The good-luck foods of the New Year

 

Photo by Jordan Alter Burton

Before I get to the good-luck foods of the New Year, I want to say a word about eggnog. I drank a lot of eggnog over the holiday and relished every drop of it. Only prudence and caution confined me to one small glass at a time, but I had eggnog for breakfast every morning in Santa Fe. What a marvelous way to begin the day! My friend, Susan Tweit, brought a big jar of eggnog with rum for the nog when she visited us on Christmas Eve, and Christian, coveting both the eggnog and the container, brought the remaining little bit home with us. So I’ve had it twice for breakfast in the cottage. I did have the good sense to turn it down Sunday morning before we went to church. But this morning, Christian and I split the last little bit and discussed getting more. If anything is going to bring a good year, surely that will do it.

This afternoon, neighbors brought Jordan a cup of Tom and Jerry, a hot drink I always associate with New Year’s. A Tom and Jerry is much like eggnog—egg whites, rum, brandy, spices, and butter. But it’s served warm and is, to my mind, more lethal than cool eggnog. Once again, reason prevailed. I took a sip and said no, thank you. Jordan drank the whole cup and took a nap. Needless to say, I took a nap even without the Tom and Jerry.

The primary traditional food on my mind tonight is black-eyed peas, because I fixed a big pot yesterday and let them sit in the fridge overnight to gather flavors. Then today I cooked them more, cooking down the excess liquid and getting the peas to just the right stage of mushy. After fifty-five years, I consider myself pretty much a Texan (barring some of the things that implies today), but there are parts of me that had a hard time leaving a northern, Chicago background behind. I was in Texas a lot of years before I consented to try black-eyed peas. Then I tried to disguise them, burying them in the rice and tomatoes of Hoppin’ John. But in recent years I’ve come to appreciate the humble pea.

In  Hoppin’ Uncle John, the peas are cooked with a ham hock, onion, celery, garlic, diced tomatoes and served over rice. Tonight I made Hoppin’ John but without the tomatoes (in deference to Christian). I can’t see there’s much difference between plain peas they way we cook them and Hoppin’ John. Even a plain pot of peas gets ham or salt pork or bacon or ham hock along with onions, celery, and garlic. Tonight, everybody else ate theirs with rice, but I had mine plain. So good. Can you believe I actually relish them now?

Probably my study of Helen Corbitt’s life and work had something to do with this. Texas caviar, her iconic dish, is simply marinated black-eyed peas The story is that after three weeks in Texas, at the university in Austin, she was challenged to prepare a banquet menu using nothing but Texas products She invented what she called marinated black-eyed peas. I first remember eating that at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame restaurant in Santa Fe years ago (no relation to the museum in Fort Worth). Today, folks elaborate on Corbitt’s idea and add corn, tomatoes, black beans, avocado. I remain a purist and follow Corbitt’s original recipe.

Of course, if you’re going to have black-eyed peas for luck, you must have greens and cornbread. I draw the Texas line at turnip greens—can’t, won’t do them. But I had leftover creamed spinach tonight. Surely that counts. As for cornbread, I did have that in the Chicago home of my childhood, but my mom was an avid follower of 1950s nutritionist Adelle Davis, which led her to the cookbooks from the Rodale Foundation, a Pennsylvania organic farming non-profit. I remember putting Brewer’s yeast and honey in cornbread. What I fixed today was far different, and like eggnog, most decadent. It’s a recipe that starts with two boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix and adds ingredients, such as two sticks of butter, a cup of sugar, a cup of sour cream—need I say more? It was delicious.

So there we are, starting off the New Year with foods that bring us luck—or so we hope. Let’s hope that 2024 will behave much better than 2023, but we’ve had the lucky foods just in case. You?

 

Back to the real world

We tend to think the new year starts on January 1, but it really doesn’t, you know. Things get down and dirty on the first Monday after that, so today is the day. Adults go back to work, kids go back to school. I think the picture above is an image that will carry me cheerfully through this coming year—one happy guy. That’s my fifteen-year-old grandson, who plays guitar and is lead singer in a small band. Look them up on YouTube: CRVNCH. Not my kind of music (they play hard rock), but I love it because he’s so good at what he does and so (mostly) happy about it. I gave him that shirt for Christmas, because it seemed to me it spoke for him. It says "I may look like I'm listening to you, but in my head I'm playing my guitar." 

 Love the shirt, love the kid.

