Brandon Eats

Happy Mother's Day to Us All

It's Mother's Day, and although this is another repeat, there's no more fitting tribute to a well-loved mom who taught me to see the fundamental hilarity in our day-to-day existence.

Rabid foodies, beware: what you're about to read will revolt you and utterly destroy any shred of respect you might have had for my culinary acumen.  You're better off just clicking over to Chocolate & Zucchini and seeing what Clotilde is up to these days.  This post is an exercise in pure, unapologetic nostalgia for a time before a lot of my readers were even born.

But don't you wish you were born in the sixties, you youngsters?  I know you do; you yearn for the days when a four-year-old and her mother could sing "Feelin' Groovy" without irony, and when "Leavin' on a Jet Plane (Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again)" sounded like the height of sophistication (I want to ride on a jet plane!). You'd beg your mom for candy cigarettes and drive home from the grocery store without a seat belt pretending to flick your imaginary ash out of the front-seat window just like your mom was doing that very minute. Kellog's Frosted Flakes with an additional spoonful of white sugar on top were part of a balanced breakfast, and later on, if your mom would let you back in the house (come back when it gets dark!), you'd guzzle Kool-Aid by the pitcherful.  And that same beautiful mom would talk to guys at parties with enormous mustaches and a compulsion to clash patterns and stripes in the most annoying way possible while your dad snapped photos with his Instamatic.

It was fun and kind of dangerous to be a kid in the sixties.  Our parents were way too young to have children and, looking back, we're all lucky to have survived to adulthood.  Although my mother experimented with Julia Child and went through a long, long love affair with a box of curry powder she found god knows where, she also served a lot of beeforoni casserole (don't ask) and my all-time favorite, Swedish meatballs.

I think my mom first started making Swedish meatballs as party food but it quickly became a staple at our house.  It was a big Sunday night dish, and she inexplicably served it with mashed potatoes instead of noodles, which just ramped up the richness factor.  Only three or four of these meatballs each, swimming in their thick, creamy, salty gravy and topping a mound of fluffy mashed potatoes, would send the entire family reeling to the living room, where we children would collapse, stomachs distended, full-length on the floor to wait for The Wonderful World of Disney to come on at 7:00.

It's still a sure-fire recipe for kids.  I've lightened it a bit and injected a modicum of healthiness into my mom's recipe by replacing the evaporated milk with fat-free evaporated milk (you can't tell the difference), reducing the amount of sodium-laced beef bouillon, and sneaking in 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of shredded zucchini (children will think the green flecks are parsley--especially if you tell them that's what they are). And although I love the mountain of mashed potatoes with a crater of pooled sauce and meatballs, whole wheat egg noodles (tossed with a little butter and fresh Parmesan) are a healthier choice.  My 21st century Swedish meatballs still retain their sixties' glamor, however, and they put me right on a jet plane back to childhood with the first bite.

Recipe after the jump.

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Spoon's coming up, but judging from the number of hits I still get from this post back from July, 2005--and the fact that I whipped up my first batch of the season yesterday--I thought I'd toss this one out there for another spin.

Temperatures rose and fell over the course of last week, and as they hit their ascendancy, iced tea played a large role in my day-to-day management of the heat. I didn't want to cook, I didn't want to leave the house, and when I did either, immediate liquid refreshment was necessary. Now, I know I should have been drinking water and I did, lots of it. However, despite the overwhelming selection of (very similar tasting waters) on the market, I craved something with a bit more of a kick, something that said "summer in the south" a little louder than all of the cicadas droning on and on in the background of every boiling day. Iced tea was the only solution.

The US is divided into two iced tea-drinking camps: the sweet tea camp of the south and the unsweetened camp of the north. Virginia, as the northernmost outpost of the south, has always been conflicted about to which camp it owes its allegiance. While I was growing up here in Richmond, tea was generally served in large pitchers unsweetened, but venturing even just a few miles southward towards Charles City or Petersburg, the tea became abruptly sugar sweet.

As Richmonders, my family always gave me the feeling it was vaguely déclassé to stir sugar into your tea (what was that tall skinny spoon there for then?), and it was years before I discovered that sugar did, in fact, make that brown stuff sitting on the dinner table every night more palatable--and even enjoyable. My grandmother served her tea resolutely unsweetened and lightly infused with the fresh mint that grew wild all over her backyard.

I've tried to duplicate her tea over the years and because she wasn't the kind of fondly maternal sort of grandmother who carefully imparted her culinary wisdom to the rising generation, I've tried different techniques I've been told or read about over the years. What's so hard about iced tea, do you ask? Well, for one, consistency. Sure, you can dump some teabags in a pitcher, pour over boiling water, and let it steep for a while, but invariably, this kind of haphazard method leads to nasty, weak tea, fit only for plant-watering--not to put too fine of a point on it. Steep it longer you say and add more tea bags? Well, that leads to acrid, foul-tasting dark brown sludge you can't even drink. You need a formula to get it actually right each time.

