was indulging my inner Texas Weather geezer on the telephone today, I frickin' French Roasted the second of my two batches of pine nuts.See for yourself. Two batches, one golden, one, um, "super golden".

I'd already successfully roasted one batch of pine nuts, and even photographed the contrast between the raw pine nuts (bowl on the right) and the very nicely toasted pine nuts (bowl on the left) to showcase the difference. Those poster children for nicely toasted nuts were going safely into the freezer for later in the season. That left me with their evil super roasted not so identical twins. So, unless I was willing to throw the over browned nuts out altogether, my only remaining hope was that the grinding up of that second batch would add an "extra layer" of flavor into my GYO pesto that nobody would quite be able to put their finger on. It would be great, I thought, if the more-than-toasted-nuts would join their little ingredient hands to the other strong flavors in the pesto without raising too big a "she burned the nuts!" stink about it.

I couldn't be certain at all that this optimism would be justified because, truth be told, in addition to the fact I had gotten distracted while on the telephone and burned the pine nuts, I have never (EVER) made pesto from scratch before. (Cue gasp from reader.) I know it is silly but pesto is so readily available and comes commercially prepared in so many delicious varieties, I never thought to make my own. The locally made stuff I get from the store is amazing. Could/would fresh taste any better? Would the French Roast nuts take the advantage of home made away?

I had my ingredients, including my French Roasted pine nuts, all assembled for Grow Your Own #11. It was time to answer the question, "How hard is it to make good pesto at home from scratch (with nearly burned nuts)?".

Rainbow Charred

If you've ever heard Garrison Keillor speaking in his oh so dulcet tones about the Lutherans in Lake Wobegon, you'll know how very surprised I was to sidle up to a pot luck table at my own Lutheran church one evening and spy something exotic on the table.

When I say "exotic" in this context you'd be forgiven if you thought I meant jello "with fruit in it!", or cookie bars with "nuts on top!", but no, I am talking here about Rainbow Swiss chard with raisins and pine nuts. I didn't recognize it immediately but rather found out after tasting it and promptly hunting down the answer from the guy who'd placed the dish on the table. Maybe other folks didn't recognize it either or maybe it was because there were so many families with young children at this particular event, but at the end of the meal the chard in the casserole remained fairly untouched.I'd done my best - had two generous helpings - to respectably empty out the container. Going home from a Lutheran pot luck with anything other than heartburn and a scraped clean dish may not be a sin, but it isn't exactly a tribute. We Lutherans are known for strong coffee, harmonic hymn singing and our very hearty appetites. Leaving a pot luck with your own leftovers is just not kosher.

So I did my helpful, conscientious concerned older church type lady duty and I asked if I could take some home? "Take it all" was my answer, "we just had this for dinner the other day and you are welcome to it!". Win/win. I got the chard, they left with their potluck reputation intact.

Turns out this family had recently returned from a trip to Egypt where they'd eaten something similar. When the dad saw some chard in the grocery store he went to Epicurious.com and found this recipe that was very close. At that point I'd never heard of Epicurious, so I went home with a delicious side dish, and a new online recipe source to boot.

Epicurious.com, besides the suggestively cool name, is the online home of Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines. When I saw that, I was concerned the recipe would be complicated and require techniques I was not yet comfortable with. To my delight, Chard with raisins and pine nuts was a simple recipe with easy prep and a short ingredient list. I printed it out, made a note of my friend's substitution of chicken broth for water and was ready to go.

Which means we've had chard with raisins and pine nuts lots of times since then, right? Wrong. Like Lutheran Potluck diners, our household has not historically been novelty food friendly. I liked to eat chard fixed this one way, yes, but I was completely intimidated by the variety of chard offered in the grocery store. I was put off by their gigantic size and by my lack of history with this veggie. The chard in the store did not remotely resemble what I'd brought home cooked. I mean it was his pot, my luck. I'd only had chard that once. What if I messed up and my family hated it? Time passed and we remained chardless.

