Mary Rea Books

The Great Cranberry Debate

12/7/2017

Once again the great cranberry debate is underway in our family. Every year it starts before Thanksgiving and continues till the last person leaves the table at Christmas…and sometimes beyond as everyone argues over which kind of cranberry sauce is best with leftovers.

This small red berry has been included in American holiday fare since the first harvest feast in 1621. There were a limited number of native fruits in the new land, and transplanted Europeans were pleased to include cranberries as a side dish with wild turkey, venison and eel.

At least back then nobody bickered about whether canned or fresh is best.

There’s one faction in our family that contends only canned cranberries deserve a place on the festive table. They believe the classic sauce with perfect cylindrical wobbliness is what Grandma served and turkey doesn’t taste like turkey without it.

But wait, it gets worse. The canned crew has a further feud. Some members claim the smooth jelly type is the only way to go. They point to the satisfying “ploosh” as the sauce slides from the can onto the serving plate, and to the lines left by the can that aid in cutting off the perfect sized slice.

The canned whole berry people prefer that style’s lumpy yet gooey texture and its visual effect on a plate next to the turkey and gravy.

I wonder if they argue about stuff like this in Wisconsin, where cranberries are the state fruit. Wisconsin produces more cranberries than anywhere else in the nation and more than half the world’s supply. Fact: Wisconsin cranberry growers annually harvest enough cranberries to supply every man, woman and child in the world with 26 cranberries.

According to fresh sauce advocates in the family, serving canned is a treasonous offence. My mom put out a time-honored heirloom recipe from the back of the Ocean Spray bag. It’s just cranberries, a chopped orange and some sugar. According to my brother, it has the added advantage of being awesome on sandwiches.

In another corner are certain relatives who want to fancy up when it’s their turn to bring the cranberry sauce. They add nuts, fruits and liqueurs, which strikes everyone else as an insult to the whole tradition. If Mother Nature intended for cranberries to taste like peach schnapps and cashews, she would have made them that way.

So we end up having two or three kinds of cranberry sauce on the table. Everyone is happy and we can move on to more important conversation. Like whether or not there should be oysters in the stuffing.

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Family Secrets

10/10/2017

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It all started when a son asked for my deviled egg recipe. Like many families, ours has several secret recipes, but stuffed eggs isn’t one of them.

I learned how to make them from my mother and she learned from hers. The “secret” ingredient is French’s mustard, but it isn’t really a secret. It’s just nobody ever mentioned the brand because for many years French’s was the only one available.

I tried for years to replicate her eggs, using whatever kind of mustard I had on hand. It wasn’t until I sat down and watched her make them that the secret was revealed.

My granny Dot had a truly secret recipe for a super delicious cake-like confection called peanut bars. It went to the grave with her. A number of years later her recipe box turned up, and lo-and-behold, there was the peanut bar recipe.

After tasting peanut bars, friends often ask for the secret recipe. I’m happy to share, but once they see the multitude of steps involved, they say, “Really? Nobody cooks like that any more.” So her secret is safe.

The idea a certain recipe can only be made well by one person is well founded. For years my brother and I tried to duplicate Mom’s potato salad. We were sure there was a secret ingredient she wasn’t telling us about. Mom insisted her recipe was nothing special. Different cooks have different styles, and the truth is nobody made her signature potato salad as well as she did. One time I stood right beside her and copied every move. Hers still came out tasting better.

My friend Emily is holding on to a family secret fudge recipe. Whenever anyone asks for it she gets evasive, often promising to send it at some unspecified later date. Cooks can be funny that way.

My aunt’s secret addition to a lot of recipes is a splash of bourbon. Living in a small town, she doesn’t want anyone to think she’s a drinker, so she omits that item when she passes on a recipe. Nobody guesses why her beef stew tastes so good.

Secret family recipes are unique. They evoke memories and family pride, which gives even an otherwise ordinary recipe special worth. Sometimes cooks are willing to share a recipe with close friends, relatives, and maybe even a co-worker, as long as they promise to “keep the secret.” It’s a special kind of culinary bond.