I like my tea amber gold, minty and slightly sweet. True to my upbringing, however, I leave the sweetening to the individual, although I have discovered a mere 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sugar added along with the tea bags during the brewing process cuts the acidity of the tea without adding any noticeable sweetness. A pinch of baking soda will also do the same thing--it's your choice.

I've never had much luck with sun tea and I like instead to brew a concentrate to which I add cold water. That way, my tea is ready to drink right away without having to chill in the refrigerator, and (even better) the ice cubes don't melt and immediately dilute my tea to dreck. I don't think you need to be too fussy about the kind of tea you use. We all grew up on Lipton's and that's the flavor most people are looking for in a good glass of iced tea. That being said though, my personal favorite is a half and half combo of any good quality English breakfast and orange pekoe teas. The orange pekoe gives it that Lipton-y amber flavor and the English breakfast tea lifts it a bit and adds a little complexity (Yorkshire Gold, if you can find it, is another good choice).

Water? I use tap water but I'm sure the more discerning would prefer spring water (they always do). Just make sure it's at a full, rolling boil before you pour it over the tea. None of this "near boiling" stuff you read about for brewing hot tea; you want to extract all the flavor you can and you don't need to be finicky about it. Iced tea should be easy to make, at any rate, and watching the proverbial pot doesn't sound like a lot of fun.  Lastly, pour over ice in a tall glass, sweeten to taste, and garnish with a sprig of mint if you have company. Ahhhh . . . now sit back, relax, and cool off. All those sweaty chores can wait for another day.  

Iced Tea (makes 1/2 gallon)

6 tea bags or 8 teaspoons loose tea in a large tea ball
1 bunch fresh mint
1/2-1 teaspoon sugar
2 quarts water

Add mint to the bottom of an unbreakable pitcher and bruise with the back of a large spoon. Add tea and sugar. Bring 2 cups of water to a rapid boil and pour over the tea. Steep for 15 minutes. Strain out mint and tea, and add 6 cups of cold water. Serve.

The Sound of Music--SLIGHTLY UPDATED!

I've been out and about lately, seeing bands, hanging out at shows, and generally doing the whole music thing.  Except for the big Style Weekly music event--I couldn't go to that.  But that's okay.  I'm down with the scene, you know?  I don't have to go to every single show. I wear my hipster cool inside, where it counts, if you know what I mean.

So, I haven't really been thinking as much about food as I have about drinking.  Bars and bands seem to go together like seared foie gras on toast points, and cocktails are more germane to this particular discussion re: my fabulously cool night life.

The first cocktail up for assessment is the humble rum and coke.  I chose this particular drink in honor of the Jonas Brothers, the first band I found myself seeing.  I was accompanied by my awesomely hip daughters, age twelve and nine, and because I love them (my daughters, that it) very, very, very, very, very, very, very,very, very much, I was able to withstand nearly two hours of nine thousand girls' constant, high-pitched screaming, despite the fact that NO rum was available. I fortunately recognized most of the songs because the CD has been on shuffle and repeat in the car for months, and because the Jonas Brothers, in a seriously smart marketing move, like to sing covers of songs mothers remember from when they were young (you should have heard the collective sigh and seen the significant glances among the older set when they launched into A-Ha's "Take on Me."

 Like heartthrobs since time immemorial, the boys are all androgynously adorable (except for that one with the creepy sideburns), and even better, during one of the three costume changes they made, the cutest one of all strutted out in what looked like a Shaun Cassidy-esque skintight white suit.  I know, because I was there with my sister when sweet Shaun catapulted through a paper drum-type thing, lo these many years ago, on the very same stage!  The only difference was that while back in the seventies my mother (as did every other mother in town) dropped my sister and me off for the show, I was forced was happy to attend with my daughters.

Compare and contrast, people, compare and contrast.

Although I wasn't drinking yet when I saw the lovely Shaun, I did have a hankering, after the Jonas Bros. show-- possibly as I was leaving the parking lot--for something from that decade of my life.  When I finally got my first taste of alcohol back in the old days, my friends and I had a preference for rum, particularly the rum my friend Jackie stole from her parents.  In order to disguise it, she stored it in a rinsed-out Vidal Sassoon shampoo bottle.  If any of you have used this shampoo, you might recall that it has (or had) a vague, almond-y fragrance.  Therefore, all of the cocktails we would drink (underage, in a plastic school cup), would also taste faintly of almonds (and soap).  The coke mixer couldn't quite kill the flavor, although it came mighty close.

I like that little extra almond kick, however, so in what I laughably call a recipe below, I recommend splashing a little amaretto in the glass first, swirling it around, and then dumping it out, like you would if you were making a dryish martini. I also advocate a strong rum to coke ratio, because sometimes you just have to be true to your past. Even though the thought of your own daughter doing the same thing at the same age chills you to the very depths of your soul.

Blast from the Past Rum and Coke

• Splash of amaretto
• ice
• 2 to 2 1/2 ounces white rum
• Coca-Cola, to taste

Coat the inside of your glass with the amaretto and dump the excess into the sink.  Add ice, rum, and coke. Wax nostalgic. Repeat.

NEXT TIME:  Spoon and the joy of hanging out with people my own age (sort of) . . .