Tag: vegetarian

Pasta Salad

My mother loved macaroni salad.  Her friends did too.  I think that they got a lot of ideas from the Woman’s Day magazines they picked up at the A & P.  In any case, macaroni salad gave them an outlet for their creativity.  New varieties appeared like mushrooms after a warm rain at every church potluck, school picnic or family get together that I can remember from my childhood.

There was plain macaroni salad (just macaroni with mayonnaise or salad dressing, salt and pepper); Mom added celery and onions to hers and spiced up the dressing with some mustard; some of her friends added cheddar cheese cubes, red or green peppers, and carrots; and the more adventurous stirred in chunks of canned tuna or cubes of Spam or summer sausage.
 
Mom liked macaroni salads, her friends liked them, even my father liked them, except for the ones with cheese in them.  I don’t remember if my sisters liked them, but even if they didn’t they probably ate them just to make me look bad because they knew I hated macaroni salad, even the one with apples and grapes that a white-haired lady once assured me tasted just like dessert as she ignored my request for only a small spoonful.  

But as the Apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”   When I was in high school, my friend Eddie’s Italian grandfather showed me how he made his own macaroni and introduced me to the wonderful world of pasta.  I was hooked.
 
Today I really like pasta salads, even the ones with macaroni, mayonnaise, apples and grapes, so maybe I should thank my parents for making sure that I ate at least a small serving of whatever was put before me.
 
Here is a simple pasta salad that encourages creativity.  If you follow the quantities suggested, you will have a good pasta salad:  if you adjust ingredients to your taste you may end up with a great salad.  Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Most of the vegetables should be sliced into thin small pieces.  Quarter the carrot and slice the celery stick in half lengthwise before slicing them crosswise.  I like to cut the green pepper and red onion into slightly larger pieces (about 1/4” to 1/2” square) because this provides a little more contrast for color and texture.

INGREDIENTS:

12 ounces rotini
1 tsp. salt
1 rib of celery
3 or 4 green onions
3 T red onion
1/4 sweet green pepper
1 carrot
1 hot red or yellow pepper (or one of each) minced
12 to 15 pimiento-stuffed green olives
3 to 4 T olive oil
1 to 2 T fresh lemon juice
1 to 2 T wine vinegar
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. celery salt
1/2 to 1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. basil
1/4 tsp. thyme
Salt to taste

PROCEDURE:

Heat three to four quarts water in a large pot.  While the water is heating, chop the vegetables.  When the water begins boiling, add one teaspoon salt and the rotini.  Add the rotini gradually so as not to cool the water too much.  Stir the rotini two or three times while it cooks to keep it from sticking to the pot or clumping together.  You can finish chopping vegetables while the rotini cooks.  After eight or nine minutes, use a fork to remove a rotini and test for doneness.  It will be done when the starch taste of uncooked flour is gone, but when it offers a slight resistance when you bite through it.  The Italians call this “al dente.”

When the pasta is done, drain it thoroughly and put it in a mixing bowl.  Add about four tablespoons of olive oil and the vegetables to the hot pasta.  Toss to mix thoroughly.  Add the lemon juice, vinegar and spices.  Toss again.  Let sit for three or four minutes, taste and adjust flavor. You can serve this salad warm, but it improves if allowed to sit for an hour or two while the flavors blend and is delicious chilled and served the next day.
 
SUBSTITUTIONS:

Use reconstituted lemon juice for fresh.
Use several dashes of Tabasco sauce if you don’t have hot peppers. Omit either the green or red onion, but adjust the total quantity to taste.

OPTIONAL ADDITIONS:

When the pasta salad is cool, you can add about a quarter cup of diced sharp cheddar cheese or hard sausage like pepperoni or salami.  This salad is a lot like a soup:  Use what you have and adjust the ingredients to create a salad that pleases you and your guests.

Grandma Rang’s Apple Cream Pie

My first memories of our apple trips are from the early 1950’s after we moved to the country. We would get up at dawn for breakfast, pack a picnic lunch and head north on highway 63 toward Bayfield, Wisconsin. In the trunk would be a pile of gunny sacks ready to be filled with apples from the orchards that rose up from Lake Superior on the hills near the city.

It was always an exciting day that included stops at several orchards and a picnic along Lake Superior. The farm families who sold the apples were good marketers, ready to answer questions and offer slices of new varieties that sometimes ended up in the trunk along with the old favorites.

The picnics were sometimes exciting too. I remember one when our 1948 Plymouth was stuffed with apples. The trunk was full, the rear window ledge was full, even my lap was full. When we got to the park along Chequamegon Bay, my sisters and I headed for the beach while Dad scouted for wood and Mom set the picnic table.

When we came back to get permission to go swimming (denied, as I recall), Dad was busy whittling spoons. He suggested that if I didn’t want to eat my beans from the communal can I should find some birch bark for plates. So my sisters and I spread out through the woods and found bark that we could peel from the birches scattered along the shore without hurting the trees. Bean juice tends to run off birch bark plates, but you can soak it up with your hot dog bun if you are quick.

