Eating

A potato in every pot

One of Rockford’s favorite stories to tell is the sad tale of the first time I tried to make potato soup. Until today, it was the only time I’d tried to make potato soup. It was that bad.

We’d just moved to Missouri. Rockford was a graduate student, and I hadn’t yet found a job. Thus, we were very, very broke. It was dinnertime. I surveyed the larder and decided that we had what we needed for potato soup, and that was about it. I’d never made potato soup before, but I figured, “How hard can it be?” I didn’t write down the recipe (for obvious reasons), but here’s a rough approximation of the how-to:

Peppery Potato Soup
3 cups water
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
3 tablespoons salt
4 cups black pepper

Toss everything in a pot. Bring to a boil. Simmer about 45 minutes. Serve with lots of water. Wish you had enough money to order a pizza instead. Do not attempt potato soup again for five years.

I’ve wised up a little in the last five years, and our budget has expanded enough to allow us to purchase onions and bullion cubes! And thanks to the magic of the Internet, I’m able to Google “baked potato soup” on a whim and come up with recipes like this:

Creamy Potato Soup with Chives
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons dry sherry or white wine
2 large russet potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 4 cups)
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth or low-fat vegetable broth
1 teaspoon table salt
ground white pepper
1 to 1 1/2 cups milk
2 teaspoons minced fresh chives
shredded Cheddar cheese
bacon bits

Heat butter or oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté until golden, about 5 minutes. Add sherry and potato; stir-cook until sherry evaporates, about 30 seconds.

Add stock, salt and pepper to taste to saucepan; bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer; cover and cook until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

Ladle potato mixture into blender. Add 1 cup milk; blend until very smooth. Return soup to saucepan; cook over low heat until warmed through. If soup is too thick, stir in additional milk to thin consistency. Adjust seasonings. (Soup can be refrigerated for 3 days and reheated just before serving.)

Ladle soup into individual bowls. Garnish with minced chives, cheese and bacon and serve immediately.

from Cook’s Illustrated

It’s really, really good. Maybe now Rockford will stop telling the Pepper Soup story. Or at the very least, maybe he’ll give it a happy ending.

Eating

An apple a day

I mixed up a whole batch of the topping and only made two apples. I do have one apple left, though, so I might be having a delicious baked apple for lunch today. I’ll still have some leftover. I think I’ll toss it in the freezer.

Alton Brown’s Baked Apples
3/4 cup oats
3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch kosher salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, diced
4 Braeburn apples (Fuji will substitute)
4 teaspoons honey

In a bowl combine all the dry ingredients and diced butter. Rub mixture briskly between finger tips until it forms small moist clumps in a loose sandy mixture. Refrigerate while preparing the apples.

Cut a small layer off the bottom of each apple to create a flat, stable bottom surface. With a small paring knife, cut a cylindrical cone out of the top of the apple, moving about 1-inch outside of the core, similar to removing the top of a pumpkin when carving a Jack O’Lantern. Remove the top and discard. With a melon baller or a teaspoon, remove the remaining core and seeds taking care not to puncture the base of the apple.

Place apples on a baking sheet or pie dish and fill each center with a teaspoon of honey. Spoon in mixture, packing lightly until heaped and overflowing over sides of the apples.

Bake in oven at 350 degrees on the top or middle rack for 40 minutes or until filling is golden brown and the tip of a paring knife can be inserted into the side of the apple with little or no resistance. Let apples stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Flotsam / Jetsam

The Strange Tale of Pteromys Squirrel

Hey, everybody! It’s a guest post! Rockford’s mom, Genia, is here to share the squirrel story.

* * * * *

Has anyone else seen that cute 1950’s Walt Disney True Life Adventure titled “Perri“? Who would not be won over by these amiable little critters? I think there were a few things Walt left out…

Pteromys the flying squirrel grew up in the woods of the western Carolina mountains. How he came to be where I found him is not too hard to understand with a little background information.

Building is booming in the mountains of North Carolina. The area has been developing as a retirement, “second home” and resort community for many years. As the pressure from construction increases, many of the local “residents” are being pushed away from their ancestral homes.

We brought our family here in 1984. We bought a home and settled in. We were frequent travelers, sometimes for prolonged periods. Unknown to us, however, there were some “settlers” on our land before us, and they still believe that theirs is the prior, better claim. Legalities mean nothing to them. They are incredibly territorial. Keeping them in line requires daily vigilance. It seems that our home was built in a primary nesting area of the Southern Flying Squirrel.

According to experts:

“The Southern Flying Squirrel is one of two species which are the only flying squirrels found in North America (the other is the somewhat larger Northern flying squirrel). It is found in deciduous and mixed woods in the eastern half of North America.

“Southern Flying Squirrels have grey brown fur on top with darker flanks and are a cream color underneath. They have large dark eyes and a flattened tail. They have a furry membrane that extends between the front and rear legs, used to glide through the air.

“Southern Flying Squirrels show substantial homing abilities, and can return to their nests if artificially removed to distances of up to a kilometer. Their home ranges may be up to 40,000 square meters for females and double that for males…

“Although the squirrels will make outside nests, especially in pine woods, they prefer to nest in holes in dead trees or “snags”. They often use these nesting holes communally, especially in winter, when huddling gives them significant energy savings. They readily use artificial nest boxes.”

So there you have it! To the local flying squirrel population, our home is a very large, comfortable, “artificial nest box.” Consequently, over the years we have had innumerable close encounters of the “squirrelly” kind. We have removed squirrels from the attics, from the woodburning stove (sad), from the chimney flues (sad again), from bags of seed in the basement, from behind the refrigerator, and from the top shelf of the pantry. We have had them greet us from above the back door, met them coming up the stairs late at night, found them perched sociably on the top of a bathroom door, and found one napping among my son’s stuffed animals. Recently, my daughter had a squirrel visit her one night while she was sleeping. Last year, we re-roofed the entire house because three family groups had taken up residence over the dining room. Whenever anything goes missing around the house, we blame the squirrels. With such proven tenacity, it’s no wonder that flying squirrels are now on the “least concern” part of the endangered species list.

Which brings me back to Pteromys. Early the other morning, he met with an unusual accident. This time we weren’t there to see what happened. Either he took a swan dive into the toilet, thinking that we had upgraded their accommodations with an indoor pool, or he badly misjudged a leap from the top of the medicine cabinet to the towel shelf, resulting in a ricochet dunking. Whatever the cause, the effect was that I found him floating face down in the water (very, very sad).

Hercule Poirot, the cat, isn’t talking, but the next day he was more than anxious to show us where Volucella (Mrs. Pteromys), was preparing a nest under one of the storage racks in the kitchen. Hercule is a wonder at locating our visitors but terrible at evicting them … which is why Volucella is still here SOMEWHERE! Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s wearing that pair of glasses I can’t find …