A Jersey Girl in Portland

Ready, set, Thanksgiving!

Now that we're settled into the new house, I'm starting to nest.

[nest] (verb) To settle as if in to a nest

It's almost too late to begin canning -- that'll wait till next year when I have a summer garden.

For now, I'm content to begin planning our first Thanksgiving in our own house. Complete with a turkey from Foggy Forest Farm! Would you look at those beautiful birds?

Every family has classic dishes that always appear only at thanksgiving.  In my family, it's Penna Dutch dried corn. We bought Cope's Dried Corn for decades but it's not available on the west coast. So what does a DIY gal do? Make her own.

The corn this summer was grand -- sweet and tender -- so I picked up a dozen ears at the Woodstock Farmers Market.

I liberated it from the cob and put it in the dehydrator. On sheets of parchment paper so it wouldn't fall through the grates of the dehydrator.

I saved the corn 'milk'-- the resulting corn-goodness that comes from scraping the cob.  That'll go into a soup or curry this winter.

Twelve ears of corn netted more than four cups of dried corn. 

Corn milk

The night before Thanksgiving the dried corn will be re-hydrated with milk.  On Thanksgiving day it will be cooked with butter and onion for an amazing-delicious side dish.

The resulting dried corn

I'm not sure what I'll do with the corn milk.  Probably save it for a soup or curry this winter. 

  Our table will also have chicken liver stuffing (never cooked in the bird), candied sweet potatoes (with brown sugar and butter), a salad and a ham.  Yup, a ham. Because nobody really likes turkey.  AmIRight?

Eat well and love big.

xoxo Nancy

 

Refreshing. Rebranding. #MahKitchen #FlatBrokeStonerChef? #OlderWiserFool??

I need to refresh my brand.  Re cast my blog-o-sphere to match my

here-and-now.

Like changing from this photo (May, 2008):

To this photo (September, 2019):

I'm no longer a fresh faced 40-something with a sweet puppy, new to the city and line cooking at the Deschutes brewpub in the Pearl.

That girl grew up, got knocked around a bit (just a bit), and embraced a new physique*!

Although I'm not fresh-about-the-face any longer, most things about me remain the same.

I do still love cooking and Portland.  My puppy Belmont is an old gal, I'm (still) a cook in a restaurant.

But!

I married a guy. We bought a house (that's our deck that I'm sitting on). Rather long in the tooth we are... Me in my late 50s, He in his late 60s... for first time home buying.

But!

It'll be an adventure.  Come along for the ride.

Jersey Girl in Portland 2.0

Peace+Love,

Nancy

 

* Fat & Bald! Woo Hoo!

Salt, pepper & smoke

Hello again! Remember me?  The Jersey Girl in Portland??  I used to write about food a lot. I've been away for a spell -- it's been a busy year. I changed jobs twice and bought a house with my sweetie.

But of course I still cook.  And I cook a lot.  And I cook a lot of great food.

We just bought a house and money is tight so I'll be working with inexpensive variety meats.  Ribs, cheeks, belly, tripe, tongue, heart; all the staple proteins of a poor family.*

So, let's get our cheap on!

I picked up an inexpensive ($2.99/#) rack of pork spare ribs at the fancy grocery store near my new home in SE Portland, Woodstock neighborhood. 

I love pork.  It's easier on the earth to raise pigs than cattle.  It's packed with nutrition; B vitamins and thiamine. Humanely raised pork is cheaper per pound than beef or chicken.

Yes. Pork. Good.

I read an article in Bon Appetit about how pork ribs need only salt and pepper for deliciousness.  Skeptical I was. I thought they needed spicing and saucing to attain perfection. I'm sure I wrote about glazing pork ribs with jam that has been melted with pan juices, and mounted with butter. Strawberry ribs, sour cherry ribs... delicious for sure.... but could plain be better?

The simple spare ribs I treated with only salt, pepper and heavy smoke, were perfect. Perfect. Twenty-six inches of rough ribs that include the skirt meat and require teeth to eat. Juicy, smokey and bursting with the meat's own sweetness.  

 

Process/recipe:

Sprinkle the whole rack with salt (robustly, not heavily) then a smattering of black pepper. Freshly ground please**.

Fire up your trusty grill or smoker.  I use my Weber kettle grill as a smoker by keeping the flame -- with a tin of wood chips on it -- opposite the ribs on a standard grill rack. 

I smoke 'em for an hour and finish in the oven at 245 for one hour (wrapped in foil) to an internal temp of 165.

I feel a little guilty finishing the ribs in the oven. Yes, when I was young I completely smoked in the smoker, rising at 2 am to stoke the fire under a fat brisket or whole chickens.  But now, I like the easy way.  Get the flavor you want and finish in the oven. 

Eat well & love big! This may be the only life we get.

xoxo

Nancy

 

 

*Although tongue and heart cost almost as much as pork tenderloin or tri-tip on sale!

**I usually hate black pepper on food. It makes it look dirty.