"In a perfect world, baked eggs are served on a plate that has the letters
of the alphabet around the rim and a picture of a clown jumping over
the
letter X." ~ Laurie Colwin, in
Home Cooking
"Think what a better world it would
be if we all, the whole world,
had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and
then lay down on our blankets for a nap. "
~
Barbara Jordan
Nursery Food September 2002
“For it's a
long, long time
from May to December
And the days grow short
when you reach September
And the Autumn weather
Turns the leaves to flame
And I haven't got time
For the waiting game
And the days dwindle down
to a precious few
September November…”
~ September Song, Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson
“When you're cranky and cry easily,
when you are so tired that your eyes
burn
from keeping them open, when you
need hugs and someone to pat
the top of
your head and whisper, 'Shh...
There, there...' and no one is
around, you need
nursery fare. Nursery foods
are the well-loved recipes
from childhood that conjure
up the happy,
innocent moments when all
was right with the world because we
knew our place
in it. The times
when, dressed in our flannel pajamas, we sat
down for
supper before a
story and bed....” ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach (from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy )
Ahah! Now I know why I discovered a package of Oreos as
I unpacked my
groceries on Saturday. 'Who bought these?!?!?' was my first
reaction. And
not only that. Jello Pudding Snacks - tapioca and chocolate!
Now then.
What
did I do with Isabella Bear? And where are my jammies?
“A long
time ago it occurred to me that when people are tired and hungry,
which in
adult life is much of the time, they do not want to be confronted
by an
intellectually challenging meal; they want to be consoled.
When life
is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four
perfect
courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors
are like
nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and
savory, easy
on the digestion – something that makes one feel, if even
for only a minute,
that one is safe. A four-star meal is the right thing
when the human animal
is well rested and feeling rich, but it is not much
help to the sore in
spirit who would be much better off with a big bowl
of homemade soup.
Once upon
a time when I was in mourning for my father I was taken
home by my best
friend who sat me in a chair, gave me a copy of
‘Vogue’ and told me not to
move until called. I sat like a good girl while
she busied herself in the
kitchen. When I got to the table I realized that
this angelic pal had made
shepherd’s pie. My eyes swam with tears of
gratitude. I did not know that
shepherd’s pie was just what I wanted,
but it was just what I wanted.
Of course
I do not mean that you should feed your friends pastina and
beef tea
(although I would be glad to be served either). But dishes such
as
shepherd’s pie and chicken soup are a kind of edible therapy. After a
good
nursery dinner you want your guests to smile happily and say with
childlike
contentment: “I haven’t had that in years.’
I have
managed to stretch the term nursery food like Silly Putty, and
under its
pliant heading comes a wide variety of dishes:
fried chicken,
lamb stew,
macaroni and cheese,
meatballs,
baked beans,
lentil soup, chili,
baked stuffed potatoes, and
lasagna. This is rounded out by an
adult salad; there is no such thing as nursery salad. For dessert, lemon fluff,
shortbread, custard, bread pudding,
apple crisp,
steamed
chocolate pudding or
ginger
cake.
These are
the sorts of things you never see on restaurant menus unless
you are lucky
enough to find one of those few surviving ladies’ tearooms. Nowadays you
won’t even find dishes like these served to you at other
people’s houses,
unless they have small children and you are not above
stealing food off a
baby’s plate. This is the age of competitive cookery,
and therefore when
invited to a dinner party you are more than likely to
get salmon medallions
in sorrel sauce and caviar, or sautéed lobster with
champagne, salads made
with walnut oil, and cakes that look intimidatingly
professional. Meals like
this are swell, but they are not true home meals.
Nursery
food borrows nicely from other cuisines. The spinach and lamb
found on
Indian menus as saag mhaan makes a perfect nursery dish, for
instance. Minorcan potatoes – a layer of potatoes, a layer of tomatoes,
plenty of garlic, bread crumbs and olive oil, baked – is nursery food for
older people. But cassoulet is not. It has too many ingredients that are
weird, such as confit d’oie, or that are hard to digest, such as
saucisson.
Many
people believe that the essence of nursery food is that it can be
mashed up
with a fork and that it does not require much in the way of
chewing. Parts
of a nursery dinner should be eaten without any utensils
at all: corn
sticks, cookies, steamed carrots and baby lamb chops, for
example. You will
never, never hear your guests say the words no host
or hostess ever, ever
wants to hear: ‘That was interesting. What was it?’
In this
uncertain world of ours the thing about nursery food is that you
can count
on it. You know what it is. It will not give you any nasty
surprises. (‘No,
darling, that was raw tuna, not marinated Indonesian
beef.’) It leaves you
neither guessing nor lost in admiration. It fills,
cheers and makes you feel
it ought to be eaten from one of those
metal-bottomed hot-water baby dishes
with three little china sections
and a picture of the gingham dog and the
calico cat in each.
And though
I would never turn down a four-star meal (or even a two-
or three-star one)
at some fancy place, on a cold night after a hard day I
would reverse my
steps if someone offered me a homemade vegetable
fritter with catsup, Welsh
rabbit or some real creamed spinach.
The
ultimate nursery food is beef tea; I have not had it since I was a
child, and although I could easily have brewed myself a batch, I never
have yet. I
am afraid that my childhood will overwhelm me with the
first sip or that I
will be compelled to sit down at once and write a novel
in many volumes. I am not afraid it will not be as delicious as I remember
it. It will. Now
that I have a child of my own I know the day is coming
when I will make beef tea for her, and I am certainly not above insisting
that she share it with
her mother.
