5th Avenue Display of Green Bell & Hungarian Wax Peppers. Perfect for Soup & for Stuffing.
Celebrating Gramma: Tasting Memories
Stuffed Pepper Soup for One
March, the month for wearing green and thinking Spring forward thoughts. This year, a month to celebrate my grandmother’s 97th birthday. Reflecting on the days when she lived alone and could still hear well. Recalling our standing date—the Saturday morning call.
I’d share a little about my week and she’d share details of hers with me. Mine took the form of a news bulletin straight off the wire. Where we’d been. What we’d done. Direct and without added flavor. No sparks of rising action, no point of climax, void of resolution.
A Recipe For Making Connections: Boilermaker Tailgate Chili
It’s been said, “Good things come to those who wait.” Like many, I have not always been the best at waiting. Recently, I had a new opportunity to hone this skill. Alongside 60,000 other train enthusiasts wanting to see the restored Big Boy Steam Engine. Stopped in Rochelle, Illinois, this marvel of 1940’s engineering designed to mount steep grades was impressive.
Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 Steam Engine stopped in Rochelle, IL. on the Heartland of America Tour.Read the rest of this entry »
Big band notes bounce. A muted trombone calls. Arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, decades of marriage twirl. Spirals in love, circle round. The radiant couple, joyfully joined. Newly wed, kiss.
Truelove, gracious hospitality, purejoy, and of course–excellent food. Thinking about these things makes me happy. My mother is a wedding planner who owned a local bridal shop. I suppose the art of celebrating love & marriage is baked into my DNA.
Spicy Roast Cauliflower with Turmeric & Toasted Cumin in hammered copper on The Barn’s reclaimed cedar planks.
Summer has arrived in the Midwest bringing with it seasonal produce. Local farmstands once shuttered, now open and buzzing with activity. Stands piled high with fruits and vegetables. Stirring memories of dad’s quick stops near Erb’s farm before Little League games to score a beefsteak tomato or two. Perhaps early experiences with in-season, peak-of-perfection produce cultivated my love of summertime’s local bounty found within our town.
However, no doubt my introduction to a mother’s home-cooked, traditional South Indian cuisine by her daughter is the root of my deep appreciation of vegetarian cooking. Long commutes to Hyde Park over thirty years ago with a co-worker and now long-time friend brought new understanding while on the Metra:
Vegetables, legumes, and fruits could be featured front and center—the foundation of a meal, no meat required. Furthermore, that spices, some new and others known, could be tempered in hot oil and used in unfamiliar ways.
The paperback edition of Marcella’s Italian Kitchen was gifted to me over twenty years ago. It was a thank you from a student who was doing a rotation through the research lab where I was working at the time.
I remember a day when I met her ten year old son. Sick and unable to attend school he accompanied his mom to the hospital. I offered to look after him while she attended a biochemistry lecture. One she couldn’t miss. Unexpectedly, I had an assistant.
For an hour or so we had fun viewing slides under the microscope. While his mom scribbled notes on the chemical processes of life, with a little light and a lot of magnification, he and I looked at cells where it was all taking place.
She returned grateful. I was in my twenties at the time; not yet a wife, nor a mother. She was both and a first year medical student in her early forties now attending a most prestigious school. She had been an artist. Later I learned a close friend’s sickness and death had inspired her to enter a new career late in life.
Spring’s ground holds such promise. Black earth rested. Ready for new life. Working the soil, strong hands turn heavy dirt. Broken free from winter’s hold, it tumbles loose through pitchfork tines. Falling first, but landing soft and crumbling fine. Good earth; the sower’s open canvas. Painted in strokes of hope, patience and endurance. Loved into yields of multiplying abundance.
I’ve always been an organized gardening type. Drawn to admire the formal gardens of centuries old. Clipped and hedged to absolute perfection. Box woods in neat rows outlining secret mazes. Or a prized, but hidden rose garden. Perhaps those imagined or more likely inspired into my consciousness. Sprung to life off the worn pages of a beloved English novel or two. Read More
Sticky cake clings to the edge of the plate. Clinging tight, refusing to let go.
“You missed a spot,” the youngest sister notices. French porcelain thin, hangs fragile in her hands. The rose-covered plate moves back towards the dish-filled sink.
“It’s a poor dish dryer that can’t help the dish washer,” the older sister reminds, elbows deep in bubbles.
Inherited bone china, held quiet, between them now.
Side-by-side sisters, sleeves rolled and cuffed clearing the mess left behind. Together in the mess; this time cups and saucers, stacked and balancing high on the counter. Beside the dessert forks and plates, cleared and bouncing in the soap. Read More
Hungarian Mushroom Soup Garnished with Sour Cream and Sprig of Dill.
My family begins to gather around the table for dinner. The way we do most nights. One by one, each boy wanders into the kitchen. Waiting on his brothers, both younger and older, my middle son softly taps out a tune against the worn farmhouse table. The tines of his fork leave behind an interesting pattern of divots in the soft wood.
Early in my mothering, the patina of raising young boys was under appreciated. Not always welcomed on furniture or otherwise. Somehow back then, the shiny and unblemished gleam of the new and unchanged appealed to me. But children bring perspective. They also bring laughter and so many Legos. And then there are the lines. The worry ones worn on my brow and on some days, the dry-erase but permanent ones discovered on freshly hung Thibaut wallpaper. Sweat and tears; they bring it all.
This coming March, I will have been at home for three years. What a blast it is! Time is flying and I am now feeling the need to do something that is all my own. I have decided this it will be: sueBthefoodie.com. I am a true believer in finding ... Continue reading →
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