Tedium

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another;
it is one damn thing over and over.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ms. Millay's observation about life is also true of meals during Lent, though today's repeat of yesterday's meal included several improvements. If you make the black bean stew, do add sweet potato (or steamed plantain) to the mix, stir in a few shakes of turmeric, and sprinkle lots and lots of fresh cilantro on top. Reheated mixed-berry dumplings are slightly soggy but still tasty, especially with a dollop of thick plain yogurt on the side.

If minor additions improve Lenten leftovers, can we do anything to spice up Lent's tedious days? Though spring is due to begin on Friday, we in the Midwest are not easily fooled. It may be 50 degrees out today, but we know it will snow again at least once, and the smarter daffodils will stay buried until late April.

I guess if Lent happened in May, nobody would observe it.

All things are wearisome;
more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:8-9, NRSV

Black bean stew

Estelle Berger directed me to this quick-and-easy recipe for black bean stew from Cooking Light (August 2003). Today Ginger Cantu joined me for lunch. She brought two kinds of bread from Panera and a green salad, and I made the stew. For dessert we had warm berries 'n' dumplings from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food (March 2009).

Atypically, I followed both recipes as closely as I possibly could without making a trip to the grocery store. The black bean stew recipe calls for Israeli couscous, which I tried unsuccessfully to find at Valli's yesterday, but I substituted a Mexican pasta that is larger than regular couscous but much smaller than rice. It had the world "pearl" on the package, which made me think it would work. It did.

Where the recipe listed fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth, I frugally substituted Orrington Farms chicken-flavored soup base and food seasoning, which not only saved a lot of money but also made me feel better about serving the stew on a Friday in Lent. If there is any real chicken in the Orrington yellow paste, it is well hidden, and I didn't look for it.

I served the stew with a dollop of thick Arab whole-milk yogurt rather than sour cream.

Ginger and I both enjoyed the stew--though we couldn't help discussing what we would have done differently. Something wasn't quite right with the tomatoes, we thought. I used diced; would crushed have been better? Or half crushed, half sun-dried? I thought a little more sweetness would have improved the flavor, so this afternoon I peeled, diced, and steamed a sweet potato and stirred it into the leftovers. Next time I serve the stew, I'm going to garnish it with cilantro.

Like Jana Riess's lentil stew recipe, this recipe is good as written, and it is also a fine base for experimentation.

David had a business lunch, so I'm not cooking tonight. We'll have what our friends the Hares call a pig supper. The pigs are the participants, not the ingredients.

Table for one

Eating is a social activity. Or should be.

I've traveled a lot on my own, and I can dine solo in a restaurant if I have to. Alone at my table, wondering if I should read or just gaze into the middle distance while waiting for my dinner, I eavesdrop on nearby conversations. Once in Stratford-upon-Avon I overheard the jovial man at the next table tell his friend about a foreigner he knew who was so nice, he found it hard to remember she was an American. "Yes," his friend agreed, "she isn't at all crass and vulgar."

That was interesting, but I would have preferred to share the moment with a friend of my own, even a crass and vulgar American. Without companions (Latin com-, with + Latin panis, bread), eating is just refueling.

David ate at the Au Bon Pain restaurant in the Orlando airport tonight. I had a cheese-and-tomato sandwich on freshly baked whole wheat and oat flour bread. If I hadn't promised to make every dinner during Lent a matter of public record, I would probably have had a bowl of cereal.

Homemade tortillas

The best way to eat well without spending loads of money is to find an ethnic grocery store in a neighborhood near you. No, probably not the one with Chianti and truffles and Belgian chocolates, though Europeans do eat about 40% less meat per capita than Americans so perhaps even la cuisine française could reduce a dedicated carnivore's budget. Well, make that la cucina italiana. And see Saturday's post about our trip to two Caputo's stores.

If Mexican food is more your thing--or if you'd like to see pretty pictures while learning more about it--check out the Mexican Foodie blog. I shamelessly copied their picture of a tortilla press because it looks just like mine except for the tablecloth, and their camera is better. My late mother-in-law bought us our press in Nogales, the border town south of Tucson, many years ago. You can go there, or you can find one online. Just be sure to get the inexpensive metal hand-operated variety, not the expensive fancy electric kind that, a friend of ours tells us, can really mess up the tortillas.

For corn tortillas, you need to buy a bag of masa harina, aka instant corn masa mix. It is not corn meal or corn flour. It has to say masa on the bag, or it won't work. You can probably find it at your grocery store.

Whenever you're in the mood for la cocina mexicana, scoop out about 1/4 cup masa harina per person and mix it with however much warm water it takes to make it the approximate consistency of pie dough. I usually find that I need almost as much water as masa. It has to be wet enough to roll into a ball without falling into little flakes, but dry enough to roll into a ball without sticking to your hands.

So... roll it into one ball for each serving. Squash each ball in the tortilla press (you'll save yourself a lot of grief if you line it with wax paper or plastic wrap). Toast each tortilla on a hot griddle for maybe 30 seconds on each side. And that's all you have to do.

If your tortilla press is small, like mine, your tortillas will be thick. No doubt too thick to be authentic. But they sure do taste good. If you like yours thin, you can of course make smaller balls. Or you can buy a larger tortilla press.

