Cooking My Way through Life--Guest Post by Author Judy Alter

Please join me in welcoming guest author Judy Author to Killer Hobbies today.  In addition to being the author of over 60! books (many of them mysteries) Judy has a talent I certainly don't share--cooking.  Check out the recipe at the end of the article.

In my next life, I think I’ll come back as a chef. I love writing, but if I’m not at my computer (or in Scotland or at a gathering of my family), I’d just as soon be in the kitchen. It’s a legacy from my mom.

Food has always been important to me. Like my faith, it sustains me. It is part of my self-assumed role as a nurturer—I love to feed people—and it’s a big factor in my social life. I’d rather go out to dinner with friends or have them into my house than go to the theater or a movie. At the table, there’s sociability and interchange and friendship; at the theater or the symphony, each person is pretty well isolated until afterward, when talk may flow in comparing reactions.

For me, food is also about continuity—and change. I bring to the table today the recipes of my mother, still often used and some, I’m sure, from her mother. I bring a few from my ex-husband’s Jewish tradition. So my cooking preserves the past and carries it on for my children and grandchildren.

But cooking is also about change. Now well into my seventies (can that be true?), I’ve seen a lot of changes in what we Americans eat. I’ve seen fast food mushroom beyond belief and the family dinner hour almost disappear—both trends I bemoan. I’ve seen foods come and go—remember when the “in” thing was to order fondue at a fancy restaurant?  But not many eat fondue today, although I hear it’s making a comeback.

In the ’80s there was all that fuss about crepes—whole restaurants devoted to them—and quiche, and the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. Pasta changed from spaghetti and meatballs to all kind of exciting things, beginning with fettuccine Alfredo and moving on to goat cheese pizza. Italian food in the United States today is much more sophisticated than lasagna, and that’s a good thing, though I still love lasagna.

Pretty much gone are the Chinese restaurants of my youth, with chrome and Formica furniture and little white take-out boxes (not that I ate at them very often—Chinese was not on my dad’s list of acceptable foods). Today, we eat pan-Asian food—Thai, Vietnamese, everything from glass noodles to sushi and sashimi (which I love)—but who would have eaten raw fish in the ’60s?

Hamburgers have morphed from a meat patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mustard into imaginative concoctions of which guacamole and bacon are the least exotic additions. We’ve added game to our menus, and now the trendiest restaurants serve elk tacos, venison medallions, wild boar chops, and buffalo hamburgers. 

I’m a believer in experimenting with the new foods, and I’m as ready as anyone to try a seared scallop on a bed of pureed cauliflower (even though I don’t much like cauliflower) and topped with foie gras (it was probably the best tapa I’ve ever had). But I also think it’s important to carry on the recipes of the past—King Ranch chicken and meatloaf and tuna casserole, albeit with a twist. In many ways, the path of my life with food traces the ways that our food has changed in this country and yet, I hope, emphasizes the importance of keeping tradition.

I’ve thought about the different foods that have been in my life at different times: a sheltered child in a middle-class, slightly British meat-and-potatoes household; a young adult who married into a new culture (Jewish) and moved to another new one (Texas); a single parent of four making a lot of casseroles; and now an older adult, living alone and entertaining often.

I am not a gourmet cook. My friends call me that, and one who has traveled the world often says she’s never had better meals than she has at my house. But I know better. I use prepared ingredients—I’m not above admitting that I use Campbell’s soup in some recipes, and have for years. When a recipe says “the finest French chocolate,” I use Baker’s if I have it on hand. I figure my friends and I can’t really tell the difference, and, frankly, I don’t have time to make my own pasta, and I often don’t have the money for French chocolate. So I fudge in ways that a true gourmet never would. I also use shortcuts, and I cook ahead of time rather than killing myself trying to coordinate a meal by preparing everything at the last minute for freshness. True gourmets would discount my cooking—but my friends and guests love it. So maybe my story is how a busy woman with a limited budget can still come off as a gourmet cook.