I’m still trying to pry my neighbor’s secret recipe for honey bunny casserole out of her. She says she’ll trade me for my granny’s dinner roll recipe. But if I do that, the family will never speak to me again.

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Tall Food And Other Records

9/16/2017

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I recently learned that celebrity TV chefs Emeril Lagasse and Ty Pennington hold the world’s record for the tallest stack of pancakes at 2 feet 10 ¼ inches.

That got me looking into other amazing food records.

The tallest cake record is held by Nigerian cake maestro Tosan Jemide. His pastry creation was 108.27 feet tall. He says he made it to bring attention to Africa.

The world champion ketchup chugger is a German who drank a bottle of ketchup in 32 seconds.

In the UK a fellow named Mat Hand ate 211 individual canned peas in 3 minutes using a cocktail toothpick.

You’ve got to wonder about these people. How much practice did Mat have to put in to get good at stabbing peas with a toothpick? And I wonder if there is another record holder for non-cocktail toothpick stabbing of peas.

There are a bunch of records that involve placing food in a single long line:
            Most hot dogs 1500;
            Most sandwiches…no mention of which kind…7,790;
            Most 12-inch pizzas 1,800;
and my favorite…most M&M pretzels lined up in 30 seconds, which is 30.

I guess there must be some kind of civic pride in being among the crew that lines up 1,841 feet of doughnuts or 1,477 apple pies, but somebody had to make and assemble all that food and it seems like an awful lot of work for not much recognition.

Burgers are as American as apple pie, so it’s no surprise there’s a longest burger line record, set in Kuwait, of all places, at 1004 feet 10 inches. There were 2500 of them, with a bun, beef burger, cheese and ketchup. Hold the onions.

A London restaurant claims the tallest burger at 5 feet 4 inches. The “Pie Scrapper” packs a whopping 30,000 calories.

John Clarkson and wife Corinne spent an hour-and-a-half assembling the structure on a metal stand to ensure the tower didn’t topple. The Pie Scrapper is filled with a series of meat patties each containing a different meal encased in burger meat. One can enjoy Spam, black pudding and sausage, steak and mushroom pie, spaghetti Bolognese and much more all in one tall burger. No mention of whether the tallest burger is covered in secret sauce.

I give John and Corinne kudos for creativity…no skinny pancake tower for them. They’ve got whole meals wrapped inside their burger patties. If you’re going to break a record, you might was well do it right.

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Seat and Meet

8/30/2017

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We have kids and grandkids at opposite sides of the country so my husband and I spend a lot of time in airplanes.

A recent trip to Boston had me thinking about nightmare seat mates. On that flight I was next to gentleman from India. He seemed very nice, but reeked of some kind of incense I couldn’t identify. I’ve got a sensitive nose and while his odor wasn’t disgusting, it was very strange

I turned the overhead air nozzle on high and tried to ignore the aroma. I’m sure those with perfume sensitivity know exactly what I’m talking about.

What do you do when the guy crammed in next to you smells of strange spices, burning wood and something so odd you can’t decide if it’s bird, beast or fish?

On another trip, the goddess of flight placed me next to a woman named Cora who went by the name of Dolly. She was, unfortunately, on her way to a convention for a multi-level marketing scheme involving some sort of magical water. Dolly immediately went into her sales pitch. I gently told her I wasn’t interested, but that didn’t stop her from spending the next 30 minutes telling me in excruciating detail her entire life story and how the magic water cured every ailment she ever had.

Dolly/Cora insisted I take her business card, even after I politely demurred. She was adamant…just in case I wanted to check out the elixir in the future. Lucky for me a flight attendant came along offering pretzels. After that I pretended to be asleep.

I’ve been seated next to people who snored loudly; who talked to themselves; who took up all of their seat and part of mine. My seat back has been kicked for hours by small children, and I’ve listened to kids cry for most of an overseas flight. Somehow that doesn’t seem as bad as the idiot next to me who loudly berated a flight attendant for being slow in bringing his gin and tonic.

