Last week, after recovering from my last disastrously costly expedition into Whole Lotta Cash Foods, I mustered up the courage and the funds to go back. Cradling my tiny, sorely-depleted-from-having-a-house-that-won’t-sell purse tenderly in my arms, I was determined to get JUST A FEW things, chief among them cream, bacon, a chicken, and some wine (to help me cope with the stress of spending all my money at Whole Foods). I revelled in my newly-acquired sense of frugality, even as I taxed the limits of my mathematical skills, as I added up each item in my head as I went along.

When I got to the counter, the total was a few dollars more than I’d imagined. No surprise there–after all, I am the woman who bounced fifteen checks in a few memorable days in 1987, one for 78 cents, in part because I had accidentally added my bank balance in as a deposit. But still, as I put my bags in the car, I thought I’d better take a look at the receipt, just to be sure.

And there it was: The bacon was EIGHT DOLLARS A POUND. I’d read the wrong label on the shelf, and the two half-pound packages I’d picked up were FOUR DOLLARS EACH.

So I took them back. “What’s the reason for the return?” the clerk asked.

“I didn’t realize they were eight dollars a pound,” I said, silently adding, “and of course only crazy people pay eight dollars a pound for bacon even if it is organic and the pigs slept on silk cushions and were hand-fed truffles their entire piggy lives.”

The clerk’s look said it all: “Don’t I know it,” he seemed to say, “but lady, save my time and get your sorry poor self over to the Food Lion next time.”

Still, some good things came out of this trip. The best turned out to be the beautiful organic Garnett sweet potatoes, which I baked a couple of nights ago and turned into sweet potato pancakes tonight.

There are a zillion different kinds of sweet potatoes, if you can figure out the difference between sweet potatoes, yams, boniato, and the thousands of other starchy tubers from around the world. (The link to Garnett sweet potatoes offers a pretty good guide.) But these Garnetts were exceptionally sweet and flavorful, and I would even dare enter WF again to get them.

My version of the sweet potato pancake is a remake of the potato pancakes my mother made for us growing up. They were made from leftover mashed potatoes rather than from raw grated potato–but the recipe for those will have to wait.

Sweet Potato Pancakes (makes 6 medium-sized pancakes)

NOTE: Cook your sweet potatoes any time–it requires practically no effort. Just cut one end off each potato (Garnett if you can get them) and bake on a cookie sheet in 375 degree for about 1 hour. That’s right: Turn on oven, cut the end off the potato, put it on a cookie sheet, and cook it. You can store the cooked, unskinned potatoes in refrigerator for several days.

2 large baked sweet potatoes, peeled
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. curry powder (or more to taste)
1 tsp. cayenne (more or less to taste)
2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup flour
Oil for frying

Place sweet potatoes in large bowl and mash with fork or potato masher. Heat olive oil in skillet on medium heat. Saute onions in large skillet until translucent. Add garlic and spices and continue to cook for 1 minute. Turn off heat. Add eggs to sweet potatoes and mix. Add onion mixture and flour and stir until blended. The mixture should be just slightly thinner than mashed potatoes–it’s better if they are too thick rather than too thin. Coat bottom of skillet used to saute onions with oil and heat on medium high heat until a small bit of mixture dropped in skillet sizzles gently. Spoon mixture into skillet to make 4 – 5″ diameter pancakes. Cook for about 4 minutes on each side, checking frequently to avoid burning. Place on plate covered with paper towels to drain before serving.

Several years ago, in a cooperative spirit no doubt bourne out of the short-lived vegetarianism described in my last post, I bought a share in a community garden. This meant that during the months that pass for spring and summer in Wisconsin–that period between mid-May and August when temperatures most likely won’t dip very far below freezing and in all probability won’t creep above 95 for more than a week–I got a box of produce once a week. In that box, one happy day, were some butternut squash. And it just so happens that I was trying to make gnocchi for the first time, and that I thought I would spice things up a bit by using something other than what the recipe called for (in this case potatoes) and there were those butternut squash. And boy did I feel brilliant. How many people would figure out to do that–you know, substitute one starchy vegetable for another, then know how to adjust spices, then make a sauce that worked?

About 136,000, it turns out. At least that’s how many hits you get if you type in “butternut squash gnocchi” into Google. Then you have to add the 505,000 people who came up with sweet potato gnocchi, and the 398,000 who thought pumpkin gnocchi was a good idea.

This glut of squashy thinking means there’s not a whole lot to add to the conversation, but since no one else seems to be bothered by this fact, I won’t be either. One thing I have noticed: Gnocchi recipes involving squash of some kind tend to use a cream or butter sauce. This is fine, but the variation I like best is a spicy, garlicky tomato sauce, which makes a wonderful contrast with the sweetness of the squash. So here is a recipe.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce

Gnocchi:

1 butternut squash
1 egg, beaten
Salt
A lot of flour

Cut buternut squash in half, scoop out seeds, and baste halves in olive oil. Roast at 350 for at least half and hour or until very soft. Scoop out flesh into bowl and let cool. Can do this several days ahead–just refrigerate squash until ready to use.

