A friend’s apple tree was loaded down this year, so we took home a bag of homegrown, organic apples. Thank you Carole! Sure they were a little mis-shapen and a couple had split places, but that’s no problem. We were planning on applesauce.

At the same time, we were asked to bring a healthy snack to a group lesson. So we bought apples at a large chain grocery store. In keeping with this well-known store’s approach to food, they were the worst apples you can imagine being sold in a first-world big name supermarket.

At the height of apple season, with apples practically falling into our hands from the branches, the store located a stash of last year’s brown, beat-up, soft apples and put them out for sale for about $5.70 a bag. The nerve. But I was running late and in need — they really count on that.

It’s not an isolated incident. There are many such insults, both to customer and food. Don’t get me started — but if you’ve got an anecdote, I’m collecting them.

Anyway, the “crapples” were not popular with the kids, so most of them came home. We cut out the bad parts, then cooked them in the pressure cooker for about 10 minutes with the nice homegrown apples. Then we put the mush through a food mill to remove the seeds, skins and stems. I only use the food mill for apples and persimmons, so it doesn’t see a lot of use. Still, only a food mill does what it does, so I gladly grant it cabinet real estate.

I cooked the mixture with lemon juice, sugar and a cinnamon stick until it reached just the right thickness. Homemade applesauce has a slightly different texture than store-bought, but it’s a little silkier, and tastes better. I would have taken a picture of it, but it’s one of those “looks bad, tastes good” goods — you probably have one of those, too.

Little Monty Python joke there.

I really like rabbit, which tastes a lot like chicken. And you might ask “Why cook rabbit, then?” And you’d have a point.

True, it comes cut up like chicken, into a white saddle and dark thigh quarters, very chicken-like. Also true that, chicken-like, there’s a mixture of white and dark meat. However the white meat is more like dark meat because it isn’t dry and chewy like chicken breast. It’s also more flavorful than a 6-week-old chicken. And there’s something slightly less factory-like about farmed rabbit than farmed chicken.

So this is a rabbit, here, cooked to an exquisite perfection in szguazet, a herbed reduction of tomatoes and wine, along the lines of cacciatore. Perfumey, wine-y, falling-off-the-bone tender. Served over pasta, with lots of the pan juices.

That’s a copy of Cucina di Lidia in the background, a wonderful cookbook of dishes from Lidia’s native Istria, which is Slovenia now, not Italy. Great place, Slovenia. Nice people, great food, awesome real estate. The spirit of Italy at half the price.

What makes the book distinctive is the simple, homey food. The ingredient lists are short, and there’s nothing exotic there, so everything should be perfectly fresh. The seafood chapter features the freshest catch, simply prepared. There’s a chapter on game, another on risotto and gnocchi and a butter/egg/milk pasta I’ve never heard of (bigoli) and rougher fare like white bean cake and plum gnocchi that seem really connected to the land and seasons. For sure I’m making one of the sausages from the book, either Mantuan sausage or cotechino (but I may have difficulty finding the “two pounds of face and butt fat” that it calls for).

Someone in our house would never, ever eat a fluffy bunny. So this coniglio magically transformed into the lowly chicken, no one was the wiser and everyone left the table well fed.

Coniglio (or Pollo) in Szguazet
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 slices bacon, diced
3 bay leaves
4 sage leaves
1 teaspoon fresh or dried rosemary
4 whole cloves
1 (2 1/2- to 3-pound) rabbit, cut up
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth
Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven or coated casserole dish. Saute the onion, bacon, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and cloves until the onion is tender. Season the rabbit and add it to the pan. Brown it for 3 minutes on each side. Add the tomato paste and mix to coat the meat. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to loose the brown bits. Add the stock and simmer, half-covered, until he sauce is reduced and the rabbit is cooked through, about 30 minutes.
(Or use a pressure cooker and cook the rabbit 12 minutes. Release the pressure by running the cooker under water, remove the lid, and boil to reduce the sauce somewhat.)
Strain the sauce (or at least remove the cloves and bay leaves). Serve the rabbit and sauce over pappardelle or gnocchi. Makes 4 servings.

