The Baseball Hero Ate Broccoli and other notes

After an uncertain season, Jacob’s Little League team won their play-off game last night. He came out to the cottage afterwards, bearing a hot dog on a plate, and I gave him the buttered broccoli I had fixed. I cooked it out here partly because he likes the way I cook it—mushy beyond belief—and partly because his dad really does not like broccoli, so I thought I’d spare Christian the cooking odor. Jacob ate the whole crown by himself. So wonderful to find a vegetable he likes. Tonight, he came out when my dinner company was just leaving. Jacob was polite and cute, and when I turned around he had disappeared. I called his phone and asked if he had something on his mind, and he said no. I guess he just came to be here, and I’m so sorry I missed that opportunity.

My dinner guest, a colleague from TCU, brought me a chopped sandwich and potato salad from Heim’s Barbecue, a relative newcomer to town. I had been there once really liked the bbq and was overboard about the potato salad. It’s twice roasted potatoes, far superior to the potato salad usually offered in barbecue joints. Good dinner tonight.

I had an intimidating lunch guest today. She didn’t mean to be, but Heather is a lunch-time lead cook at Café Modern in the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art. (I’ve been mistakenly promoting her to sous chef.) She’s also an old friend, who brought lunches and conversation to me when I couldn’t get out. I figured it was my turn to cook, but what do you fix for someone who daily cooks in an upscale restaurant? I settled on bean salad on toast, a recipe I’d found in Bon Appetit, I think.

Dishes on toast are quite the thing these days, and it makes me smile. When I was a child, my mom frequently served asparagus on toast or mushrooms on toast. She would not, I admit, have thought of beans on toast. I wanted cannellini beans but settled for pintos. I doubt my thoroughly midwestern mom even knew what a pinto was. But I made an oil and vinegar dressing, with lots of assorted herbs, mostly what I had on hand or in planter boxes, and soaked the beans overnight. Today I salted them, which made a huge difference. They were delicious. Served with a tangy avocado and cucumber and feta salad. Quite good.

The result of all this food activity is that I have more scrumptious leftovers than I can deal with, and I will be out for several meals in the next couple of days. Jordan and I thought we’d have a girls’ dinner tomorrow and make a dent in some of it, but Christian has a church meeting and Jacob has another play-off game. I’ll be eating leftovers alone. That’s okay.

In my kitchen

Confession: I am a hoarder. I hoard recipes. I have thick and worn files titled "Entrees tried," "Vegetables," "Appetizers," "Desserts," and, best of all, "Entrees Not Tried." When I'm trying to come up with a dinner for company, I usually go to the latter--who wants to cook the same thing all the time? I experiment on my guests.
Tonight, though, I was leery about my recipe choice. A recipe for eggs baked in a tomato sauce has been floating in the "Not Tried" file forever, and I finally decided to try it. With only one guest, I cut it in half and made the sauce this morning. To begin with, you sauté onion and poblano peppers--I used one pepper and even then feared it was too much. I'm not a fan of peppers, nor is my stomach. Add various spices--cumin (which I couldn't find in my cupboard so I substituted green chile powder), sweet smoked paprika, salt, etc. I refrigerated the sauce, heated it before my guest arrived, and cracked four eggs into it, let it simmer covered for about 15 minutes and then served it with trembling and trepidation.
The egg takes up most of the sauce, so what I envisioned as an entrée running all over the plate was not that at all. The eggs were cooked harder than I usually like them but with the sauce it was fine. And the sauce was delicious, in spite of all my worries. The smoky flavor was a great addition. You can find it, if you're a Southern Living subscriber, in the September 2014 issue--or you might find it online called "Eggs simmered in tomato sauce" (original title, no?)
I served a salad of corn, black beans, cherry tomatoes, and lettuce with an avocado dressing with it.
Tomorrow I will make potato salad. The potatoes are already cooked and in the fridge. Chilling potatoes is a trick I learned from this recipe for County Line Potato Salad. They are so easy to peel and dice when cold. I have recipes that call for dressing quickly while the potatoes are hot, and I have to say that's a pain. County Line Potato Salad (you can find it online) calls for an astonishing amount of dill pickle relish--but it tastes great. One of my favorites. It serves 18, so I'll halve it for a party of eight.
The fly in my ointment is that my dishwasher refuses to start. Enough times that I know this is serious. I decided tomorrow would be given over to potato salad and washing dishes. But it dawned on me tonight that since I'm not cooking any big meals for twenty of my nearest and dearest, I can just leave the dishes in there and hand wash what I use for each meal or cooking session. My low back likes that idea a lot.
Fourth of July and potato salad--they go together, don't they? I'm looking forward to hamburgers and hot dogs. Y'all celebrate but stay safe--even sparklers are dangerous!

The Two Ps

Two Ps dominated my life today--proofing and potato salad (must be an indication of versatility). I am slowly proofing the copy for a digital version of my 1995 novel about Jessie Benton Fremont, wife of the flamboyant (and sometimes foolish) explorer, John Charles Fremont. She was ahead of her time as a woman but chafed at the restrictions placed on her. While Fremont went off to explore California and fulfill "manifest destiny," she was at home running her father's household and then writing up her husband's reports. I'm struck by the difference in language between this and my contemporary mysteries, but I was writing in first person from the viewpoint of a woman in the mid--to-late nineteenth century, and of course she spoke more formally, with more restraint.
The novel is based on thorough research but one incident I read today almost made me teary. Jessie's mother was a chronic invalid but fairly early in the book (200 pages out of 475) she begins to have a series of small strokes or TIAs (trans-ischemic accidents--the term was unknown in that day). Clearly, those episodes were based on memories of going through that with my mom--the arm that grew suddenly heavy, the convulsive shudders, the confusion. It all came rushing back to me. Jessie was the primary caretaker and that, too, was familiar, as was her hidden desire to shake her mother and say, "Mom, just be yourself!" Oh, how I wanted that.
The potato salad consumed most of my morning, I love potato salad of almost any kind--don't much like what they serve in BBQ joints. Then again, one of my favorites is County Line Potato Salad from the Austin/San Antonio BBQ places. You can find the recipe online--it takes an amazing quantity of dill pickle relish but even if you don't like the relish, you'll like this. It takes four large Idaho potatoes; you boil, chill and then peel. So much easier.
The recipe I used today calls for peeling and dressing still-warm potatoes, which is a bit of a pain and often hard on the fingertips. But I persevered, although I may have let the potatoes get a bit cool. The dressing is mainly vegetable oil and lemon juice. My potatoes were larger than usual, so I may have to add more dressing tomorrow before serving. I also made a salad of corn, black beans, radishes (Christian loves them), with a mayo dressing slightly touched with vinegar and flavored with chopped basil from my front porch herb garden. Enough standing. I'll set the table for eight tomorrow.
Here's the recipe for the potato salad, given to me by friend Sue Winter. I hope she won't mind my sharing it.

Lemon Potato Salad
6 medium red potatoes
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
Sauce
2 Tbsp. grated lemon peel, fresh
3-4 Tbsp. lemon juice, fresh
3-4 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. salt (don't skimp)
1/4 tsp. pepper
Boil potatoes until tender. Drain. Peel and dice while warm. Add onions. Pour sauce over warm potatoes and onions and coat well. Add celery and parsley. Chill. Serves eight.
The original recipe calls for a small jar of pimiento, which I don't particularly care for (though I love pimiento cheese). Add if you want, when you add celery and parsley.