For gnocchi, add egg, about 1 tsp or so salt, and a cup or so of flour to the squash. Keep adding flour until you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead dough for a couple of minutes. Cut into quarters and roll out into a log. Cut log into 1/2″ pieces and shape as desired. Cook in small batches in boiling water immediately before serving.

Tomato Sauce

Saute 1 large chopped onion in olive oil on medium heat until translucent. Reduce heat and add 3 cloves minced garlic, then stir. Add crushed red pepper to taste. Add 1 can (not the big one, just that ordinary size) tomatoes (crushed, pureed, or sauce) and salt to taste. Cook on low heat for about 20 minutes. Add a little cream if desired and serve over gnocchi. Garnish with grated Parmesan cheese.

For the first time in the 20+ years my sister Jinjifore and I have been adults, I forgot to call her on her birthday yesterday. So in belated commemoration of her birthday, here are a couple of memories from earlier times, when someone else was in charge of remembering birthdays and all we had to do was eat the cake.

Today’s potato casserole recipe is in Jinjifore’s honor. (In case you’re wondering, Jinjifore is a childhood nickname for Jennifer, which has stuck to her like a fly in ointment.)

The first potato casserole recipe I tried was “Golden Parsley Potatoes,” from Diet for a Small Planet. It was during a heady, crazy six months in the late eighties when I lived as a vegetarian, in solidarity with migrant workers oppressed in chicken factories, African farmers who could not survive because all the grain in the world was going to feed factory-farmed cows that were headed straight to McDonald’s, and cats. (You know: I wouldn’t eat a cat, so why would I eat another animal?)

Now, I have not completely given up on these ideals, but I realize that my refusing to eat any meat whatsoever was probably not going to make much of a difference. And then of course I married “I love vegetables especially when they are accompanied by a slab of flesh” Fred.

But last night, unconstrained by the need to work bacon, ham, hot dogs, or steak into the meal, I returned to potato casserole. The recipe below is based on “Golden Parsley Potatoes,” which is a wonderful recipe but which I don’t currently have access to because it’s in a storage locker off I-285 right now. It was not entirely vegetarian, as I used the remaining chicken fat from a roast chicken earlier in the week. But frankly I think it would have been better with butter, which is why that is featured in the recipe below.

The beauty and poetry of potato casserole is its variability. Few things taste bad when mixed with potatoes, as the inventor of the restaurant potato bar will tell you. So this recipe contains infite possibility–just like life when you’re 3 and your sister has not yet forgotten your birthday.

Potato Casserole (serves 4)

4 large russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled if desired and sliced thin
1/2 stick butter
2 large yellow onions, peeled, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups grated cheese (any kind will do!)
Salt and pepper to taste
A little cream or half and half

Cook potatoes in salted water until just tender and drain. While potatoes are cooking, melt butter in medium to large skillet on medium heat. Saute onions until translucent. Turn off heat, add garlic, and stir. Preheat oven to 350. Layer potatoes, onions and cheese in medium sized casserole dish (potatoes, onions and garlic, cheese). You can break potatoes into smaller pieces during this process if you wish. If you like a creamy, moist casserole, pour a little cream (1/4 cup or so) over the top. Bake for 30 minutes.

Variations: 1) Last night, before adding the final layer of cheese, I poured 1 cup plain tomato sauce mixed with about 1/4 cup cream over the top of the casserole. This was nice and gives the dish a slightly Italian feel. You could also add olives, capers, anchovies, or similar items to make it “Sicilian” (just remember to add less salt!). 2) Add ham, bacon, or other pork. To add, saute along with the onions and layer with them as well. 3) Add cooked chicken and parsley.

Jinjifore, I promise to call today!

Fred had a great dinner on Saturday night and so did I. However, a recent perusal of his online checking account suggests that his vegetable consumption at our dinner was probably equal to what he normally eats in an average month, viz:

Purchase PURCHASE TWAIN`S BILLIARDS 10/07 $11.00
Purchase PURCHASE TWAIN`S BILLIARDS 10/06 $12.09
Purchase PURCHASE WAFFLE HOUSE #0001 10/07 $14.58
Purchase PURCHASE TWAIN`S BILLIARDS 10/05 $20.53
Purchase PURCHASE TWAIN`S BILLIARDS 10/04 $12.09

Note the number on that Waffle House. It’s actually not the original, which is now a defunct Chinese restaurant with an overgrown parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, but the replacement across the street. This is how they do things in the ATL–and why no one worried when Sherman burned it to the ground, since they don’t save anything anyway.