Airline seatmates are always a matter of luck, even when you fly Southwest, which allows you to select a seat when you board. The sickest person I ever sat next to appeared hale and hearty when I sat down beside her.
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On the upside, I’ve never had to dodge an onboard fist fight. And once I shared a flight with a gay men’s church choir who serenaded passengers most of the way to Minneapolis. It was like flying above the clouds with angels.

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Oldies, but maybe not so good

8/1/2015

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Did you see that news item about the 16-year old can of soup found in the back of a refrigerator at the Chicago EPA office? I can beat that. The other day, while sorting though a box we’ve been storing for a grown son, I came across a Milky Way candy bar with a sell-by date of 1985.

But it turns out I don’t hold the world’s oldest chocolate. Even though there’s evidence chocolate was made in ancient times, not much actual candy has been left uneaten long enough to become antiquated.

There is a small box of chocolates in Scotland that was made especially to commemorate the coronation day of King Edward VII in 1902. The chocolate passed from the original schoolgirl who abstained from eating it, mother to daughter, until it was donated to the St. Andrews Preservation Trust in 2008. The chocolates look a bit withered, but what else can you expect after 111 years?

The one food that never seems to go off is honey. Archaeologists in Egypt heated up three thousand year old honey, stirred it a little, and found it tasted just about like the honey they had at home in the pantry.

The oldest bottle of wine still in liquid state was discovered in Germany in a sarcophagus. After 1650 years of aging the contents were waxy and silty, and the alcohol content was long gone, but it still had a decent bouquet. Recommended pairing is spit-roasted oxen.

I have spices from my grandmother’s kitchen which are at least 40 years old. I hold on to them because of their interesting containers. Unfortunately, I’ve also got spices nearly as old in my own cupboard. After paying $7.95 for a bottle of ground cardamom, it’s hard to throw it out even many years later. Who knows, another recipe may come along that requires cardamom and I don’t want to have to put out another $7.95.

A friend is still feeding her cat cans of liver she bought in preparation for Y2K. The apocalypse never happened, and she hasn’t had to buy cat food for years. Everything turned out just fine. Does make me wonder though, how many people are holding on to stuff until Y3K.

As for that soup can at the back of the EPA refrigerator, I’m glad nobody checked my fridge lately. It could be downright embarrassing.

This also appeared in the Wenatchee World.

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Yum...maybe

7/10/2015

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As his wife put dinner on the table, my son took me aside. “I’m just warning you this is Tater Tot casserole and it’s disgusting. But you’ve got to excuse Abbie. She’s from Nebraska and can’t help it.” In the Midwest there are thousands of versions of Tater Tot hotdish. It’s a classic regional specialty. Every cook has a favorite recipe and just about all of them contain canned cream-of-something soup, cheese, one or more kinds of canned or frozen vegetables and Tater Tots.

To change from a side to an entrée, just add hamburger. In some communities the dish is called “funeral casserole” since it is a mainstay whenever comfort food is called for.

Tater tots were invented in Idaho in 1953 when Ore-Ida co- founders F. Nephi and Golden Griggs were trying to figure out what to do with slivers of cut-up potatoes left over after French fries were formed. They grated the small pieces, added flour and seasoning, and pushed the mash through holes. The mixture that came out the other side was cut into bite-sized cylinders, deep fried and frozen.

They couldn’t come up with a name for their new potato product so they held a contest among employees and their friends. A young housewife, Cora Lay Orton, entered the name Tater Tot and took the win. Originally, the product was very inexpensive but nobody bought it. A marketing expert advised the Griggs to raise the price to increase its perceived value. That’s all it took. Today, Americans consume approximately 70 million pounds of Tater Tots per year. That’s a lot of pounds of Tots, more than the entire populations of California and Texas combined.

My mother was also raised in Nebraska, which probably explains why she dumped a can of cream of mushroom soup onto almost everything she made. To this day, it’s hard for me to choke down anything that involves cream soup in a can. But Abbie’s Tater Tot casserole wasn’t so bad after all.

Still, I’d rather have Tater Tots for breakfast with cheese and a fried egg, for lunch with catsup, or for dinner smothered in nacho fixings. Please leave the can of cream of mushroom soup in Nebraska.