It is made
as follows, according to my mother:
Beef Tea
You take
one pound of absolutely fatless silver tip of beef and on a doubled sheet of
butcher paper or a wood board cut it into tiny dice. Place it and any juice
the meat has yielded in the top of a double boiler and gently cook, covered,
over simmering water for several hours. Do not use salt or pepper. Simply
leave the meat alone to give of its juices. After several hours you will be
left with pure essence of beef, perfectly digestible and nourishing. Strain
into a warm bowl, then press out any additional juice from the meat. The
meat itself is useless, a mere net of fibers, and should be given to the
dog.
Beef tea
can be eaten by the very delicate from a spoon. In my family, not
known for
the delicacy with which food is approached, we drank it by the
glass. It is
recommended for frazzled adults and children recovering from
minor ailments.
Baked Eggs
"More substantial and less digestible a form of nursery food
is baked
eggs,
a staple of my childhood. The proper vessel to cook them in
is a
small
covered Pyrex dish. An earthenware dish will do, except that you
can’t
see through it to see if the eggs are done.
The Pyrex dish is put in the oven to hotten up. When hot, a lump of butter
the size of a walnut (as the old cookbooks say) is dropped in to melt.
When
the butter is just slightly sizzling, break in the eggs, never more than
four. Sprinkle with black pepper and Parmesan but no salt, as the Parmesan
is salty enough. Cover and bake in a 325-degree F oven until done. Done
can
mean just cooked, or pink around the edges of the yolks, or baked to
the
consistency of a rubber eraser – some children like eggs this way.
Baked
eggs, though, have to be watched.
The perfect accompaniment is a tomato salad or a side dish of pickled
beets.
This makes a lovely dinner for a cool summer night: easy to make
and quick
to cook, a good thing to keep in mind when people are starving
and no one
feels much like fussing.
In a perfect world, baked eggs are served on a plate that has the letters
of the alphabet around the rim and a picture of a clown jumping over the
letter
X. As a side dish, buttered white toast cut up to postage-stamp size
is just
right, with a large glass of milk – perhaps in a jelly glass – or a
cup of
cocoa."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Laurie's recipe for Shepherd's Pie is included in Home
Cooking, but as part
of another excellent piece called "Feeding the
Multitudes". No kidding. The
concept is so simple that I feel sure you will
have no trouble whatsoever
paring this recipe down to your size, whatever that may
be...
1. Have ready four large steam-tray tables – these hold
around forty
portions apiece, more or less.
2. Chop ten large onions and four entire bulbs of garlic, peeled, the
larger
the better.
3. Heat two to three cups of olive oil in an enormous skillet or low-sided
saucepan, and begin to brown some of the meat (you will need 35
pounds of chopped chuck in all), adding onions and garlic as you go.
The
browned meat should then be put aside while you brown the rest.
4. Season with black pepper and the contents of one large bottle of
Worcestershire sauce. [I would add salt, probably Lawry’s Seasoned
Salt,
but suit yourself.]
5. Apportion the meat into the steam-tray tables and add, or rather
distribute, ten pounds of previously frozen, now thawed, carrots
and
peas,
and mix well with the meat.
6. Make about one gallon of instant mashed potatoes, stirring with a
whisk.
Many people find instant potatoes nasty – I do not. You
would
not want them
as a side dish, but on top of a shepherd’s
pie they are
just fine.
7. Spoon a thick layer of potatoes over the meat, sprinkle with fresh
grated cheese (not the stuff in jars) and bake in the oven at 300
degrees F
for two hours.
This will feed 150 people, some of whom are children.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Comfort food: quirky, quaint, quixotic. Personal patterns of
consolation,
encoded on our taste buds past all forgetting, as
unmistakable as greasy
fingerprints. When the miseries strike, and
you’re down in the dumps,
food transformed by love and memory becomes
therapy... When
hearts
are heavy, they need gravitational and emotional equilibrium."
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach (from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy )
Amen, Sister Sarah! What I said yesterday and the day
before still
goes...
Until next time,
remember... Be well, stay safe,
enjoy your freedom. And please. NEVER take it for granted! Count your
blessings. Express your gratitude. Some of the sentiments I shared with you
around this time last
year bear repeating, as I mean them more than ever:
If you love someone (and surely you do!), tell them so. Today. Now.
They
should not have to figure it out for themselves. Hug your spouse,
your
children, your parents, your siblings, your pets, and tell them how
much
they mean to you... Eat something delicious, nutritious, and
comforting. Make sure that you include some beauty in your life today,
be it
in the form of flowers, music, art or your favorite hobby. Call a
friend. Live love. Be passionate about something. Give a hoot!
“We always thought we were secure inside our
borders in this country.
And the one day where we realized we weren’t, we
lost control for a few
hours.
And these people, literally and
figuratively, tried to take control
back for us.
And I think that will
resonate for many, many years, and
will be remembered
as a defining
American moment.”
~ New York Times reporter Jere Longman, in Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back
"It
seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love,
are so
mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think
of one without
the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I
am really writing about
love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the
love
of it and the hunger for it…
and then the warmth and richness and
fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it
is all one." ~ M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
La Belle Cuisine
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