:: Mental Kudzu ::

It seems a damn shame that for most people thoughts of sweet potatoes come around only during the winter holiday season. If you’re not guilty of seasonal sweet potato dysphoria, relax and read on. I won’t belabor the point. Yams, the bright yellow inside (almost orange) soft sweet potatoes are what I refer to here, not the northern white flesh kind. Southern sweet ‘taters, ya’ll. Puerto Ricans or the like.

*and let me state here, for the record, that it is absolutely ridiculous to have February be “sweet potato month”. Is that belaboring?

The best sweet potato recipe is the simplest.
MacEwan’s Smashed Sweet Taters
Bake around three pounds of sweet potatoes. Slip ‘em out of their skins (after they cool, der), mash and smash the taters with about a half stick of butter and 1/2 c of brown sugar. (you can even use your Kitchen Aid behemoth for this and create a totally smooth concoction). The best way to know if you added enough butter and brown sugar is to taste it — add more according to your own preference.

Butter a 13″x9″x2″ pan, fill/spread it with the smashed taters.

Topping
This varies according to the contents of my pantry. The basic recipe is to double the topping list for a standard Bisquick coffee cake:
2/3 cup Bisquick
4 tbls butter
2/3 c brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
and then to that I add about
1/2 c oatmeal
2 tbls butter
1/2 c chopped pecans
more cinnamon if need be
This needs to be a crumbly mix, with small lumps about the size of the tip of your little finger.

Crumble the topping over the sweet potato spread.
Bake at 350 degrees. How long? Welllllll… keep an eye on it. Probably about half an hour. You want the top to brown and get crunchy. In my gas oven, that takes 30 minutes.

* If your house is on the market and someone has an appointment to tour it, put this in the oven about 5 minutes before they are due to arrive. It smells so delicious, even better than baking bread, it will make people love your house. (Set your oven to auto-turn-off, if you’re lucky enough to have a stove like mine.)

Yam Facts:

There is a difference between sweet potatoes grown in northern states and those grown in Louisiana. Sweet potatoes produced in the northern states are mostly “firm” and tend to be drier, more mealy, and yellow in flesh. People in Louisiana enjoy the second type, “soft”, which is higher in natural sugar, is more moist, and has a bright orange flesh color. Most often it is the “soft” type which is referred to as a yam.

And – I learned to make a Bisquick coffee cake in the eighth grade at Kimmons Jr. High in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Of course, we didn’t use Bisquick, we made our own all-purpose mix from scratch. My friend Sarah and I were so good at making coffee cakes, our teacher would get us out of other classes to come to the home ec lab to bake for school events like teacher’s meetings and even school board meetings. Home economics back in the ’60s was truly the place to be. We even learned how to sew and made a-line skirts. Imagine that.

Cannoli. The comfort food of the gods.

Despite my “Fishing for Nixon” winning a first place BLUE ribbon at the Beaufort County Arts Council Fine Arts Show this year (and an honorable mention for “Opium, the careful spider”), this blog has begun driving down a new highway – the road to food. I suppose that’s all right for now, but Artistic Endeavors return tomorrow. Yesterday’s trip to Michaels yielded much goodness and fodder for the 3D imagination. Friday means a Greenville antiquing stroll for objects duh art. So… on with the blog…

November means more than election time. It’s the beginning of the Food Season. The fifth and final season of the year. It truly commenced yesterday as Phoebe Kate and I strolled leisurely amidst the aisles of carefully arranged delicacies at that heavenly building which hosts our Fresh Market. We purchased cannolis, Napoleans, parmesan-bread crusted talapia, artichokes the size of a toddler head, and cobs of delicious corn. This officially begins Food Season for me. Let the baking begin!

A week or so ago, a bundt cake – not a phenomenal one – caused the rebirth of baking finesse in my kitchen. When the Kitchen Aid began to purr, it became obvious to all within earshot that warm ovens and cooling racks would once again rule my domestic efforts. Chocolate. Madagascar vanilla. Oh, and I just remembered – I promised Phoebe Kate some biscotti as she has never had the homemade variety.

When Food Season is in full swing, it becomes difficult to spend my precious daily allotment of “free time” on writing. As my fingers whiz across the keyboard, visions of eclairs dance in my head.

Betcha’ wish you could have one.

*Pittsburgh PA cannoli update: The BEST cannolis in this world can be found for sale outside the shops on The Strip on Saturday mornings.

Fall is upon us which, for some reason, means thoughts of food. Here in the South lower temperatures mean we can use the oven again. Summers and 100 degrees means no baking, letting Harris Teeter make the cookies and rolls. Last summer, while in Samara, Costa Rica, we noticed there were few, if any, ovens in the everyday homes and rentals. Being from NC, we understood immediately. If I had my druthers, there’d still be a detached kitchen out in the back yard so the heat would stay out of the main house.