Today things are about as normal as they’re going to get, what with Australia on fire and the manchild in the White House having brought us to the brink of a war no one wants. Still, we all go about our daily chores as if the world were not in chaos. Over the weekend, I started new files for 2020—bills paid, etc.—and put the 2019 files aside for the awful chore of compiling tax information for the accountant. No use in rushing these things.

I keep a pottery container (don’t know how to describe it any other way—it’s sort of a free form shape) on my desk for important pending papers. It has sentimental value, because                 Winston gave it to me—he was the children’s adopted uncle, called me his sister, and had an enormous impact on all of us until he died of AIDS in the early 1990s. Anyway, Winston‘s catch-all frequently gets out of hand, stuffed with papers that threaten to fly everywhere (sort of reminds me of him), So this weekend I went through it, found all sorts of things that should go elsewhere—a bunch of family pictures, some money that should go to the grandkids (shhh! Don’t tell them! I’ll get it to them, just have to add a bit). Of course I couldn’t think of where to put the things that belong

elsewhere, so I ended up putting them back but more neatly.

And the “to do” stack on my desk was in a neat pile until this morning when I sat down and began to plow through it. I uncovered “busy-ness” details to be dealt with—an invoice to check on, a call to a lawyer, photo credit to be checked, and so on.. All those odds and ends—“brushfires” a friend calls them—eat into  your time.

So now I’m off to bake the chocolate chip bars Jordan has particularly requested. She keeps calling them brownies, but they’re not brown. The recipe, from the original Kimball Cookbook, makes two 9x13 pans—we’ll be eating chocolate chips for a long time. Good thing I got a cookie jar for Christmas.

Last night I made another family favorite—Sloppy Joe. There’s a story behind it, and it may show up in my Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog on Thursday. That’s another step  in getting back to routine—I’ve let that blog go untouched too long.

My new cookie jar

Eating for good luck

2020 is one day old. How’s it treating you so far? My year got off to a rocky start, I think because I was so smug about being in bed asleep at midnight. I was in bed, all right, but I could not fall asleep—something that rarely happens to me. I hope it’s not an omen. Then this morning I unpacked my new remote keyboard but could not find the USB connector anywhere—I spent far too long sifting and sorting through packing materials, sure that I’d missed it because it’s so small. Finally I called Amazon and got instant help. The manufacturers are so clever these days—it was inside the battery compartment of the mouse. Who knew? Now it works fine.

But the day and the year got a lot better when I went to early afternoon dinner at the home of neighbors Mary and Joe. A lavish spread, starting with cheese and vegetables with dip and herring for appetizers. I can’t resist herring, but these were large pieces. Turns out they were rollmops—herring rolled around a pickle. Supposed to bring good luck for the year.

There had been some consternation about black-eyed peas in my family. When I first moved to Texas, I confronted the tradition of black-eyed peas and ham on New Year’s Day. I didn’t think I liked those peas—I was from the North, you know—but one year I found a recipe I thought my family would eat—Hoppin’ John. I’m sure you know, but just in case: it’s a stew of black-eyed peas, ham, rice, sometimes tomato. Today another guest had brought some, so I      got double good luck—rollmops and peas. Fast forward fifty-some years, and my family and I are just like most Texans—we want our black-eyed peas on January 1.

Many cultures have traditions about lucky foods you eat on New Year’s Day. The black-eyed peas are obviously from the American South, often served with collard greens. And some folks boil a silver dollar in with them—I think I draw the line at that. Another southern food eaten for luck is cornbread. Pork, or ham, is regarded as lucky in the South, as well as in many cultures.

Mary tells me that rollmops for luck were served in her childhood home, which was heavily influenced by German traditions and foods. In Spain, they eat grapes; in Italy, lentils. Some cultures consider round foods good luck, sort of as in “coming full circle.” Or maybe because they’re shaped like coins. In Japan, they eat soba noodles at midnight December 31 and call it toshi-koshi, “from one year to another.”

Today sumptuous dinner was the German dinner of Mary’s childhood: roast pork loin with gravy, applesauce, sauerkraut, tiny purple potatoes, peas and mushrooms, a butter lettuce salad, and multigrain bread. Dessert was crème brulee. If that menu is an omen of the year to come, I’ll take it gladly. Everything was absolutely delicious.

