All You Can Eat... and more

Brazil seems to be the mecca of all you can eat dining and last night we experienced the pinnacle.

At Verdanna Grill, there's an extensive salad, seafood and sushi bar. But that's not what people come here for.

They come for the MEAT.

All you have to do is sit at your table and wait for the food to come to you. Waiters walk around with huge skewers of meat, offering their fare at each table.

See something you like? With the nod of your head, it's yours.

To the best of my memory, we ate:

• filet mignon
• filet with cheese
• sausages
• beef hump
• pork
• capybara
• quail
• chicken
• turkey
• bacon
• pork belly and skin
• rib eye
• shrimp
• chicken hearts

It was extraordinary amount of food with an extraordinary family. I couldn't help thinking how much my dad and Ben's dad would have loved the meal. Wish they were here!

Broken Record

We fed 18 around the dinner table last night, thanks to a generous donation of several salmon from some Alaska friends. It truly was an all-you-can-eat meal straight out of the Copper River.

When two more friends dropped by, we broke the record for how many people can fit in the house at once - 20 people, 3 dogs, and a bird crowded into living room and kitchen of our 1200 square foot house. When 8 of them left and only 10 remained, it seemed so quiet!

Good times, great blessings, wishing the same for you.

A Warm Welcome

We weren't even all the way in the door at the new family owned grocery store before one of the workers greeted us. Dad pumped him for information about who built the store, how it was stocked, what made them stand out from the chain stores, while I picked up huge avocados, tiny pears, and arugula from a bulk bin.

The same worker met us on the other side of the store while we were browsing the cheese section. I asked if they had any prepared pizza dough. He didn't know, but he'd find out.

"We don't carry pizza dough yet, but we might later," was his answer. "But I'd like to introduce you to Erik. He's our executive chef."

Erik was more than happy to fix up some pizza dough for me on the spot and bring it out to me while I was shopping.

We met the same worker at the end as we pulled our cart up to check out. Dad did what I should have done in the first place--asked his name.

Larry.

The new store, Chuck's Produce and Street Market, will be a fun place to shop, especially for hard to find items like passion fruit and good Gouda. But what's taking me back there is the warm welcome I received from Larry and the terrific customer service from Erik.

By the way, the pizza was delicious. Y'all should have stopped by.

Bananas

The Asian market has plantains on sale, nice juicy ripe ones. I bought 2 the other day and grilled them. One of the kids and I ate them both before anyone else got a taste.

Back to the market to buy a dozen of the giant cooking bananas. That was yesterday.

We ate them all.

6 went on the grill. The rest went in the fryer to go with eggplant sauce and potatoes for dinner. All went in our tummies.

What is it about food? Plantains were a staple for us during our years in Africa. I don't think I've cooked them since, but as soon as I started cooking with these, the kids started telling me stories of memories they have from Africa. The smell, the taste, the texture ... I'm not sure what it was, but those bananas awakened a long dormant piece of our family. It's fun to let the memories flow.

Quest for the Green Papaya

Sounds like a great adventure, right?

I was more like a comedy of errors. I wanted to make a green papaya salad for a luncheon, but didn't want to make a trip to the next town to the Asian supermarket I knew would carry it.

So... I looked up a local Asian market online and promptly decided (for no reason that makes any sense to me right now) that it would be easier to go on a random papaya hunt than to go to the market that might actually carry such a thing.

3 hours and dozens of red papayas later, I was no closer to finding the object of my quest than when I had first begun.

So... I went home and called the Asian market that I should have called in the first place.

Yes, of course they had green papaya. Hmmm.

And it made a lovely salad for a lovely luncheon.

Lesson of the week: Don't make things more complicated than they actually are.

Identity Crisis

I was shopping at Costco this morning and noticed something I hadn't seen before. In the fresh produce section, the round red fruit we used to call plums were packed in boxed marked

FRESH PRUNES.

Fresh prunes? Are prunes so popular that people are wishing they knew how to buy them fresh? It rang a bell, so I wandered over to the dried fruit aisle. Sure enough, you can buy a product there called

DRIED PLUMS.

I thought the idea of calling them dried plums was to give the fruit a younger, sexier image. Did that backfire? Do we now need to reach out to the older crowd to offer them the fresh version of the magic fruit that solves all their digestive problems?

Here's what I think. I think someone went to sleep during the ad campaign meeting, couldn't remember what the consensus was, so he decided to cover his bases.

Loaves and Fishes

I was out of grocery money a week ago, not sure how I was going to stretch the food in the cupboard to last our family of five for another 10 days. It would take some creative menus and more tolerance than usual for the foods the kids aren't crazy about. If only the sun would come out and encourage my garden to grow.

We got a call on Thursday that some friends might be coming through this weekend, either Friday or Saturday. I put on my thinking cap, cleaned the last of the chicken out of the freezer, poured the last of the vinegar and soy sauce into a marinade, and cut some of the chicken pieces smaller to make them stretch. Last minute I remembered the corn on the cob I'd happened to pick up a few days before and hadn't had a chance to cook yet, so those ears went on the grill with the chicken. I crossed my fingers and hoped the food would fill the 10 of us.

Make that 11. These friends had generously picked up a recent high school graduate (think hungry boy!) who is now traveling with them.

The dinner was enough. And it was tasty.

Saturday, what to eat? Baked oatmeal is always a favorite around here and I had some oats in the cupboard, so I mixed those with the last stick of butter and most of the brown sugar and fed the crowd.