Recipe for Doris Casserole

This is a family favorite, beloved by all but one of my children (she doesn’t like cream cheese, sour cream, etc.). It was served to me at a dinner party nearly fifty years go by a woman named Doris. I didn’t see much of Doris in later years but when I did she barely remembered the casserole. I gave the recipe to a friend who insisted the noodle layer should come first. I assured her it shouldn’t. This is supposed to feed six, but it disappears quickly.

First layer:
1 lb. ground beef
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed in garlic press
2 tsp each sugar and salt (I cut back on those but sugar is important in tomato-based sauces—my mom taught me years ago it sort of rounds it off.)
Pepper to taste

Brown ground beef in skillet. Drain grease and return to skillet. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce, garlic, sugar, salt and pepper. Simmer 20 minutes, until it thickens a little.

Spread in a 9 x 13 pan.

For noodle layer:

5 oz. (approximately—they don’t come in this size pkg.) egg noodles
3 oz. pkg. cream cheese (here again, you have to fudge; cream cheese doesn’t come in 3 oz. pkg. anymore)
1 c. sour cream
6 green onions chopped, with some of the tops included

Topping:

1-1/2 c. grated cheddar

Cook egg noodles and drain. While the noodles are hot, stir in cream cheese, sour cream, and green onions. Spread over meat mixture. Top with grated cheddar, bake 35 minutes at 350 or until bubbly and cheese is slightly browned.

 Leftovers, if any, freeze well.

 

Click the cover below for a link to the cook book!

 

 

Judy Alter, an award-winning author with over 60 books for young adults and adults to her credit, has written her own cookbook/memoir, Cooking My Way Through Life with Kids and Books. Currently she writes the Kelly O’Connell and Blue Plate Café mysteries series. The fifth Kelly O’Connell book, Deception in Strange Places, will launch as an e-book July 31 and a stand-alone mystery, The Perfect Coed, will be available as an e-book and trade paperback October 15.

Find her at http://www.judyalter.com, http://www.amazon.com/Judy-Alter/e/B001H6KPU6/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1403141253&sr=1-2-ent; or on her blogs, http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com and http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com (a food blog—no surprise!).

Crime in the Kitchen

Note: I’m on a killer deadline at the moment, so pardon if I commit a drive-by blog this week.


I can’t cook.

I know many people say that, but I Really. Can’t. Cook.

The situation is so dire that I’m thinking of possible terms for this condition to submit to the medical lexicon. Should I call it Kitchen Disaster Syndrome? Attention Recipe Disorder?

I’ve always been a lousy meal maker, but I used to maneuver around my shortcoming with a combination of take-out dinners, meals-in-a-box, and frozen-stuff-in-a-bag-that-you-can-dump-into-a-pan meals. But the whole noncooking thing came to a head recently, because for once, I’ve actually been trying to follow recipes. I’ve been really trying. And failing.

Here’s what happens every time I try to cook:

1. I think of what my family and I might want to eat.
2. I search on Yahoo for a recipe, which usually lands me on http://www.recipe.com/.
3. I attempt to follow the instructions.
4. I forget a minor-sounding step.
5. I study the results, which look nothing like the picture on the web page.
6. I bury the evidence and dig up the delivery menus.

It’s that damned Step Four that gets me every time. Even if I print out the recipe and keep it by my elbow, I get distracted during the actual cooking process and leave something out. I leave out something important.

Take last night, for example. I was trying to make Southern Fried Chicken Legs. Not hard, right? Women like me who were raised in the south are born knowing how to make this dish.

I looked up the recipe, printed it and followed it assiduously. The results, however, looked like the shriveled stumps of thousand-year-old chicken mummies. So of course, I reread the recipe with righteous anger. Then I spotted my mistake. I was supposed to have covered the chicken at some point. Probably I was supposed to have covered the chicken at the moment that I was busy dodging ammunition bursts of hot oil droplets that spattered every time I got close to the pan.

So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll keep trying to cure this thing, and learn how to cook. Or maybe I’ll simply give the disorder an official name, like my current favorite, Chronic Inedibility Fatigue. And call it a day.

Suggestions?