I am not used to that big a meal any time of day but especially not mid-afternoon. When I cam home, about 4:30, I was uncertain what to do with the rest of my day. So what I’ve done is nothing constructive—my ambition seemed to have fled. I’ve got to stop taking everything about today as an omen for the new year, because in general I’m enthusiastic about several projects on my desk for coming days.

I hope each and every one of you had a safe and sane New Year’s Eve, a happy day today with whatever you think brings you luck. Out with the old and in with the new—may you be happy the whole year through. And may we take back our country and heal the divisions that tear us apart.

Food, food, food!

For Christmas, my Canadian daughter gave me a copy  of The Best American Food Writing 2018. You may know the Best American series—volumes of short stories, essays, mystery stories, travel writing, and so on. 2018 was the first year the editors recognized the importance of food writing—way over and above cookbooks—in our culture. So far, my eyes are opened wide just reading the introduction by famed food editor Ruth Reichl, one of my heroes. It was a folklorist, not a historian, wrote several years ago: “The foods we eat, the way we eat them, and the imagination we bestow on their preparation will tell much about us to historians, folklorists, and anthropologists of Buck Roger’s twenty-fifth century,” (If our planet lasts that long.)

I’ve been having my own mini-food culture the last few days, and I hope it’s an omen for the new year. I also hope it tells a good story about me. Saturday night I pan-fried a filet of ruby red trout with seasoned breadcrumbs and finished it with lemon butter. Delicious—but as usual I overestimated when I placed my online order, and I had another filet left. I cooked it yesterday and flaked it into a cream cheese mixture today to serve as an appetizer tonight. Trout is so delicate, I’m afraid I may have overwhelmed it with cream cheese. I let it sit in the fridge to “collect itself.”

Sunday night, Jordan and I decided to serve the bison kielbasa we’d brought home from our road trip, and I made German potato salad—one of Christian’s very favorite foods. I usually use canned and sliced potatoes (lazy of me) but they don’t carry them at Central Market, so I planned ahead and cooked the potatoes Saturday. After chilling in the fridge, they sliced easily and held their shape instead of crumbling as warm potatoes will do.

Last night friends and I went to the Tavern. I never get there on Monday night when meatloaf is the special, so I was delighted. While my companions dined on healthy salads, I had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and sautéed spinach—that alone should tell you a lot about me. Today I had a wonderful lunch of cold meatloaf and German potato salad.

If what you eat and do on New Year’s Eve is predictive of the coming year, I have a definite preference: a quiet early supper with a friend or two, a meal slightly elegant (a notch up from comfort food), and no watching the new year in. So tonight good friend Jean came for an early supper. We had my trout spread for an appetizer—she put a hearty stamp of approval on it—and Coquilles Saint Jacques (scallops and mushrooms in a cream sauce with a gruyere/crumb topping)—rich and good. For dessert I offered Jean a choice of homemade toffee or fudge dipped in dark chocolate (nobody should have to make such a choice)—she chose toffee, and we toasted the New Year with a New Mexico champagne that she had brought. We talked of “cabbages and kings and many things” in a nice long, comfortable visit. Jean’s husband is terminally ill and in a care facility; we share a church and many friends and a history at TCU; we are sympathetic in our world views. There’s a never a lack of things to talk about, and I found it easy and encouraging to welcome the new year in with this good friend.

Of course, we didn’t really welcome the new year. As I write this, it is ten o’clock. By midnight I plan to be sound asleep. But it already feels like 2020. I think it will be a good year. My prayer for all of us is that 2020 brings sanity to our country and our government. Peace across the world would be wonderful, but it’s probably a long shot.

And for each of you, my wish is that 2020 brings you what you most want and whatever you need. Let us all make it a year of caring for each other, a year of sharing the love. Peace and sweet dreams, my friends.

This is how my garden grows

One of my Christmas gifts this year was an indoor herb garden. We’ve all seen indoor herb gardens—ho hum, the herbs wither and die before you can do anything with them. Not this one! It’s hydroponic, automatic, and nearly foolproof. You place little cups of pre-planted seeds in the designated holes, fill the receptacle with water, and plug it in. The light in the arm over the plants cycles on for 16 hours, off for eight; all you have to do is fill the reservoir with water when the indicator gets low. My gift came with a wide selection of seeds—later I read the reason the starter kit was three basil plants is that basil is easy to grow and fairly unforgiving. I didn’t read that in time, so I planted basil, mustard greens, and romaine—shoot, if it’s dangerous to buy, I might as well grow my own. The kit comes with two extensions for the light arm so as the plants grow you can raise the light and allow them to increase in height.