Anywho, we’re planning an NC State Fair pilgrimmage this week for the grandballoons. It will be their first state fair. Rob’s recent acquisition of the ‘04 Volvo XC70 stationwagon assures my ability to travel distances beyond 20 miles from home. Between the new car and this MacBook Air, my “disabilities” seem to disappear. Transparent mobility creates a sense of well-being, lightens the load of my unhappy bones and connective tissue.

The NC State Fair cooking competitions have commenced. Here is a rendering of Gail Fuller (one of the winners’) recipes featuring House-Autry Mills:

Baked Chicken Enchilada Casserole

• 8 House-Autry Mills crepes (see recipe below)
• 6 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup chopped cooked chicken
• 1 4-ounce can of diced green chilies
• ¼ chopped onion
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• ½ teaspoon of pepper
• 2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese, divided
• 1 can mild diced tomatoes and chilies
• 1 small can tomato sauce
• ½ cup whipping cream

Stir together cream cheese, chicken, green chilies, onion, salt and pepper with one cup cheese in large bowl. Spoon about 1/3 cup chicken mixture down center of each crepe. Roll up and place in a lightly greased 13×9 inch baking dish. Cook diced tomatoes and chilies, tomato sauce and cream in a sauce pan over medium-high heat until heated through. Pour mixture evenly over crepes and sprinkle with remaining cup of cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes until cheese melts and tomato mixture bubbles.

House-Autry Mills crepes (makes approximately eight crepes)

• 2 eggs
• ½ cup of flour
• 1 package House-Autry Mills In Your Oven Chicken Seasoned Coating Mix
• 1 cup milk or cream

Combine ingredients in a bowl and whisk until completely mixed. The batter will be thick and lumpy. Cover and chill for one hour. Place a lightly greased 8-inch skillet over medium heat until hot. Pour scant ¼ cup of batter into skillet and quickly tilt in all directions so batter covers bottom of skillet. Cook about one minute or until crepe can be shaken loose from skillet. Turn and cook about 30 seconds. Repeat procedure with remaining batter. Stack crepes between sheets of wax paper.

This recipe is the best I’ve found. I tried to make chower “a la Val” and failed dismally. Best to go with the pros, I suppose. If ya’ll have a better recipe, leave it in the comments (see top of page). I’d appreciate it.

See Red Lobster’s New England Clam Chowder on Key Ingredient.

It’s time to move on (dot org) to my Grandmother Morgan’s peanut butter cookies. During August 1968, my Uncle Brownie’s mother, a four foot high dynamo I called Grandmother Morgan, taught me how to quilt, embroider, and bake cookies. She’d won Ohio State Fair Blue Ribbons for her quilts. The lessons have lasted my lifetime.

That’s my youth in a nutshell. A summer spent in Cincinnati, OH at my childless Aunt Helen and Uncle Brownie’s house while half-a-million strong traveled to Bethel, New York to Yasgur’s Farm. A rising ninth grader, I’d never heard of Jimi Hendrix, let alone any other Woodstock artists. Oddly enough, Richie Havens performed right here in Pooddunk, NC a few months ago. I kid you not. The very same. Came to our newly revived old vaudevillian downtown Turnage Theater where the Red Clay Ramblers played last weekend. (Bland Simpson was just in Greenville Sept. 29-30th for the ECU Literary Homecoming and led a workshop along with Clyde Edgerton. I know ‘cuz I was there. Literally literary and coming home… but I digress, back to cookies.)

Onward to the recipe:

My Grandmother Morgan’s Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chip Morsels On Top.
Chewy. Delicious. Sugar-coated heaven-sent…

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. (yup, only 300)

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature (I used salted, probably should use “un”)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 1/2 cup unbleached flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Calumet baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 bag semi-sweet chocolate morsels

(1/2 cup sugar in small bowl)

Cream butter 2 minutes. (I’ve got the essential Kitchen Aid mixer because of my advanced technical culinary tool addiction, but as a kid, it was a hand mixer all the way.) Add the sugars and cream. Add peanut butter and egg. (Grandmother Morgan made me mix by hand at this point — wooden spoon.)

Mix together the dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add to the sugar/peanut butter mixture.

Roll into slightly less than 2″ balls, then roll the balls in sugar, coating all around. Place the cookies about 1″ apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Take 2-3 chocolate morsels and kinda’ squish them into the cookie ball, slightly flattening the dough. (some recipes use a Hershey’s kiss, but Grandmother Morgan’s cookies called for the morsels and nothing else will do.)