Which brings me back to Durham, where my old urges to carry cloth bags into grocery stores and take a travel mug with me everywhere for refills (even in those few cases when I’m forced to enter McDonald’s)–well, where those old urges are coming back now that I’m in a land where well-heeled but earnest students eagerly hand out PETA flyers and there’s always a vegan option on the menu. But I still don’t dare enter Whole Foods.

Nevertheless, Whole Foods did provide a lovely if decidedly non-vegan meal on Saturday. The roasted root vegetables were especially good.

To make them, I poured off the fat from a chicken I roasted on Friday and covered the vegetables. This was what made the dish particularly good. However, realizing that vegans do need to eat and that not everyone has chicken fat lying around, I would recommend a good extra virgin olive oil as a substitute.

Roasted Fall Vegetables (serves 4 as a side dish)

1. Heat oven to 350.

2. Peel and cut into 1 – 1/2″ pieces:
2 large sweet potatoes
4 -5 carrots
3 -4 golden beets
2 large yellow onions

3. Put vegetables in shallow casserole dish (metal is good) or roasting pan. Add:
1/2 cup chicken fat or extra virgin, extra good olive oil

4. Sprinkle with:
Salt to taste
1 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. red pepper flakes, or to taste

Variations: Substitute 3 -4 parsnips or 1 potato if you don’t like beets and add an extra sweet potato. I would not add too many regular potatoes since they would make the dish too bland. You could also add squash (butternut, acorn, calabasa, etc.)–if you are more industrious than I am, that is, and felt up to seeding, peeling, and cutting them up, then roasting the seeds because you have spent too much time around vegans and don’t want to be wasteful, even though you think pouring chicken fat on vegetables is a good idea.

By the way, we also made an offer on a house–$40,000 below the asking price. HAHAHAHA!! Which is what the seller, who doesn’t seem to have listened to the news in the last year and has never heard the term “buyer’s market,” will probably say too.

The pumpkin soup was quite good–but not until the next day. Unlike butternut squash, calabasa, or many other squashes, most pumpkins you find in the store are a bit less flavorful and therefore benefit from a little time to absorb seasonings. If you really want tasty pumpkin, look for “cooking pumpkins”–they’re smaller than those enormous “carving pumpkins” you see right now, which taste like candle wax and are really best used only as decoration.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly what I put in the white pumpkin soup. But the Calabasa Soup recipe from February is a good starting point for any squashy soup. If you’re vegetarian, just substitute vegetable stock for chicken and add more garlic and onion to increase flavor.

And now for other news.

FRED IS HERE!!!

Not permanently, but for the weekend, as we look for a house here in Durham. We are down to four possibilities (really, only two) and should visit them sometime tomorrow. Our top choice is a “botanical paradise in southwest Durham”–a 1962 ranch house on half an acre, owned by a landscape architect. As long as the wooded lot across the street is not slated to be turned into a gas station or strip mall, that could end up being our new home. It has an outdoor shower. (And one inside too.) That’s enough for me.

For dinner tonight, in a fall harvest extravaganza, Fred is having pork chops, roasted vegetables (golden beets, carrots, sweet potato, and onion) and possibly mashed turnips. I went to Whole Paycheck to purchase the meat and ended up buying all the food for the meal there. Their marketing is absolutely masterful–you are sucked in like an ant up an armadillo snout, and the next thing you know you and your entire savings account have been digested and absorbed in the giant beast of corporate profit.

And on top of all that, I couldn’t even get parsnips there because they had gone floppy. And one of the potatoes I bought was rotted inside. I thought about returning it, but I’m afraid to go back in.

Tonight in a fit of cooking extravaganza I’m cooking a white pumpkin and will probably make a soup. Pumpkins, I recently learned, come in all kinds of colors. So when I saw a white one recently at a local market (well, Whole Foods), I had to try it.

The pumpkin soup recipe I came up with last year can be found in the October edition of the Oakhurst Leaflet, where I write a food column. However, this version will be different, as I have no pork sausage, just side meat I picked up at the Raleigh Farmer’s Market. As far as I can tell, this is basically uncured bacon, but I am going to contribute to the generally unreliability of the Internet and not look that up just now.

I will report results.

Last night as I was talking to my beloved husband in Atlanta as I drove through Durham (yes, I’m one of THOSE people), I could hear loud voices and music in the background.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Twain’s,” he said. “I’ve ordered wings. It’s 9:00 and I haven’t eaten since noon.”

This didn’t surprise me. Before we married, you could find Fred here just about any night of the week, sitting at the bar next to a plate littered with a few scraps of bone and animal flesh, reading Zizek, his Greek New Testament, or some other book without an actual narrative, or perhaps drawing a picture of a kitten on a napkin.

We talked for a while and the noise suddenly increased. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was me eating the celery.”

“That’s okay,” I said, relieved that some fiber had finally entered his system. “At least it’s a vegetable.”

“You know,” he continued, “celery supposedly has negative calories. You burn more calories eating it than it has. So it should offset the effect of the wings.”

I really miss that man.