Called Click and Grow, the company has a web site and is most responsive to questions—I asked about why my light was going off and on because the instructions didn’t say, and I got not one but two quick responses. Apparently, there are also all sorts of videos on YouTube about pruning, etc. I will explore, but for now I’m in the seedling stage. Even Jacob is having fun watching them grow.

Last year, neighbor Jay planted basil outside my front door. It struggled but finally flourished into a big plant as basil will do Trouble was I couldn't get down from the walker to harvest it, so if no one was around to cut it, I couldn't get to my basil. Now it will be handy on my desk top.

A last look at Christmas ligh ts

It’s all over but the shouting and maybe that’s over too—another holiday season has come and gone. Son Jamie, giver of the herb garden, was here today, and he and Christian had a mournful discussion about how sad it makes them to take down the Christmas tree. “The house looks so boring,” Christian said. I definitely feel that and am turning on my Christmas lights as long as I have them. Tonight, Jordan whisked away the wreath from my front door, the snowman who stood outside the steps, the large snifter of Christmas ornaments, and the German Kinder Claus and Scottish Santa Mac from my coffee table. I’m back to Mexican tin art—a Chihuahua and a wise old owl--on the coffee table. I’m sure the tree and the lighted glass block will disappear soon, so I took one last picture. My spray of green neon lights—from a diffuser that throws these dots of lights on the neighbors’ wall—remains all year, and I love it. Somehow though I haven’t figured out the cycle. I turn it on in the evening and off when I go to bed, but if I wake in the night—says three or four in the morning—the lights are on again, though they are always off when I get up in the morning.

Last night, Jordan and Christian lingered by the firepit after the guests had left, and Jordan found herself buried in dogs with the most amazed expression on her face. This picture somehow seems a fitting end to the holiday season, though I must say I woke during the night because the cottage smelled to strongly of pinion smoke. Today I’m used to it, but Jamie said he smelled it immediately when he came in, and Christian came in and threw open the doors to get fresh air in. Next time we have a fire we will keep my French doors closed.

The end of a wonderful holiday season is but the beginning of a new year. May all your dreams and hopes and wishes come true and may the Good Lord smile upon you.

My way of welcoming in the new year

No, I am not spending the evening in pjs with a book—well, at least not all of it. Tonight, dear friends Teddy and Sue came for an early happy hour—they had plans for a romantic dinner for two with filet mignon and a good wine—ah, the joys of being newly wed. Jordan and Christian came out to join us, and we had a loud and lively discussion. Mostly we all agreed, but we still tried to talk over each other. These are people I love.

After they left—Teddy and Sue to their steaks, and Jordan and Christian to a progressive pot-luck party, I cooked myself dinner. New recipe—scallops with a lemon and caper sauce. One of my few mix-ups with Central Market curbside delivery—first I had too few scallops (two) and then I had too many (five). They turned out okay but not the best I’ve ever eaten. The recipe called for brining them in salt water for ten minutes—I couldn’t see that it did anything for the flavor, but it did make them tend to fall apart. The recipe itself was complicated—olive oil, butter, garlic, white wine, capers, lemon juice, chicken stock (which I left out). In my zeal to get a good browned crust, I overcooked them slightly—maybe due to the brining, maybe I didn’t have a high enough heat. Lesson learned: I’ll go back to browning them in butter and serving with a wedge of lemon. Easier and better.

And then I had Mac’s salad. If you haven’t lived in Fort Worth thirty years, that deserves explanation. Back in the day—‘70s and ‘80s—we had three upscale restaurants in west Fort Worth: the Carriage House, the Swiss House, and Mac’s House, which was on Park Hill between McCart and Forest Park, sort of where Black Rooster is now but much larger. It was a fine steak house but most renowned for the salad—a secret dressing on head lettuce, with Parmesan and sesame seeds. Don’t even try to fancy it up with blue cheese or croutons. In later years, an aging Mac worked the front of the house at Michael’s on 7^th Street, and Michael’s still serves the salad—and sells the dressing, so I bought some. All this has a sentimental attachment—my ex- and I ate at Mac’s fairly often, and my oldest, Colin, worked there as a bus boy when he was fifteen. For Colin, it was the start of a long career in hospitality.

After I write this, I’ll nap. Then I’ll read until the Burtons get back—ten or ten-thirty when they and friends get to the house. At that point I’ll go in and welcome in the new year with them. Well, at least watch the ball drop in Times Square which is eleven here.