Only when I’m cooking professionally do I make a list and go into a store and buy the items to make a recipe. Instead, I usually buy what I think we’ll eat. In practice, that means many dinners are built around whatever foods in the fridge/freezer need to be eaten.

Pinto beans and some Nathan’s hot dogs taking up real estate in the freezer, turkey bacon and a bell pepper reaching their sell-by date and some no-salt-added ketchup purchased by accident — a batch of beanie weenie would clear it all out at once.

About 35 years separate me and my last serving of beanie weenie, so I can’t explain why it came to mind. It seemed like an interesting path: study up on 35 years’ worth of technological and flavor-profile improvements to the somewhat lame beanie weenie of my youth. But when I looked for a beanie weenie recipe, I came up empty-handed except for three “combine a can of pork and beans with some sliced hot dogs” on Recipezaar.com. Not what I wanted. I looked in some very likely cookbooks: Fannie Farmer, the Dinah Shore cookbook, Amy Vanderbilt, the old Joy (2 editions), the Good Housekeeping cookbook, Dinner Doctor. Maybe people didn’t make beanie weenie from scratch. I never have before either, it’s true, but I figured someone out there was doing so, especially in these economically trying times.

So I developed a recipe. The trick is to cook the bacon, onion and pepper low and slow, and to make a little roux. Not a big scary roux. You’re just browning a little flour in a little oil so all those flavorful fats and oils form a suspension that binds the beans and the hot dogs so they become one in deliciousness. Pintos and Dawgs were very good, and even Sweet Cheeks only had to be asked twice to eat it. I even wrote down the recipe, so I have a copy of it. And now you do too.

And the plate partner there in the photo is panelle, a crazy good French fry substitute made from chickpea flour and nearly carbless, recipe from my pal Claudia at CookeatFRET.com

Pintos and Dawgs

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter

3 slices turkey bacon, chopped

1/2 chopped onion

1/2 chopped green bell pepper

2 tablespoons flour

5 hot dogs, sliced

1 scant cup chicken bouillon or broth

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

1/4 cup barbecue sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

2 to 3 cups cooked pinto beans

Salt to taste

In a nonstick pan, heat the oil and butter over medium-low heat and saute the bacon until the fat is rendered. Add the bell pepper and onion and saute until very tender and beginning to brown. Sprinkle with the flour and saute for about 10 minutes until browned. Add the hot dogs and saute until browned. The mixture will be sticking to the pan. Add the chicken broth and mix very well. Cook until thickened, about 3 minutes. Add the mustard, barbecue sauce and ketchup and mix well. Cook until thickened and hot. Taste it — the mixture should be tangy but not tomatoey. Add the beans and salt and cook until heated through. Makes 3 to 4 servings.

Squash bread so good the cat ate it — several people wanted the recipe. I found it in a community cookbook last year — maybe Encore Nashville. The recipe called for zucchini originally, but since our organic box of vegetables from Delvin Farms has included about three big squash a week for the last three weeks, you can see where this is going.

Myself personally, I love squash cooked just the plain Southern way, with a chopped onion and a pat of lard margarine butter then served with plenty of black pepper. I tried serving it twice: once before Child, and once After Daughter. There was screaming both times. So I’ll be a retired widow before that side dish ever happens again, and by then, my meals will consist of Slim-Fast and a Rye Manhattan. Until then, squash must be managed: disguised as a fritter, minced for stir-fry, layered in the bottom of lasagna, and made into quick breads and cakes.

This recipe calls itself a quick bread but it’s really a one-bowl loaf cake, since the original called for 2 cups of sugar. I cut that to 1 and it’s still plenty sweet. Whole wheat pastry flour makes up about 3/4 cup of the total. I use only about half the oil and it seems fine, unless you like a really rich, slightly oily cake.