Bake for around 15 minutes at 300 degrees. This is how the cookies stay chewy. Your oven might vary from mine… so smoosh a cookie after 15 minutes, it should hold its own – with the dough keeping its shape but just barely.

Come back and leave a comment (see top of page) if you bake these… hope they turn out for you!

Well, seems the header on my previously activated theme dropped my adsense banner and with it a bit of the background of the theme. Should have known something like that would happen since the theme’s title is “Communist”. Those damn pinko commies — must they always intrude? Those commies destroyed my theme. My fear of commies? Easily explained:

I grew up in the Nixon years.

Shakespeare (according to Mr. Magorium) used the elegant “He died.” to explain a life removed. The simplistic beauty of those two words, elegant and precise. Deliberate yet vague. Short and concise explanations can be delivered to our modern day equivalent of prose, as in my seven word diatribe.

To those of us who were children in the ’60s, doesn’t “I grew up in the Nixon years.” say it all? The political confusion, the illegal alliance of good and evil, war and peace, love and hate? We were too young to go to Woodstock and too old for PBS.

According to the family photo album, Nixon came in personal contact with my then-Republican family twice. Once in Illinois in the late 1950s and again in Fort Smith, Arkansas where he flew in on Airforce One on his way to the Arkansas v. Texas football game. I checked Wikipedia for that one and low and behold – found this:

In 1969, the Razorbacks had another chance to claim the national title, when #2 Arkansas played the #1 Texas Longhorns, coached by Darrell Royal, at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The game, known as “The Big Shootout” or the Game of the Century, is perhaps the most notable football game in Razorbacks history. Arkansas led 14-0 at halftime, but Texas stormed back and took a 15-14 lead on a two-point conversion play, after a questionable passing play was called late in the game by then coach Frank Broyles, which was intercepted by Texas. President Richard Nixon was in attendance, and proclaimed Texas the national champions, even though they had a bowl game to play, and Penn State was also undefeated. Sadly, Arkansas would lose to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, 22–27, and Texas would beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl for the national title.^[5]

And that, my friends, is an illustration of the true joy of free thought, of an unfettered mental discussion with the past. I began with the theme malfunction and ended with the Game of the Century and memories of Frank Broyles. Broyles was replaced, I believe, by Lou Holtz who coached the New York Jets for one losing round of games and quit. Talk about Six Degrees — Skip Holtz, Lou’s son who was in high school in Fayetteville while Daddy coached the Hogs, is now the coach of East Carolina University, my final academic resting place, 20 miles from here. So from Communist WordPress themes to Richard Nixon to the Arkansas Razorbacks (my original alma mater), to the East Carolina Pirates and back here to the Ass-End of the Great Dismal Swamp.

All in one blog post.

Who’d a thunk it?

My dear friend, novelist Janis Owens, is gearing up for the publication of her new cookbook:

The Cracker Kitchen

A Cookbook in Celebration of Cornbread-Fed, Down Home Family Stories and Cuisine

By Janis Owens
Introduction by Pat Conroy

This Edition: Hardcover
Publication Date: February 10, 2009
Our Price: $24.00

We’re working on her new website — complete with videos and recipes. Y’all are going to love it. Trust me.

Am I right or what? And there must be peas. It’s not real without the really green little peas.

This is the OFFICIAL Campbell’s Soup recipe with my comments. I was going to put my own recipe in here but realized the quantity of ingredients would be wrong because I use a “bunch of peas”, a “can or two of tuna”, whatever size can of creamed whatever kind of soup I have in the pantry… and I add more milk if it “looks” thick, and use whatever kind of noodles I have in the pantry… which works but you might want better details.

1 can (10 3/4 oz.) Campbell’s® Condensed Cream of Celery Soup (Regular or 98% Fat Free) *or mushroom
1/2 cup milk
1 cup cooked peas (or frozen peas for a zing)
2 tbsp. chopped pimentos (what??? I never added that, hmmmm…)
2 cans (about 6 oz. each) tuna, drained and flaked
2 cups hot cooked medium egg noodles
2 tbsp. dry bread crumbs (crushed potato chips really work best here, old family favorite)
1 tbsp. butter OR margarine, melted

Directions:

PREHEAT oven to 400°F.

MIX soup, milk, peas, pimiento, tuna and noodles in 1 1/2-qt. baking dish.

BAKE for 20 min.

STIR . Mix bread crumbs with butter. Sprinkle on top. Bake 5 min. or until hot.

Serve with your favorite frozen vegetable combination. For dessert serve ice cream.

To melt butter, remove wrapper and place in microwave-safe cup. Cover and microwave on HIGH 30 seconds.