Nov 8, 2020

Menu: Week of 11/08/20

One of the quips from the internet this week that made me chuckle was: “from the year that brought us the four months of April, come the three days of Tuesday.” Like most people around the world I have been in an absolute agony since November 3rd, waiting to hear who our President would be for the next four years.

Yesterday was cabbage day in our house. I had both a green and a red one left from CSA boxes past and a gorgeous Red Napa one made its debut this week. I needed something to keep me occupied while I continued to wait for some update to the voting tally without going mad so I cooked up a vat of sweet and sour braised red cabbage and finally got my sauerkraut going, thus using up the green.

The election results came through while I was chopping away and, after I finished blubbering like a baby, I took advantage of L.’s absence from the house to crank up the radio and let loose. I danced through the house like a madwoman and ended up back in the kitchen bopping away to David Bowie. During one particularly manic twirl, I opened my eyes to see that I had an audience. There is nothing like the gaze of two very disapproving felines to make one feel a fool.

A food blog is probably not the place for politics but it’s my blog and this is a historic moment. For many of us, the past four years have been an absolute nightmare. I have likened it to feeling as though a gigantic rock was suddenly overturned and all the nasty creepy crawlies -- racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, fascism, autocracy -- that I thought the world was on the way to eradicating and that we in this country would not tolerate, had crawled out from under it, taking common decency and the ideals of American democracy hostage.

I think the Washington Post best summed up how I am feeling when they said: “Biden picked up the weight of the presidency and much of the nation set down its burdens”. Today I will continue to bop, in thanks for record breaking voter turnout, in honor of our first ever woman Vice President, for a President who seems decent and empathetic and able to communicate in more than 280 bullying characters, to rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization, and for the fact that American democracy did not die on our watch (earnest and overwrought though that might sound.).

But tomorrow, like all Americans, I am going to have to address the fact that 70 million US citizens chose to vote for a person who, for four long years, held not one of the values that we, as a nation, purport to hold. If that thought alone doesn’t drive you straight to comfort food cooking, I really don’t know what will.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled lockdown...

This Week's exceptionally pretty CSA box contained:

Herbs: --

Greens: Rainbow chard

Alliums: --

Vegetables: 2 Honeynut squash, a bunch of radishes with their greens still attached, a head of pink celery, 2 tight heads of radicchio, 3 huge purple top turnips, a mess of orange carrots, a beautiful Red Napa cabbage, a handful of Brussels sprouts, a small head of broccoli, a yellow pepper, 3 Russet potatoes

Fruit: 4 tiny Gala apples

Remainders: a couple of stalks of lemongrass, a couple of hot peppers, and one purple tomato

So, with the addition of the above remainders and perhaps some herbs and salad greens mid-week (and minus items used in lunches), these veggies will be transformed into:

Sunday “Pantry Roulette”; fridge, freezer, and pantry item dinner]

Plain Grilled Pork Chops

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage and Radicchio 🔁

Creamy Polenta with Turnip Greens

Monday [Wildcard; a more complex or fiddly dish than usual to test my culinary skills]

Meatloaf

Buttered Mashed Potatoes

Steamed Balsamic Broccoli

Tuesday [Pasta]

Harvest Salad

Mac and Cheese 🔁

Wednesday [L.'s choice]