Butterscotch (Squash) Bread

* 3 eggs
* 1 cup cooking oil
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 cups grated zucchini

*1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 2 cups flour
* 1/2 cup oats

* 1 (3-ounce) package instant butterscotch pudding mix
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• Beat the eggs, oil and sugar in a large bowl until light in color and somewhat thickened. Add the squash and vanilla and mix well.
• Combine the remaining ingredients and mix well. Add to the squash mixture; mix until no white streaks of flour remain.
• Spoon the mixture into 2 8-inch loaf pans or a single 10-inch springform pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes; remove and cool completely. Freezes well. A lemon-juice-butter-confectioners sugar glaze is nice. Makes 2 loaves or 1 cake.

How many times have you read that? Even people who hate fruitcake love this one. Even people who hate mushrooms love this soup.

What is it about food-hating that instantly makes people want to convert the hater? Tell someone you loathe peas/liver/brussels sprouts and suddenly she’s at your elbow waving a recipe and crooning, “Even my kids, who won’t eat anything, love these.” Whatever it is you dislike, it’s probably happened to you. I know I’ve done it myself.

Why do they do it? People are just nice, I guess, and they want everyone to enjoy a food as much as they do. Sometimes it’s just not going to happen. But occasionally, with a really good recipe, it’s possible to convert someone.

Case in point: there’s a tofu-hater at my table occasionally. I made an Indonesian Tofu Omelet the other day in which it was impossible to detect the tofu. IM.POSSIBLE. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t made it and tasted it. Tofu Hatah was visiting, and there was not much else to eat. (Except kale.) So while I don’t like to lie to people about what’s in the food, (because what if they’re allergic?) I called it an Indonesian omelet. It tastes a lot like Vietnamese banh xeo, which is just about my favorite Vietnamese food, which is just about my favorite cuisine. It went down the hatch without a hitch.

Do I feel a little guilty? Maybe so, but if you don’t actually tell the person, they don’t lose face, do they? Because that would just be rude. Way ruder than feeding someone a food they claim to hate.

Indonesian Tofu Omelet

This recipe is from The Southeast Asia Cookbook.

Drop the bean sprouts into boiling water for about 30 seconds. Refresh under cold water.

Drain and mash the tofu. Beat the tofu with the eggs and salt. Stir in the sprouts. Oil an 8-inch skillet or crepe pan. Add half of the mixture. Cover and cook until set. Flip it over and cook the other side (or broil it) until cooked through. Repeat with the remaining tofu mixture.

Combine the kecap manis and vinegar. Drizzle over each omelet. Scatter the chiles, peanuts and parsley over each. Cut into quarters. Makes 2 main dish servings; up to 6 appetizer servings.�

We share two shares of organically grown, local produce with two other micro-families, and the spring time boxes arrive like wave after wave of green leafy things, as anyone with a CSA share can attest. The greens barely fit in the boxes. The bottom half of the refrigerator is bulging with leafy bunches.

It’s great in theory, but in practice, it means cooking a large batch of something green three nights in a week. I dream in green. I think green thoughts. I have to push aside green food to find the milk. Surfers use the term “the green room” to describe how it feels inside the barrel of a wave. It’s a little like that.

Kale is the biggest issue. I think kale is wonderful, but Sweet Cheeks and Big Fella are indifferent at best, and hostile at worst. And all the kale recipes fall into two types: kale and chickpea gratin/soup and kale cooked like collards.

Found a new one on Recipezaar, though: Czech kale patties

Cook the kale then drain it really well and pat it dry. Puree the kale with an egg, an onion and bread crumbs, then roll in more breadcrumbs, flatten into a patty, and fry. It tastes like spinach. I still needed insurance that they would eat it, so I added a homemade cheese sauce. Two out of three residents of my house found it acceptable.

To stay on top of the green wave, it’s likely that one of the meals will have to include two green vegetable-based dishes. Our plates tonight included Fried Fennel Slices from Deborah Madison’s brilliant vegetarian book The Savory Way.

After the meal, one of the vegetable bins was partially emptied out, and it felt like real progress.

But it’s just a temporary victory. There’s another delivery tomorrow.

