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Random thoughts while cooking an Easter meal
I like to put sliced black olives in my spaghetti sauce. I recently thought I had bought the pre-sliced olives, only to discover they were whole. No problem, at least they were pitted. I put the remaining olives in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. Mrs. Pessimist saw them the next morning and thought they were blueberries, so she dumped them into her cereal. Boy, was she surprised.
Speaking of cereal, breakfast was a daily ritual in our house that could not be skipped. Often it included fruit, eggs, toast and bacon or ham. If I called in sick from school, however, the menu would become a large shredded wheat biscuit (the large whole biscuit, not the spoon-sized cereal) served with hot, sweetened milk—usually reconstituted evaporated milk, which my Depression era mother thought was both the best value and most nutritious form of milk.
I liked cereal, and I learned to like evaporated milk. Those wheat biscuits were hard to swallow, however.
Okra was a Southern staple when I was young. My parents loved it. Okra was easy to grow and very prolific. What you didn’t eat when it was fresh could be canned in Mason jars and served throughout the year. Oh, how I hated okra. Slimy, gooey and truly noxious in every aspect. My parents liked it boiled and extra slimy. I don’t know why they didn’t add it to stewed tomatoes. I don’t know why they didn’t deep fry it. Those are the only two ways to make it edible, as far as I can tell.
Once I was an adult and put away childish things (as if anyone ever does that), I discovered that most of the “meat and three” restaurants I enjoyed in the Carolinas offered stewed tomatoes and okra over white rice as a side dish. One of the best growing experiences is when you discover that the things you have avoided throughout your life are the things you now enjoy.
Not all of my most blessed learning experiences involve food, but few provide a longer-lasting joy.
Published in General
I never cared for liver – with or without onions – as a child, and I’ve never had it since turning 18.
And I don’t mind some okra mixed in with other things, including as part of Campbell’s Chunky Soup; but okra alone, in any form including deep fried, I wouldn’t touch with my ten-foot pole.
Even more off putting is their alternative name, lady fingers. Yuck.
We were once enrolled in a trial for a cereal company. We got unlabled boxes of a couple of different batches to try for a week at a time and then filled out a questionaire. At that time Garrison Keilor had a “sponsor” for his radio program – A cereal that helped you “get up and do what needed to be done”. We named the test serial after Garrison’s product – Raw Bits.
When I was newly married, my husband’s Irish and Italian and Irish-Italian :) family members would gather at my sister-in-law’s house for Easter dinner. There were about twenty of us all together. It was always loads of fun, and Diane went all out on the decorations and food. It was just wonderful. Gorgeous day. Flowers everywhere. Good family cheer.
But a lot of work for Diane. :)
She was up until four in the morning one year getting everything ready for our two o’clock dinner time. Her sister’s son Mark was her paperboy because her sister lived a couple of doors down from her house. Just as she was turning in for what would be essentially a nap before her guests started to arrive, she pinned a note to her front door:
Dear Mark,
The Lord is risen but your auntie has not. Please do not ring the bell.
Happy Easter,
Love,
Auntie Diane
:) :)
Black Olives Matter!
I remember the MASH episode where Col Blake is talking to a Greek officer on the phone about how they’d sent over a bunch of food to celebrate Easter. More or less:
Blake: “Everything arrived just fine, except the olives, for some reason they all turned black!”
*pause*
Blake: “Oh!”
Because, y’see, it was the 1950s and they only knew olives for martinis, the green ones.
Tiny black olives, or really huge blueberries, that must have looked “moist and fermenting” or Mrs Pessimist hadn’t yet put her glasses on.
I visited my son in Hudson OH last week, and always visit the costco store near his house to pick up wine.
I also found a 6 pack of stuffed olives in cans, $11.99 for the bunch.
I have that 6 pack to my sister in Buffalo for her Easter appetizer table.
Waiting to hear reviews.
Some of the varieties were: orange, blue cheese, jalapeño, pickled veggies, and truffle. I don’t recall the 6th.
No costco store in PA has this olive special. If the reviews are good, I’ll have my son pick up more.
Those big shredded wheat biscuit things! Thanks for reminding me of those. You could cut it as you liked it and you could soak it in milk as you liked it. Excellent things.
Okra is a very instructive vegetable. It has taught me not to overcook it. Cooking a short time and in small quantity gives nice flavor and texture without slime. And how about red okra? Do people grow red okra much in southern gardens? We have enjoyed growing it in upstate New York, in the Adirondack foothills. It cooks up green, as do purple beans, but that’s ok.
Mrs. Pessimist was once enrolled in a trial for household products. Some of them were quite successful. I still use a complex knife that she was given. One product she got was a lemon scented dishwashing soap that she thought was actual lemon juice. She squeezed it onto broccoli one night and when I tasted it I thought I was going to die! I had to laugh because the packaging did make it look like fresh lemon juice.
Some dish soaps do have real lemon juice, but they’re still mostly dish soap.
The joke, though, is that many “lemon flavor” food items DON’T use actual lemon juice.
@jadro
Mark’s from Utah, and I’m from Illinois. Okra seemed to be the main ingredient necessary to make a chicken gumbo a real gumbo. Even my culinary inexperienced mom, who came from Minnesota knew that.
Now I live in a household where only one of us likes okra. In Chicago, I used to see it fresh along with all the other produce items. Now I only see it frozen.
I miss gumbo, and would easily spend a small fortune visiting New Orleans every other week to have it should I ever win the lottery.
It’s funny how you don’t realize how much you miss something until it is not readily available.
It’s jzdro, not jadro.
So to those of you out there throughout this great land, please tell me of anyway that you can make okra edible without deep frying it or stewing it with tomatoes.
Unless you are very convincing, I will probably ignore anything you ever say on this website again.
And gumbo without tomatoes is not really gumbo but sometimes it is pretty close.
I’ve had this dish at one friend’s home and also at an award-winning restaurant.
I think it’s heavenly:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/216888/good-new-orleans-creole-gumbo/
From the above link, that also offers up the complete recipe:
New Orleans-style gumbo is a true taste of Southern tradition. This boldly flavored stew is bursting with fresh, filling ingredients like bell pepper, sausage, stewed tomatoes, and crabmeat. Hot sauce Cajun seasonings add a kick that makes this Louisiana dish a favorite amongst our community of home cooks. Learn how to make the best homestyle gumbo right here.
My comment: it doesn’t mention in its description the 20 0unces of okra the recipe asks for. But the dish is so wonderful most people will not recognize the okra as it blends in.
The stewed tomatoes are right there in the recipe, so SP’s mandate is satisfied.
by the way, the “Jazzy Jambalaya” flavor Chunky Soup is pretty good.
My dear departed mother taught me to like pickled okra, and red salmon straight from the can, cold. My best two stories about her are the time she excitedly told us we were having zucchini. Canned, slimy zucchini. And then there was the time she bought Sautern cooking wine for a celebration. Other than than those episodes, she had taught herself to be a competent cook.
As surprised as my then-four year old son was upon grabbing an olive at a wedding party and popping it into his mouth thinking it was a grape!
I’m grateful for this thread, as I have now recalled the time my Dad started brushing his teeth one morning and burst into indignant clamor. He had grabbed, instead of toothpaste, the tube of DencoRub.