I lay my tortillas on a plate and then stack interesting things on them. Last night it was a fry-up of onions, tiny white potatoes (halved and steamed before frying), and a poblano chili pepper (seeded, deveined, and browned under the broiler before dicing and adding to the mix). I topped this with some leftover white cheese, and then I crowned the whole stack with a mixture of diced tomato, diced avocado, and chopped cilantro.

Tonight David is at a meeting in Orlando, no doubt eating in some fancy restaurant at somebody else's expense. Also, it's 73 degrees there and 27 degrees here. What--me, jealous? However, my meal of leftovers wasn't bad: two fried eggs, sliced cheese, Brussels sprouts with garlic and pecans, sliced tomato, and cashews for dessert.

Betty's Armenian pilaf

Back when the earth's crust was cooling, Betty Tyler was a student in my 10th-grade world history class. A quiet girl who sat in the back row, she did not want attention. But she got it anyway when she handed in an excellent but unfinished short story about a medieval maiden in distress, as I recall, and I gave her an infinite extension if only she would tell me how it ended.

For many years Betty has been news editor at Redlands Daily Facts. Redlands, a small town in southern California, is poor in medieval maidens but rich in local lore, which Betty enjoys ferreting out. She also enjoys good food and her mother's family's traditions, which come together in the recipe she kindly sent me as soon as she read about the Lenten Experiment. I like Betty's recipe style--she gives us the basics and encourages us to play.

Over to you, Betty. . .

Here's my Armenian grandmother's version of pilaf, as my mother said she learned it, with a modification or two of mine. There are many versions of pilaf, by the way, some of them with rice, which is what most Americans think pilaf is. Did you know that the original Rice-a-Roni was a non-Armenian's modification of an Armenian landlady's pilaf?

Ingredients:

• 1 cup noodles (coil fideo or anything you like; thin noodles seem to work best)
• 1 tablespoon shortening (I've used oil for years, but I seem to remember melting margarine in the saucepan years ago)
• 1 cup cracked wheat
• 1 tablespoon salt (I probably don't use as much as a tablespoon. I don't measure it any more, but I use other seasonings, too.)
• 2 1/2 cups boiling water (I've used room-temperature tap water for years) and 1 cup canned tomato, cut up (if I'm lazy, I buy the kind that's already diced and has seasonings added; store brand is still cheap) OR 2 3/4 cups boiling water and no tomato (I always use tomato)
• 1 tablespoon butter or margarine (that's to add after it's cooked, and I stopped doing that years ago, because I don't need the extra fat; tastes fine without it)

Brown the noodles in shortening, stirring constantly. Then add cracked wheat and brown for a few minutes. Add water, tomato and salt and cook over low heat for about 15 minutes. After cooking, add butter or margarine.

An onion may be used in place of noodles, if desired. (I've never done that, but I should try it.)

I usually add a bit of oregano and thyme and - not an Armenian ingredient - a dash of hot sauce. Use whatever you like.

This is easy, tastes good if you like cracked wheat, noodles and tomato, and is relatively cheap.

Yesterday's fare
$1 salmon filets from Aldi, leftover risotto from day before yesterday, about 38 cents' worth (plus olive oil, garlic, butter, and lemon juice) of Brussels sprouts from Caputo's, and about 10 cents' worth of sliced tomato, also from Caputo's, with leftover cheap white wine from Trader Joe's.

Too much information?

Collin Hansen makes interesting observations in "Blogs: A Window to Our Souls." He doesn't encourage people to start blogging, he says, because "if you run your own blog, there is constant pressure to post so you won't lose regular readers. The Internet never shuts off."

I have an equal and opposite fear: if I continue blogging about everything we eat, readers may run for cover. Do you really want to know that last night we had rich Arab-style yogurt topped with honey, almonds, and blackberries? Followed by little bowls of Barbara's bite size shredded oats to snack on while we read mysteries?

Or that today I abandoned my Lenten principles and had lunch with two friends at Suzette's Creperie, a lovely little bistro and tea shop in downtown Wheaton? Or that for the price of a slice of broccoli-cheddar quiche, a green salad, and two cups of Earl Grey tea I should have been able to eat for three whole days?

No. I didn't think so. But it was nice of you to drop by.

Second Sunday in Lent: whingeing

Lent would be a lot more fun if it weren't so long. And penitential. And guilt-inducing. And rainy.

OK, I've been spending too much on groceries. Though I now have lots and lots of exciting canned beans that will keep us putting along indefinitely. And onions, and potatoes, and corn meal.

If I could turn stones into bread or earn the kingdoms of this world with a simple miracle, I probably would. I don't even need all those kingdoms. I'd be satisfied with the simple assurance that Social Security, Medicare, and our retirement funds will still be available in roughly five years. World peace would be nice too.

But on a brighter note, we had a pleasant lunch of risotto flavored with onion, garlic, carrot, and halibut; fresh asparagus, and tomato slices. And then after lunch we visited the grocery store our friends have been raving about--Valli Produce in Glendale Heights. If God makes it and anybody has ever cooked with it, they stock it at a very reasonable price.