Fried Fennel Slices
2 large or 3 small fennel bulbs

1 egg, beaten
1 cup bread crumbs
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fennel greens
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Clarified butter or light olive oil for frying
Pry off the scarred, thick outer layers of the fennel and use it for soup or shave it for salad. Cut the bulb lengthwise into pieces about 1/2-inch thick, leaving the core attached.
Dip the slices into beaten eggs, then coat with crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. Fry in butter in a large, heavy skillet over very low heat, turning once. The fennel should be tender at about the same time the crumbs turn dark brown. Serve with a lemon wedge, or a spoonful of homemade mayonnaise flavored with a few drops of Pernod. Makes 4 servings.

As long as the potlucks and picnics of May continue, the greatest hits of Junior League cookbooks past and present will roll out of my kitchen on colorful disposable plates. It’s the kind of food you’re somehow supposed to feel guilty about, because it’s full of short cuts and prepared or ready-to-use products. As if those were bad.

Vegetable Squares are defensible junk food masquerading as a side dish or appetizer. Almost everyone will eat them.

Puppy Chow (Dawg Food if you attended the University of Georgia) is light, sweet and crisp, and so good you’ll have to force yourself to move away from the bowl. And it can be thrown together in about 20 minutes.

The season goes on — what are you bringing?

Vegetable Squares

I use homemade Dijon garlic vinaigrette in place of the ranch dressing mix, and use just 1/3 to 1/2 cup of mayonnaise.

2 (8-count) packages refrigerated crescent rolls

2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 envelope ranch salad dressing mix

1 bunch broccoli, cut into tiny florets, lightly steamed if you like

2 colored bell peppers, minced

1 zucchini, shredded

4 carrots, shredded

Chopped fresh chives or parsley, if desired

• Press the crescent rolls into a 9 x 12-inch baking pan, pressing the dough to seal the seams. Press it slightly up the sides of the pan to form a lip. Bake at 375 as directed on the package. Let cool.
• Mix the cream cheese, mayonniase and salad dressing mix until smooth. Spread it over the cooled crust. Layer the vegetables over the cream cheese mixture.
• Sprinkle with chives or parsley, if you dare, or if the children are older. Cut into about 32 bars. Makes 12 kid-size “side dish” servings or about 16 adult appetizer servings.

Puppy Chow

Pretzels make a good substitute for about half of the Chex. When we run out of Chex, we’ve substituted Golden Grahams and Cap’n Crunch.

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter

1/3 cup peanut butter

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips or chopped white almond bark

9 cups Crispix or Corn Chex

4 cups (1 pound) confectioners’ sugar

• Melt the butter, peanut butter and chocolate in a saucepan, mixing well. Measure the cereal into a large bowl or soup pot. Pour the chocolate mixture over it and stir gently but quickly to coat.
• Pour the confectioners’ sugar into a large paper grocery sack (or a plastic sack without holes). Add the chocolate-covered cereal and toss to coat with confectioners’ sugar.
• Serve right away or store in ziptop plastic bags.
• Bake sale time: This recipe makes enough to fill 15 snack-size plastic bags.

We were going to be really, really late to a potluck last week, and I knew it beforehand. I wanted to take something that everyone would love, so they would be happy to see us, instead of annoyed that we were late. So I made deviled eggs.
It was my first batch of deviled eggs ever. That’s because I sincerely dislike them. I’m not even a little waffley about the matter. Eggs are kind of ~eh~ for me anyway, and deviled eggs embody all the things that make me pull a face. The smell, the rubbery whites, the … Sorry.

    But a distant relative of mine — my step-half-sister-in-law’s mother — who is a wonderful Southern cook, once told me that you simply cannot prepare a large enough batch of deviled eggs to meet the demand. “They’ll eat every last one you make, no matter how many,” she said.

I’ve always wondered what the devilish part of deviled eggs is. If cleanliness is next to godliness, what is next to devilishness? Is it the mustard? That hardly seems worthy of the name “devil.” Here’s a Southern transplant who uses Tabasco — that seems more satanic, anyway, than mustard.