Enter the advantages of cooking my way week to week through a CSA basket from a local farm. The unspoken agreement between my husband and I is that we will try this out for a season, eat everything we get in the basket whether we think we like it already or not, and understand that it might take 2 or more tries at preparation styles or presentation to find a winning way to offer the veggies as part of our regular dinner line ups. Like turnips. Roasted turnips were not well received by both of us, no, but scalloped? My husband handed out high accolades, "you can fix this anytime". And went for seconds. When Basket Number 5 hit my kitchen from Tecolote Farms, inside was an amazing bunch of rainbow chard. Bingo! I found the recipe and threw caution to the winds. Since this chard arrived in a CSA basket, it came with built in permission to cook as a novice and offer the proceeds. We didn't choose the chard - it chose us.

I've gotten a lot healthier emotionally operating under the "hey - it came in the basket" premise. This means I am no longer taking it personally when my husband doesn't like something I've cooked or prepared for dinner. In years past my kids would try to fend off inquiries as to why there was a relatively intact dinner plate returned to the kitchen after a meal. "You didn't like it?" I would ask (peevishly - I'll own that). "I liked the salad!" they'd say brightly, backing quickly away from the kitchen. "The salad is just dressed lettuce!" I'd yell at their rapidly retreating forms, "that's not cooking!".

Yes I will confess to you here and now - for years I was one of those "love me - love my cooking" Mommies. This was complicated by the fact that everybody but me in this family used to be incredibly picky eaters. I am not all that adventurous an omnivore by any means, it took me a decade of watching before I even tried sushi, but for a long time I was the one out in front of the group, leading and sometimes dragging them along to "just TRY some!".

Now I am much better. (Well, recovering.) We take it one dinner at a time. My kids, out and cooking on their own, have well developed palates despite their self imposed narrowed start. Now they are just as often the ones encouraging me to try out something new.

My husband tries to find something positive to say about every dinner (he usually does like the salad) and I try not to glower when I hear him say "ehh - not exactly my favorite".  As a matter of fact, I've learned if he does not spontaneously praise a meal, I probably ought to just let it go that night. Unless I want to pick a fight. Which, on a good night, I absolutely do not. Meals are to be about warmth and nurture and companionability, not "if you love me you will eat it and lie and say you LOVED it".

My point - and I did have a point here somewhere - oh, right. The chard.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, they raised the chard and put it in our baskets. I found the recipe I'd downloaded so long ago off epicurious.com, printed it out, and got started.

In my defense, uncooked rainbow chard is gorgeous. I felt like I was playing with crayons the colors were so brilliant. I planted chard in our garden but it is the ordinary variety with white stems. These rainbow beauties have stems and leaf veins that are pink, yellow, orange. Fun to look at and work with. Which I offer by way of explanation for the charred pine nuts. My husband, a (mostly) retired neurosurgeon, is a pretty sharp guy. A trained medical observer. "What are these little burned thingies?" he asked as I was stirring a mountain of chopped chard into the pot.

I admitted to you I am "recovering". I stretched the truth.

"Those", I stated with forced cheerfulness, "are French Roast pine nuts!".

The first step in this easy recipe is to chop the chard. The second step was to toast the pine nuts in some oil "over moderate heat, stirring constantly".

My eyes were clearly dazzled by the colors because somehow I read that recipe to say "throw some pine nuts into a too hot pan and forget to stir them. Continue to ignore them while you play with the chard until you smell them burning, then curse and remove.".

Simple mistake, yeah?

Anyway, the chard dish was good - I added some leftover rice I had into the mix wishing it was couscous - this would taste awesome over couscous - and didn't realize until the next day that I had totally brain clouded and not thought to substitute loquats in for the golden raisins. Next time...I will hopefully remember to do it that way next time.... Our dinner also featured some Nilgai sausage provided us by "our friend the Hunter" and roasted baby carrots. Real babies - not those lathed down critters from the store.

And pardon me for one more sidebar but what do you suppose they do with the carrot shavings they must have left over after lathing thousands of carrot pieces down to look like they popped out of the ground so cute and small? There must be giant hills of carrot leavings behind a factory somewhere. Do they recycle those into compost? Is that where the color comes from in those V-8 Tropical juice blends? I am curious, orange....
As far as our Adventures in Chard - (cue Gone with the Wind theme), as God is my witness - there will be a next time. Although my husband left much of his chard on the plate (he said he was "full" and I left it at that - see? Recovering!) I am chard averse no longer, which is a very good thing seeing as I have 5 heads of it growing at a rapid rate in my garden. I will try preparing it some other way for our next chard exposure, and perhaps will not be similarly recipe blinded by my more modest non-rainbowed stems. Live and learn! (and eat)....