Courage in the Kitchen

Okay, we made it through Christmas with quite a few entries on the plus side of the ledger. We shared a Christmas Eve worship service, celebrated the holiday with friends and family, gave and received some neat gifts, enjoyed a lot of holiday music, and ate well. But for me at least the plus side also included a noticeable plus in the poundage category.

Even though I limit myself to half portions on the second round of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and bread; and even if my wife serves me an inadequate piece of lemon pie to start with and a really skimpy piece of apple pie I try only to be polite; and even though I confine myself to just one martini before and two glasses of wine with dinner, the bathroom scale is not my friend the morning after.

Vigorous walks and a tedious diet of leftovers are just starting to take effect when suddenly it’s time to welcome the new year with more food and drink. And there’s the Rose Bowl, an event designed to put pounds on any loyal Wisconsin fan. We all could benefit from a low calorie dip that tastes good.

Here’s a delicious bean dip recipe that’s relatively low in calories that I learned from Jerri’s niece Lori. She makes it during the college football season when husband Dan cheers on the Auburn Tigers, but it will go well on New Year’s Day when the Badgers wow fans at the Rose Bowl.

If you think bean dip is something that looks like milk chocolate paste, you need to try this recipe. It’s a simple but delicious dip that looks great and is a perfect complement to tortilla chips.

INGREDIENTS

1 can (12-16 oz.) black beans
1 8 oz. can of whole kernel corn
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1 small red or yellow onion (about 2 1/2 inches in diameter)
1 medium sized firm tomato
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 small can of chopped green chilies
Salt and pepper to taste

PROCEDURE

Drain and rinse the black beans and corn and put them in a mixing bowl along with the can of chopped green chilies. Remove the stem scar, seeds and pulp from the tomatoes and peel the onion. Chop these fairly finely and add them to the beans and corn. Chop the cilantro fine and add it along with the cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. Mix well and serve with tortilla chips.

NOTES: For a hotter dip, add some vinegar-type hot sauce or substitute chopped jalapeños for the chilies. For a milder taste, omit the chilies. And of course, you can always vary the proportions of the spices to suit your taste.

I think that the flavor of this dip improves if it is made a couple of hours before being served. Store it in the refrigerator until your guests arrive.

Garnished with sprigs of cilantro and slices of cheddar cheese, this dip will make a great addition to your Super Bowl snack table.

When Grandpa Hopp, my mother’s father, bought Grandma a new gas kitchen range, she was excited and happy to think of how much better it would be than the old wood stove it replaced. In the summer especially, it would be a blessing not to have a hot stove in the kitchen on baking day.

That was the theory. One hot summer day we discovered that Grandma had made Grandpa replace the gas range with the old wood stove. “I just can’t bake good bread with that new stove,” she explained, and as long as Grandpa was able to cut, split and carry in wood for the stove, Grandma cooked and baked as she had for the previous 60 years.

She made wonderful bread made all the more wonderful because Grandpa would cut slices for him and me, lay on thick slices of Limburger cheese and onion, and tell me stories as we ate our snack. Mom thought it was gross, but I loved it.

I have not eaten Limburger cheese in many years, but I really enjoy its milder cousins, Aged or Milwaukee Brick and Beer Kaese. The aroma may turn you off, but once you bring yourself to try these cheeses, you may discover that your palate is more catholic than you imagined.

Thinking about Grandma Hopp’s baking reminded me of her gingerbread cookies. She made them every year for Christmas. They were thick, soft and delicious. I don’t remember if she decorated them or not, but she had an old-fashioned gingerbread cookie cutter and I do recall how much fun it was to eat those cookies leg by leg and arm by arm.

I asked my sister Patsy if she had Grandma Hopp’s gingerbread cookie recipe. She has never made them but she said she would look though my mother’s recipe boxes. A few days later an envelope arrived with a photocopy of a recipe card titled “Grandma Hopp’s Christmas Gingerbread Cookies” and a request from Patsy to tell her how they turned out.

The recipe is a list of ingredients (including a question mark after “1/3 cup milk”) with instructions to “Roll out 1/4 in. thick, cut out, & bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 10 minutes.” But I screwed up my courage, stirred up a batch and made some cookies that tasted pretty much like I remembered. And it is still fun to eat them leg by leg and arm by arm.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup shortening or lard
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup dark molasses
1/3 cup milk
5 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
white sugar for sprinkling

PROCEDURE:

Cream the shortening and sugar. Blend in the molasses and milk and stir well. Add the spices and soda to the flour and sift by cupfuls into the liquid ingredients. Stir well after each addition until you have a stiff dough. If necessary, add a little more milk to moisten all the dry ingredients. You should end up with a stiff dough that you can form into a ball. Refrigerate the dough for an hour or so to make it easier to roll out.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Flour a large breadboard. Divide the dough in half and roll out to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with a gingerbread man cutter. If you are not planning to frost and decorate the cookies, sprinkle with a little white sugar. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9-10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Let the cookies cool for a minute or two before transferring them to wax paper to finish cooling. Store in a tightly sealed container.

NOTE: I rolled some cookies out to about 1/4 inch thickness, and others to about 1/8 inch and they turned out okay too. I rolled the trimmings into part of the unused dough each time. Perhaps the cookies were a little tougher, but they were still good.

The photo shows Grandma Rang’s Date-filled Cookies, Grandma Hopp’s Gingerbread Cookies and some Peppernuts.