So my evening combines all the things I like: socializing with friends; cooking; some alone time in my cottage, and then more socializing. What a lucky woman I am.

To all those who read my blog, especially those who read and comment regularly, a deep and heartfelt thank you—you save me from the feeling that I’m talking to myself. I would love to hear more comments and questions from you, especially on the Gourmet on a Hot Plate page.

But to all, may 2019 bring you a blessed year—good health, good times, good food, lots of books to read, more of whatever you need, and peace to our be leagued country. God bless.

Setting the pattern for 2018

It’s here! The clean slate! The untouched year for which we each hope we can set our own course. Very deliberately today, I did three things I enjoy, three things I want to do a lot of in the coming year.

First on my list was to write. I have been haphazard, unscheduled about writing time in the last few months, and I want to get back to committing words to paper in a regular, daily I hope, fashion. I’ve changed my thinking from a daily word count to a scene a day—it actually comes out about the same, but somehow it’s better to think in scenes—I certainly wouldn’t quit in the middle of a scene just because I’d reached my word count. It’s also easier to plan ahead in terms of scenes. The current work-in-progress, is a Kelly O’Connell novel, as yet untitled.

The second thing on my bucket list was to read. I was nearing the end of Honeymoon with Murder, one of Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand bookstore mysteries. I am a devoted fan of that series and not sure how I missed this one, but I apparently did. Enjoyed it immensely and was both glad and reluctant to finish it today. I always leave the world of a good mystery somewhat reluctantly, because I’ve become fond of the people in that world and felt at home there. But now I’m moving on to Death Come Quickly, the 22^nd (can you imagine that?) China Bayles Mystery by Susan Wittig Albert. So much to read, to little time to do it.

And the third thing was cooking. First thing this morning, before my cup of tea, before reading emails and Facebook, I started a pot of black-eyed peas. I asked for a ham hock when Christian went to the store yesterday, but he reported they were sold out and bought salt pork. So I cut the hunk of salt pork into smaller chunks (too lazy to really dice it) and browned them with the diced onion and garlic in the pot. Then I put in dried peas and water and let it simmer all morning—okay, it boiled once, but it’s not like pintos where if you let them boil they’ll give you gas. Peas are smaller and cook faster, so by noon they were done. The only seasoning I’d added, late in the cooking, was a half teaspoon each of black pepper and allspice. Turned them off, let them cool a bit, and refrigerated.

Tonight, I fished out the salt pork and threw it away; by then Christian had brought ham, which I cut into bite-size pieces and added to the pot. Lots of folks think collards should be added for optimum luck, but I don’t like collards, so I put in a can of cut green beans. No objections from any of my dinner guest—my immediate family of three. Served the peas with pot likker over rice. So good, and now we will feel lucky all year.

Another note on cooking: Christian made enough King Ranch chicken last night to feed the multitudes: two 9x13 pans, one for a family where there had been a death, another for the house, and a small one for me without bell pepper (isn’t he a good son-in-law?). Sometimes I think he makes cooking twice as hard as I do—I’ve never followed a recipe for King Ranch, let alone added bell pepper and cumin. I just cut up tortillas, diced onion and chicken sort of, and layered it in a casserole dish. Then I mixed cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soups and Rotel original tomatoes to taste, poured it over, and topped it with grated cheese. Christian read several recipes, added the cumin and peppers, and diced it all move finely than I ever had patience for. His stroke of genius? Since he left the peppers out of the smaller one, he added corn—great addition, so appropriate to the casserole, and so good with the other ingredients. Why didn’t I ever think of that?

So there you have it—the way I hope to spend my year: writing, reading, cooking. The only negative that I hope isn’t a pattern is that I am developing a head cold. I sneezed a lot the last few days. Today the sneezes are mostly gone, replaced by a lot of coughing, a slightly scratchy throat, and a runny nose. I don’t feel bad—maybe a little tired—but I’m not sure what these annoying symptoms will do to my eye surgery scheduled for Thursday. I’ll call the doctor’s office tomorrow. I’d hate to cough or sneeze in the middle of delicate eye surgery. A part of me is glad for another reason to postpone, but the logical part of me desperately wants to get it over with.

Sitting at my desk, looking at my curtain of sparkly green lights beyond the French doors. That’s how I want my year to be—sparkly with bright lights. I hope your year is too.