This also appeared in the Wenatchee World.

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You've Got To Be Kidding

4/19/2015

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I’ve never been a huge fan of swimsuit shopping. The suit I wear now was purchased on sale at least 10 years ago. Every spring I promise myself I’ll buy a new one, but the purchase becomes so excruciating I can’t force myself to go through with it.

Let’s start with price. I walk into a store, find just what I’m looking for, flip over the price tag and hastily return the suit to the rack before I pass out. How can a scant handful of fabric, strings and clasps possibly cost so much?

Manufacturers tell us swimsuits are complicated garments whose prices are tied up in global manufacturing, seasonal retailing, and the requirement they be designed for a wide range of activities and body types.

I get it that stretchable fabrics are more expensive than many other materials. I get it that special machines are necessary to sew stretchy materials. What I don’t get is why I should have to empty out my checking account for a swimsuit.

Eventually I grab an armful and head for the dressing room. Standing a few feet in front of a full length mirror reveals every bulge, bump, flaw and sign of age. I just don’t handle it well.

But I plunge ahead. It’s time to try on what's basically glorified underwear made out of spandex. Just for the heck of it, I’ve brought along three cute two-piece beauties, each of which cost more than the entire outfit I wore into the store. They are quickly rejected. Too much skin, not enough suit.

At least I’m getting more fabric for my money with a one-piece.

I perform various contortions wrestling the first suit into place, meanwhile trying to figure out why my arm is on the wrong side of the shoulder strap. Yikes!

The rest of the pile turns out no better. While I can’t see exactly what’s going on with my backside, I can feel spandex creeping up past an acceptable point. One suit makes me feel like I could be trying out for a pin-up show. Cute suit, but not on me.

Fashion experts advise taking along a trusted friend to provide honest opinion and emotional support when depression sets in. Maybe next year I’ll try that.

I’m done for this year.

This also appeared in the Wenatchee World.

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Celebrate Your Cans

1/22/2015

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It’s that time of year again folks. On January 24 the nation celebrates Beer Can Appreciation Day. Laugh if you will, but the holiday is important to many people. There are thousands of beer can collectors out there…not to mention hundreds of beer can hat collectors. And don’t forget all the backyard barbeque chefs who specialize in beer can chicken.

And the starving college students selling crushed aluminum beer cans to buy text books.

The bright idea of putting beer in cans came to brewer Gottfried Kruegar back in 1933. He teamed with American Can Company to develop a container that was both pressurized and had a special coating to prevent fizzy beer from reacting with tin. After several years of experimentation, Kruegar introduced a test run of 2,000 cans. It was an unqualified success.

Today canned beer accounts for approximately half of the $20 billion U.S. beer industry.

Cans are easier to stack than bottles, are more durable and take less time to chill. They’re also easier to haul to the beach.

Until recently the craft beer industry was not swayed by the allure of metal. Many beer geeks insist a can is by nature an evil thing to seal fine beer into. That’s changing however as microbrewers become increasingly convinced that cans insure purity and taste.

A word about tops: the original 1935 beer can had a flat top, which remained the norm till about 1970. It’s hard to imagine in this day of feather-light aluminum that the first containers weighed nearly four ounces. It took an indispensible tool known as a church key…and a fair amount of effort… to pry them open.

The change that revolutionized everything came in 1963. Schlitz introduced the “Pop Top.” You put your finger into a ring, yanked, and bingo the can was open! Pull tabs were a beer drinkers dream and an environmental disaster. Pets and wildlife died from ingesting them, as did more than a few people who dropped the ring into their beer and then accidently choked on it. Pull tabs were around for a little over 10 years before they were replaced by the stay tab. Like its name suggests, the tab remains connected to the can where it can do a lot less damage.

A final holiday note: If you stacked all the cans of beer consumed in the US this year, you could go to the moon and back 20 times. That’s a lot of cans to appreciate.

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Please Excuse the Bow

12/15/2014

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I love everything about Christmas except wrapping presents.

I put it off until the very last second. Often that means getting up before everybody else on Christmas morning to slap paper on something I bought months ago.

