Tastes of home

It's not exactly Proust and the madeleines, but yesterday, I had my own trip back in time. We went out to Hockley (a new place, our old one is now a housing development) to cut our own Christmas tree. On the way back, I made everyone stop at the brand new Steak n Shake on FM 1960 for lunch. It's the only one in Houston at this point.

Steak n Shake was founded in Normal, Illinois, not all that far from where I grew up in Saint Louis. My mom, who is pretty picky, actually likes their steakburgers. So, this was one of our eating out places. We went there fairly regularly.

In high school, every Saturday night, we'd end up in one of three places: Steak n Shake, White Castle, or Naugles. I think I can smell the grease from each of them. Sadly, Naugles and their greasy delights are no more and White Castle seems rooted in the midwest. But Steak n Shake has been steadily expanding. There's one in Tallahassee we'll usually stop at on the way to the beach...but now we have one near us. When we walked in the door, one of my kids said, "this looks just like the one near Grammy and Papa!"

There's a certain embedded memory for these places deep in my soul. I can still smell the White Castle. My mom hated White Castle, so it's only a place I went with my friends, and there were 40 years of grease and onions that lent a distinctive odor to the building. Your hair would even smell like White Castle after you went. Even though the Steak n Shake we went as teens burned down in the 1990s, I can still hear my high school gang noisily clustered around its tables, ordering one more order of fries to share. And, although Naugles is shuttered and long gone, I can still see their tacos greasing up their wrapper and taste the hot sauce I loved so much. We'd join the long line of kids in the drive-thru or if we were wanting to be social, we'd go in and see all our friends.

It's amazing how rooted in a certain time or place certain things are. Each of these foods really means Saint Louis to me:

• Imo's pizza. Saint Louis style pizza requires a mixture of mozarella and provel cheese. Think of provel as a processed white cheese. It melts smoothly and it is the best for cheese toast and pizza. It's hard to get outside of Saint Louis and for the life of me I don't know why. For a very brief window, you could get provel at Central Market, but I guess other shoppers didn't know what a treat it was and they stopped carrying it. I will probably crave Saint Louis-style pizza forever.
  
• Amighetti's sandwiches. Saint Louis has a large Italian population and a lot of Italian markets and restaurants are concentrated on "the Hill." These sandwiches are the food of picnics.
• Miss Hullings Lemon Cake. Miss Hullings cafeterias are gone, but this was a St. Louis staple since the 50s. Miss Hullings cakes have a gazillion layers (not really, but that's how it seemed). You can still get them at Straub's grocery, but it's not the same as going down to the past-its-prime cafeteria and pushing your tray through the line.
  
• Toasted ravioli. It's not toasted, it's fried. Now you can get this on lots of menus, but once upon a time it was really only available in Saint Louis.
  
• Ted Drewes. Frozen custard, which is a lot richer (and caloric) than soft-serve ice-cream. Ted Drewes is a Saint Louis tradition, still busily packed on summer nights. There's a whole menu of mix-ins and just before they hand it to you, they turn it upside down to show that it's so thick, it stays in the cup. I always got a small with banana and chocolate chips. The first Ted Drewes opened in Saint Louis in 1930.
  
• Crown Candy Kitchen. The giant bowl of ice cream and sauces. We'd always share. Opened in 1913, and still serving up the good stuff.
  
• Gooey Butter Cake. Someone always brought a gooey butter cake to the potluck. Think of a collapsed cake oozing and you've got it. There's a recipe I use sometimes in the cake mix doctor book that pretty well replicates the taste. Here's one from Paula Deen.
  

Today, with the proliferation of chains and the popularity of cooking shows, there seems to be a lot less regionality with restaurants and food products. You can mail order anything from anywhere and as grocery stores have 50,000+ products, you can probably find your childhood memory on a shelf somewhere in town. I don't have any idea what will say Houston to my boys. I wonder if there's a smell, a taste, a look that will transport them back in time the way that some of these foods do me.

I'd love it if you'd share your memories in the comments. I get a huge kick out of this sort of stuff.