For dinner, we pulled out the leftovers (can't believe there were any) and a stack of tortillas, some cheese, a bowl of taco meat from the other night, and everyone ate their fill.

This morning that 25-pound bag of steel cut oats I'd bought for an emergency took a hit as about 4 pounds of it went in the pot to feed the masses. Brown sugar is now completely gone, but no one is hungry. And there are enough cooked oats left to cook into biscuits in the morning.

For lunch, the guests cooked up a big moose roast they'd brought along. I supplemented with green beans from last year's garden, carrots I didn't know we had and two loaves of garlic toast I purchased with a $20 bill that was hiding in my wallet. I was sure I was out of money. huh.

Did I mention that I'd also pulled a turkey out of the freezer--one of those good deals at Thanksgiving last year that was put aside for just such a time as this? It roasted all day today, made sandwiches tonight and will go on the road trip north with our friends tomorrow with enough left for us to have a couple of meals, a pot of soup, and scraps for their dog and ours.

The fridge is bulging with leftovers that will carry us over until pay day. Family and friends have been fed so much that even the teenage boys insist they're stuffed.

Not exactly the feeding of the 5,000, but the feeding of the 11 (6 of whom are teens) has been a bit of a wonder nonetheless.

Sin Tax

I don't smoke, so the cigarette tax doesn't hurt me.

I don't drink, so no worries on the taxes on beer and wine.

I don't gamble, so if there are any taxes at casinos, I don't know about them.

But a new sin tax goes into effect today that I just might feel.

My state has instituted a tax on candy, defined as any sweet confection that does not contain flour and does not require refrigeration. Licorice, jelly beans, Christmas candies, they're all subject to the new tax. So is chewing gum.

It's kind of like a tax on families with children.

And for those of you who are feeling smug about not being affected, watch out, because using plastic is also a sin, so you'll be paying taxes on bottled water, too.

Maybe it's time to quit cold turkey. I think I'd better pop some m & m's and think about it.

Licking the Spoon

It was one of those moments when I was the kid and she was the grown up, though she's my daughter. I don't know if it's that I've drilled into her that you don't lick the spoon (raw eggs and all that) or if she just doesn't share my love for unbaked baked goods.

This morning, she made the cookies and I licked the spoon. Chocolate Oat no-bake cookies (David Cookies, as they were known at our house growing up) don't have any ingredients to be afraid of... not if you don't count the cup of butter and the 4 cups of sugar.

So I stood over the sink and licked the spoon.

It tasted just like childhood.

Velvet Hammered!

Just one little velvet hammer milkshake from Coffee People at 9 o'clock at night. It tasted so sweet, so cool going down after a long, hot day. I chewed on the little black specks and hoped they didn't get stuck in my teeth. Got home at midnight and crashed.

For an hour.

Then I was wide awake. Wide, wide awake. I read 200 pages. I stared at the ceiling. Until 5 a.m. and even then, I slept fitfully.

I woke up feeling like I'd been clonked by that velvet hammer, only someone forgot the velvet part.

For all you coffee addicts out there, I can see why you feel like you need to cure your coffee hangover with more coffee. I can't imagine feeling this way every morning. No thanks. A caffeine addict, I am not.

Unless it comes in the form of chocolate.

A Touch of Honesty

Alas, not every dinner is as perfect as last night's. Tonight, the menu looked more like this:

Guy: 2 slices of leftover pizza, the last slice of blueberry pie
Me: A glass of malted milk, a handful of raw kale, 1 asparagus spear, 4 grapes, a chocolate bar
Child 1: a kiwi and something else, I think
Child 2: a cup o'noodles, a handful of strawberries
Child 3: a peanut butter and honey sandwich, potato chips

I feel neither as full nor as satisfied as I did last night. I'm not near as proud of my prowess as gatherer or provider. But the random stuff in my fridge is mostly gone.

Sayonara, Satsuma!

One of my favorite parts of winter has come and gone. The Satsuma oranges have been replaced by the far inferior Clementines.

Time marches on.

Oh, Lait!

Anyone who has ever been to France knows about their love affair with dairy products. I spent many a day tromping through alpine meadows where the Beaufort cows eat the wildflowers that give Beaufort cheese its special aroma and flavor. Whatever the French need to do to spoil their dairy cows, they should keep on doing it.

Emmetaulier, cheese fondue, creme fraiche, boursin, yogurt and high fat milk... the lactose delights go on and on.

I was so disappointed to learn that the French also gave us one of the greatest disasters in culinary history - margarine. Oh la la! Quelle catastrophe!

Travesty

I had a teacher in France, Madame Weille, who would have fainted at the thought of throwing out a piece of bread. Every morsel, every crumb of each baguette was used either as pain perdu (French toast) or as bird food. "Jamais," she would say, "Never throw bread away. It would disrespect our memory of the war, when our bread kept us alive."

I smiled inwardly at her passion over bread. I knew then, as I do now, that throwing away a piece of bread or a bowl of rice or a half-eaten serving of salad does not really affect the soldiers of WWII or the starving children of India, China or Africa.

Still, when I made too much Akume (Ugali, cornmeal mush) tonight, I could not throw it away. If I have to eat it for breakfast, fry it into chips and introduce it to my dog, it will all get eaten. Because really, when it comes down to it, I am tied to the hungry people of Africa. I can see their faces as I eat their food.

And to throw away their sustenance would disrespect their memory. It might not affect them, but it affects me.