After our picnic we would usually have a leisurely drive home, sometimes starting with a detour to the artesian wells at Ashland or a stop for ice cream at Grandview or Cable. When we got home, we emptied the sacks into bushel baskets and stored them in the basement. In the following weeks we ate hundreds of apples for snacks, and Mom turned apples into sauce, jelly, pickles and all kinds of wonderful baked goods.

In fall and winter our basement smelled of apples. Eating apples, pie apples, apples for sauce, crabapples for pickling and those we called “keeping apples”. Those were the apples that perfumed our basement from December through March each year. Cortlands I am sure and maybe Northern Spies. They lasted through the winter, which meant we could enjoy Grandma Rang’s Apple Cream Pie for nearly half the year.

Grandma Rang immigrated with her family to the United States from Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. She almost certainly learned this recipe from her mother, which may explain why it is similar to traditional Dutch apple pie recipes. All I know for certain is that my mother learned to make it from Grandma and that we all loved it. It is still my favorite apple pie.

Even better, it is absurdly easy to make. The most difficult part is peeling the apples.

INGREDIENTS:

1 nine-inch unbaked pie shell

Enough apples to fill the crust

1 cup sugar

1/8 tsp. salt 

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 T flour

1/3 to 1/2 cup cream or half and half

PROCEDURE:

Wash, peel and core the apples. Preheat the oven to 350º.  Slice enough half quarter apples to make a tight layer on the bottom of the crust. Then fill the crust to heaping with  sliced apples.

Mix the sugar, salt, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl. Stir in enough cream or half and half to make a mixture like a thick gravy. Drizzle it evenly over the apples. Bake the pie for about an hour, or until some of the apple slices are browned on the tips.

Note:  If the apples seem to be especially juicy, add an extra teaspoon of flour.

In the winter our basement smelled of apples.  Every fall we would head to Bayfield to buy them:  Eating apples, pie apples, apples for sauce, crabapples for pickling and those we called “keeping apples.”  Those were the apples that perfumed our basement from December through March each year.  Cortlands I am sure and maybe Northern Spies.  My mother liked Jonathans and Wealthies for pies and McIntoshes which made beautiful pink applesauce.

I loved them all, especially when I could pick them off the trees, which we could do at some smaller orchards.  Apples that you pick yourself seem to taste better.  That may explain why I stop to pick apples from trees growing along roadsides, sometimes to the consternation of my wife who thinks that one should not park just anywhere.  Most of them don’t taste very good, but I still am expecting to discover the next great apple.

My earliest memories of our apple trips are from the early 1950’s after we moved to the country.  We would get up early in the morning, pack a picnic lunch and head north on highway 63.  In the trunk would be a pile of gunny sacks ready to be filled with apples.

It was always an exciting day that included stops at several orchards and a picnic along Lake Superior.  The farm families who sold the apples were good marketers, ready to answer questions and offer slices of new varieties that sometimes ended up in the trunk along with the old favorites.

The picnics were sometimes exciting too.  I remember one when our 1948 Plymouth was stuffed with apples.  The trunk was full, the rear window ledge was full, even my lap was full.  When we got to the park along the lake, my sisters and I headed for the beach while Dad scouted for wood and Mom set the picnic table.

When we went back to get permission to go swimming (denied, as I recall), Dad was busy whittling spoons.  He suggested that if I didn’t want to eat my beans from the communal can I could find some birch bark for plates.  So my sisters and I spread out through the woods and found bark that we could peel from the birches scattered along the shore without hurting the trees.  Bean juice tends to run off birch bark plates, but you can soak it up with your hot dog bun if you are quick.

When we got home, we emptied the sacks into bushel baskets and stored them in the basement.  In the following weeks we ate hundreds of apples for snacks, and Mom turned apples into sauce, jelly, pickles and all kinds of wonderful baked goods.  Some of those apples lasted through the winter, which meant we could enjoy Grandma Rang’s Apple Cream Pie for nearly half the year.

Grandma Rang immigrated with her family to the United States from Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany.  She almost certainly learned this recipe from her mother, which may explain why it is similar to Dutch apple pie recipes.  All I know for certain is that my mother learned to make it from Grandma and that we all loved it.  It is still my favorite apple pie.

Even better, it is absurdly easy to make.  The most difficult part is peeling the apples.

INGREDIENTS:

1 nine inch unbaked pie shell
Enough apples to fill the crust
1 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 T flour
1/3 to 1/2 cup cream or half and half

PROCEDURE:

Wash, peel and core the apples.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Slice enough half quarter apples to make a tight layer on the bottom of the crust.  Then fill the crust to heaping with sliced apples.

Mix the sugar, salt, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl.  Stir in enough cream or half and half to make a mixture like a thick gravy.  Drizzle it evenly over the apples.  Bake the pie for about an hour, or until some of the apple slices are slightly browned on the tips.

Note:  If the apples seem to be especially juicy, add an extra teaspoon of flour.