Frothiness for Saturday

You wouldn't think you'd be able to get a whole blog out of one food item, but you'd be wrong. The folks behind cupcakes take the cake regularly (several times a day) post about their favorite food, cupcakes! The interesting thing is that it makes for fascinating reading. When you're dedicated to one subject, you can really tackle it in full. For some reason, I am fascinated with this blog, and read it regularly. It's kind of interesting, because not only am I not even a huge cupcakeaholic, I don't often eat dessert.

We've got two of those trendy "cupcake boutiques" near us. These are Houston-grown bakeries who mainly (or only) serve cupcakes. I haven't tried either one. You can get all sorts of unusual flavors, including things like eggnog, pumpkin, ginger lemon or red velvet. This is not your Kroger's chocolate cupcake with mounds of inedible icing spray-colored neon colors; they are definitely little mini works of art. So, perhaps because I'm such a devoted blog host, maybe I'll figure out if they're actually as delicious tasting as they look.

Sugarbaby's
Crave Cupcakes

And, it serves more than just cupcakes, but I'm going to give a plug to the Dessert Gallery, because it's been around for years. They have this old-fashioned chocolate diner cake that I think is perfection.

But, beware, local Houston cupcakeries, a chain from LA, Sprinkles, is muscling into town in the spring. Let the cupcake wars begin!

Mixed Emotions

Today's kind of a weird day for my family. Today's the day we're selling the family farm. This is land that has been in my father's family for generations. It's where my dad would spend summers with his grandparents, where he learned to drive, where he learned about people and human nature. It was the land where our family members married, had children and died. Our family history is certainly interwoven in its acres.

But none of the siblings in my father's generation are really farmers. One of them looks after it, and we have a tenant farmer who grows the rice and the soybeans and the cotton. But to be honest, we haven't farmed it as well as it should have been. There have been huge, barnstorming family fights over that land (just like all those other families throughout history fighting over land).

My generation, there are six girls. As cousins, we're not all that close, although we do like each other well enough. We did not grow up going to see our grandparents on that land--so we have a familial connection to it, but not that emotional pull of childhood memories. And, none of us lives close--the closest one is 500 miles away. Not a one of us wants to farm it or oversee the farm. And, our bonds are not strong enough that our relationships could withstand those tempestuous family fights anyway.

So our parents have made the decision to sell it, helped along by the fact that an Argentine farming corporation seems to think they'll farm it better than we have (that's not a high bar to reach). They're buying up lots of land in that area of Arkansas, and paying top dollar, more than anyone local can pay. That's a sort of extra weirdness, like Belgian brewers owning Anheuser Busch, the fact that South Americans will own a large swath of Arkansas delta.

The money will help my father's siblings in their retirements and that is a good use of it. And now's a good time to sell, as almost everyone has capital losses this year, so the taxes on the sale of the farm will have some off-setting losses. It's definitely the right thing to do.

But, for my father and his siblings, it's still somewhat emotional. And I have to admit, that even though I have no real connection to that land, and never met the ancestors who lived on it, there's a part of me that is a bit sad today.

Gerald O'Hara: Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts.

Leftovers

I generally do not care all that much for leftovers. I don't know why. My husband will eat anything twice in a row and with great gusto. I usually will not (unless it's something I love). But what I will do, is turn one dish into something else. So chili becomes a baked potato topping; leftover bits of meat get turned into a hash or a pasta dish. Leftover chicken becomes quesadillas or enchiladas and so on. But, sometimes it's hard to be creative when you're faced with a previous dish.

I thought it might be helpful if we shared some leftover ideas.

I'll start.

Tonight, I'm making soup. A cold front came in last night and it went from the high 70s (shorts on December 3rd) to barely in the 50s. So that calls for a hearty soup in my book. Starring is a couple cups of leftover meat sauce from Monday night's spaghetti dinner. Added to that is a couple of teaspoons of taco seasoning (I buy it in bulk instead of the little packages) and one chopped up chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. Enough stock to make it soup-like. It's all simmering on low in the crock pot. Later on today, I'll add frozen peas, corn and carrots to the pot make a full-meal soup. I picked up a crusty loaf of bread at the bakery when I was running errands and I've got brownies in the oven for dessert.