    A cookbook I’ve been working on lately (Junior League of Greater Ft. Lauderdale) included an interesting deviled egg recipe that looked like it might conjure a little underworld-y heat. Instead of the usual suspects, the filling included horseradish. I added a spoonful of a hot Russian mustard. Those Russians, they know from hot mustard. Then I decorated the little cholesterol boats with olives, a twinkling of dill and little chive appendages. I figured the olives would warn away little kids. The chives and dill were just for personality: some looked a little like lawns, or smiley faces, or Mr Potato Head. You want people to know they’re getting something a little out of the ordinary, right?

I didn’t taste one — you can put lipstick on a pig and all that. We arrived well into the dinner hour, and everyone had fixed a plate. I was a little worried I’d have to take the devils back home. But my stephalfsisterinlaw’smother was right — 20 minutes later there was nothing left on the dish.

I don’t know why I buy bananas. For their flavor, I can take them or leave them. They have their good points (potassium) and their drawbacks (loads of carbs) (that mooshy texture once they pass the perfectly ripe point). But I buy them occasionally nonetheless, because that’s what good American moms do! Like I buy Emmentaler cheese, even though it smells like feet, because it’s authentic.

They sit in the bowl until, as you see, big sugar spots develop. Then more sugar spots. At that point, no one can be convinced to eat them fresh. I can’t stand to see the bananas go to waste, so I throw them in the freezer, which turns the skin black. So when I have a party, I have to remember, Remove the frozen black bananas from the freezer because they frighten civilians.

They kind of frighten me, too, when I find them months later, lurking under three 1-cup containers of frozen chicken broth. Ugly and scary. I thaw them, shaking my head that something so vile can ever be put to use, and make banana bread. My daughter eats two slices, and I eat the rest of the loaf.

Malaysian baked bananas prevents that last step toward the freezer. You can use really really ripe bananas to make it, because they’re baking to a soft texture anyway, and the overly sweet taste is covered with butter, brown sugar, lime juice, cloves and ginger – the topping and the baking transform a banana into a side dish,  or a dessert, or an ice cream topping.

No more creepy blackened banana bodies.
 

Malaysian Baked Bananas
The recipe is from The Southeast Asia Cookbook

4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 tablespoons orange or pineapple juice
1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon minced, peeled fresh ginger
6 small firm bananas, skin on, cut into halves lengthwise
Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until soft and well combined. Beat in cloves, orange juice, lime juice and ginger. Arrange the bananas on a rimmed, greased baking dish. Spread seasoned butter mixture over them. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes until top is bubbling and bananas are tender.
The dish may be prepared to the baking stage up to several hours ahead and covered. No refrigeration necessary. Bake just before serving. Makes 6 servings.

Like a lot of parents, I buy for Sweet Cheeks whatever toys I really, really wanted as a kid, but didn’t get.

So it was a happy Christmas for everyone in 2004 when Santa brought an Easy-Bake oven. I was so excited, er, Sweet Cheeks was initially excited, mostly about the cookies and cakes that were suddenly not just permitted, but encouraged. We worked that oven like Faberge worked those eggs, like Banksy works a wall. We made chicken spaghetticranberry orange torte with a cookie crust, pies

quiche, yellow cake, soda bread. If we were artists, it was our “Easy-Bake” period.

Like any Christmas gift, the Easy-Bake’s novelty fizzled quickly. One rainy Saturday, I pitched the idea of a cake and filling. “Let’s make sponge cake with creme anglais filling. I mean, in the Easy-Bake! Of course! Doesn’t that sound fun??!!?” And before the egg whites were even holding firm peaks, Sweet Cheeks had wandered off to play with some inferior form of entertainment.

I tried to get rid of the thing last year. Bad timing — there was a recall of Easy-Bake ovens two models newer than ours. Hysteria being what it is, there was no explaining that my oven wasn’t a threat to life and limb. It was a tough sell: “No, see, my oven is five years old, not two years old.” Tried again to sell it when the hysteria had passed. This time Sweet Cheeks protested — she liked it. So she said — it is still sitting, untouched, on the kitchen counter, collecting dust.

We were packing for a trip on a sunny day recently when I noticed that Sweet Cheeks was developing her first pimple. I’m thinking our Easy-Bake period is history.