It’s the corners that get me every time. I’ve never mastered the art of precise folding. As hard as I try, the corners always look sloppy and uneven, not tucked in nicely like they should.

I’ve tried using paper with dotted lines on the back, which works great for cutting straight, but as soon as you start folding, the lines disappear and everything goes haywire.

It’s a mystery how some people are able to cut wrapping paper, fold it around a gift box, and have the seam end up exactly on the edge, not angling sideways down the back like mine does. And some people end up with exactly the same amount of paper at each end to be folded over neatly to match the neat corners. How do they do that?

I’m also not good at scotch tape. You hold the spot to be taped with one hand and try to rip off a section of tape with the other. The piece you get is either too long, too short or sticks to the paper before you have a chance to get it in place. I can’t tell you how much tape I’ve wasted over the years, and how many packages I’ve had to rewrap because of uncooperative scotch tape.

Either the little cutter doesn’t cut, or the tape flips back and sticks to the roll. Have you ever tried to get tape unstuck from itself? It never comes off even; there’s always one small sliver that refuses to unroll with the rest. Picking that little stinker loose with a fingernail can get really aggravating.

My mother-in-law is a master wrapper. Each holiday season she selects a theme. One year it was tartan plaid and pheasant feathers, another Victorian cherubs and old lace. I decided to up my game. I watched Martha Stewart create “darling, no cost” wrapping paper with road maps and raffia. Unfortunately, instead of turning out “darling,” my packages looked like they’d been rolling around in the trunk of the car for two months.

Now I mostly use gift bags or printed gift boxes. There’s still the issue of getting the tissue paper to look like it hasn’t been slept in, and attaching festive bows that don’t sag. But it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

This also appeared in the Wenatchee World.

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Squash Pie, Anyone?

11/20/2014

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Pumpkin pie is a holiday favorite. Would you like it as much if you knew you were eating squash pie? It turns out most canned pumpkin is actually—gasp!—squash. Manufacturers make “pumpkin” puree from one or more kinds of winter squashes such as butternut, Hubbard and Boston marrow, which are less stringy, sweeter and have better color than pumpkin.

Before crying fraud, it’s important to know there’s a rather fuzzy distinction between pumpkin and squash. They are in the same genetic family, with the principle difference being in the stem. Pumpkins stems are stiff and spiky. All pumpkins are squash, but not all squash are pumpkins.

Libby, which produces 50 million pie’s worth of canned pumpkin and is responsible for 85 percent of the canned pumpkin globally, has its own proprietary variant, called Dickinson Select 12, which much more resembles butternut than the traditional jack-o-lantern Halloween pumpkin.

Here’s another interesting fact: 90 percent of all pumpkins grown in the United States are raised within a 90-mile radius of Peoria, Illinois. Libby’s processing plant and cannery are located smack in the middle of pumpkin country, in the town of Morton. The company contracts with independent farmers to grow pumpkins on about eight square miles of land, providing them with patented seeds available to no other growers.

Illinois’ second largest producer of canned pumpkin, Seneca Foods, supplies many of the private label supermarket brands and is located just down the road. But proximity hasn’t led to an identical product.

Libby’s canned pumpkin is thicker than other brands with a lower moisture content. It could be Libby’s special variety has less moisture to start with or it may be the way the squash is processed.

Still, if you have a favorite brand, food experts recommend sticking with it, especially for a tried-and-true recipe. The formula for the perfect pie filling changes with the consistency of the puree. Change brands and you’ll probably also have to change the number of eggs or liquid you add.

But whatever recipe you use, when Thanksgiving dinner conversation takes a dive into an uncomfortable discussion about politics, you can always change the subject by blurting out, "Hey, did you know this isn't pumpkin pie? It’s actually Dickinson pie!"

This first appeared in the Wenatchee World.

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The Great Cranberry Debate

Family Secrets

Tall Food And Other Records

Seat and Meet

Oldies, but maybe not so good

Yum...maybe

You've Got To Be Kidding

Celebrate Your Cans

Please Excuse the Bow

Squash Pie, Anyone?

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