With my kids, you have to be careful with the spice...they're getting better, but even a tinge too spicy and they won't eat it. I'll probably add an extra bit of adobo sauce to my husband and my portions. We think the smoky flavor of the chipotle pepper is just divine but the kids don't exactly agree. The addition of the chipotle changes the flavor quite a bit from the meat sauce.

I am trying very hard to be a more useful consumer of leftovers and reduce our food waste. I sort of realized that I was throwing out a lot of food, partially because I would buy too much at one time and partially because the leftovers would sit and then have to be tossed. So, I am making a real effort to use the leftovers and not waste food.

In addition, I still haven't gotten my stuffed fridge back from the storm (after having to throw out everything in there three times due to our unstable power situation, I have been hesitant to completely stock up). This means that foods aren't getting lost quite so easily in the fridge or in the freezer. I am making an extra mid-week trip to the grocery store (usually combined with another errand), so I buy less at any one time and think about how to complement what I already have with a few purchases.

Anyway, any leftover suggestions would be highly appreciated and probably enjoyed by all the blog readers.

Hashbrown Casserole

Because every now and again, you need a dinner that is so easy there's no excuse not to cook.

Ingredients:
1 bag Ore-Idea peppers & onion hash browns
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup yogurt or sour cream
2/3 cup diced ham (or so, or chicken, or go meatless)
15 smashed saltines (or so)
2 tablespoons melted butter

In a large bowl, mix together soup and yogurt. Add hashbrowns and ham and stir, then put in an ungreased 13x9 pan. Mix smashed saltines (a great job for kids) and melted butter. Sprinkle on top of hashbrown mixture. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 35 minutes.


I'm not usually a big fan of cream-of-anything-soup cuisine, but this is a just-fine weeknight meal. It won't win any contests, but it will provide a hot, not that expensive meal. For one of those nights when you're too tired to cook or you need something that requires only 10 minutes of prep time.

Stupidity on Wheels

Driving home from taking the kids to art today, I was cut off by a man in a Ferrari. A brand spanking new one with paper plates, just off the lot. If you were driving around in a car that cost way more than the average house, don't you think you'd be somewhat careful in it? Just saying.

After Ike

I've been meaning to give an update, for those of you out of the area.

Things are returning to normal. The piles of branches and leaves and refuse were picked up long ago. Most fences have been repaired (although not mine). The number of houses sporting blue tarp roofs continues to decline, although there are still some in every neighborhood. Some neighborhoods have a lot--it sort of depends on how the wind swirled through the area and how the houses were built.

In the woods across the street from me, there are still plenty of downed trees. This is echoed throughout the city. Most of the trees on paths have been cut, so that at least you can get through when you are walking. But every park we visit seems to have a pile of brush that is yet to be cleared. And I'm not sure if the downed trees will stay. At Memorial Park, the woods look very changed. Large oaks show their roots, just downed easily. But, the park is usable and being in the woods is very soothing. I've started to walk there again and pay attention to my surroundings, marveling at all the changes.

The biggest remaining scar is the signs. Very few of those shattered business signs have been repaired. It is just that there are so many of them and there are not all that many sign companies. Those that are here have been working non-stop since the hurricane, and yet you still don't see that much progress.

Every now and again, you run into a big reminder of the storm. Today, I was at my post office, which suffered a fair amount of damage. The ceiling has been removed and the wires and conduits are all visible if you look up. The front door is still made of plywood, and today was missing entirely.

And of course, there are the still-reported stories of the people who lost everything or a lot of things. Everyone know someone who lost a beach house, or their real house, or had big damage. We have friends living in apartments and waiting for contractors; friends who had trees split their houses in two. And those without insurance, the poor? They're really suffering right now.

Even though we're cutting back on our gift-giving this holiday season, we will be donating to charities helping people in hard-hit hurricane areas. Two we will support are the Lambi Fund, which works in Haiti and the Houston Food Bank, which feeds people in this area.