There are many advantages to growing up an Army brat, like Petey, or a Coastie kid, like me.
It fostered an appreciation of the commitment and sacrifices that men and women are willing to give to this nation. It’s humbling.
It allowed us to see many different cultures around the country and world. Seeing the various ways in which people live as a child means there is almost no judgement. Kids are still learning how the world works, so don’t come from a position of cultural superiority. It’s not better or worse, just endlessly fascinating.
We always knew that there was a huge population that had a vested interest in us and had our backs. At times, it could be a little uncomfortable, when the entire United States Armed Forces and the Coast Guard are acting as in loco parentis. But when the chips are down, and you need them, they’re right there.
But, probably the best gift Petey and I received from our upbringings was the gift of resilience.
Every few years, usually at the end of the summer, we’d pack up and move our entire lives to a whole new world. But, by the time Halloween was on the horizon, we’d be home. What was once strange and new became both familiar and comfortable.
And this week’s recipe is a culinary example of resilience. The vegetables are the only constant. The seasoning and the dressing itself are incredibly malleable.
Za’atar
Za’atar is a middle Eastern spice which contains thyme, toasted sesame seeds, and sumac. It can be found in Asian and Middle Eastern markets. Sumac is a dried ground flower. It has a bright, lemony flavor.
Although not one of the most common spices in the kitchen, you can buy sumac in most grocery stores.
But.
If you would like the flavor of za’atar for the dressing, you can make something very close by mixing one 1 teaspoon lemon zest, and ½ teaspoon each, toasted sesame seeds and dried thyme.
Roasted Cauliflower Summer Salad
6 slices thick cut bacon
On a parchment-covered, rimmed baking sheet, cook the bacon at 350 degrees until completely browned and crispy (18-24 minutes), turning once. Remove bacon to paper towel covered plate, reserving rendered bacon fat.
1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup white corn kernels, either from frozen, or roasted fresh
2 scallions, sliced very thinly on the bias
1 small head of Boston bib or butter lettuce
Turn oven up to 450. Once the bacon is removed from the pan, replace with the cauliflower on one single layer and drizzle on two tablespoons of bacon grease and season with salt and pepper. Roast the veg for 20 minutes, stirring once. When cooked, remove from sheet pan and set aside.
Dressing #1:
¾ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon za’atar or 2 teaspoons of homemade za’atar
2 tablespoons bacon grease
Salt and pepper
Whisk together all ingredients and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Dressing #2:
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons bacon grease
1 teaspoon za’atar or 2 teaspoons of homemade za’atar
Salt and pepper
Whisk together ingredients and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Assembly:
Place cauliflower, corn, and green onions in bowl. Fold in dressing of your choice, a bit of a time until lightly coated—don’t overdress. Serve on a bed of torn, bite-sized pieces of lettuce, and top with shards of crispy bacon.
This salad works as a side dish at Sunday dinner, a cookout, or for a unique addition to a bagged lunch. Like the recipe itself, it’s infinitely adaptable.
Thanks for your time.
Almost a hundred times a day I tell Petey, and anybody else who’s not quick enough to run away that I am not at all pleased with the way summers go around here. I have threatened for years to file a complaint.
I am writing today to express my dissatisfaction with the summers you and your association have recently been distributing to humans. In the next seven days, the high temperatures for North Carolina range from 90 to well over 100 degrees. Today in Kuwait it was over 120 degrees. This week in France the mercury has risen to over 110 degrees.
The heat is relentless. It seems as if there is a personal, malevolent component to make everyone miserable and grumpy. Morning, noon, or late at night, being outside for more than ten minutes results in flushing, sweating, and frizzy hair. Everything and everyone is limp and lacks energy and enthusiasm.
The result is no one wants to do anything except hang out in swimming pools eating ice cream. But people have obligations they must attend to, only a small population has access to pools, and a diet solely consisting of ice cream would quickly have a deleterious effect upon one’s health.
Temperature: From May until late September the average high temperature should be no more than 80 degrees with most days being a comfortable 74-77 degrees.
Rain: We need it, so I’ll leave it in your experienced hands, but the heat that causes soupy steam to rise from paved surfaces is completely unacceptable. I’m a North Carolinian so I understand that hurricanes are a fact of life, but tornadoes are unnecessary and just seem mean-spirited.
On a personal note; as one woman of a certain age to another I am sure you can understand the discomfort I have been experiencing and the poor humor which then results. I unfortunately do not have the power to strike with lightening the most aggravating with whom I must contend.
I look forward to your reply concerning these horrible summers that humanity has been enduring. I understand that you are a busy woman with a large territory under your purview which could make a timely and satisfactory conclusion problematic. Because of this I feel a fair resolution concerning this untenable weather should be achievable within ninety days.
Well, I feel better anyway.
I had a plan. I was going to get really pretty pictures of this brand-new pasta salad I’d invented. Petey had shown me a few camera tricks and I was going to wow the world with this gorgeous summer dish.
I’ve had a life-long culinary handicap. I’ve talked about it many times, and in various ways: baby tongue, delicate palate, wimpy mouth. No matter the moniker, they all mean the same thing. I have a very low tolerance for heat/spice.
It literally causes me pain (and definitely not in a good way), and I can’t eat it. But, it would be a perfect weight loss strategy—if I didn’t have a problem with wasting any food, fiery or not.
But my new favorite is the chili-lime seasoning. It’s perfectly balanced and goes great on meat, avocados, and fruit. The other day I made pasta salad, and got crazy with it.
½ lb. rotelle or other small extruded pasta, like shells or cavatappi, cooked according to directions and drained
1 cup mayonnaise 
baby spinach 
Serves 6-8.
Thanks for your time.
Until 1982, Disneyland issued ticket books to visitors. Each ticket was lettered A-E. The “A” tickets were for easy, sedate rides like the merry-go-round. The “E” ticket was good for a go on scarier rides like Matterhorn and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Monday night, on returning from visiting my parents, we discovered our phone and internet had gone out. We hoped it would be back up in the morning.
I was digging in, when I felt something hard in my mouth. I had bitten down on a piece of the granola and broken a big chunk off one of my molars. Awesome.
Before I could react, it crawled deep inside and we both started freaking out. The invader flapped and fluttered, and I danced around like an electrocuted ballerina going, “Oooooh Nooooo! Oooooh Jeeeeeez! Oooooh colorful-but-unprintable-interjection!”
I needed to visit a medical professional, but the cable guy was coming. Alone, I headed off to urgent care while Petey waited at home. Awesome.
I put the object in a bag, and Petey rushed me back to the dentist. Once there, we discovered the crown in place, but my tech had no idea what the object was. She went to get the dentist for his opinion.
As I sheepishly left with my laughing spouse, I could hear the dental office in the midst of similar side-splitting merriment.
Thanks for your time.
I was visiting my dentist the other day. As in almost any situation I’m in, we were talking about food.
Goober Grape. It’s that striped peanut butter and jelly product from kindergarten. I don’t think I’ve ever had it on bread. It is my martini, my cigarette, and my valium. A spoon of this stuff is just what I need after a bad day. The first scoop from a brand-new unsullied jar probably brings me way more joy than it should.
Toasted sesame seeds. I buy them at the Asian market where they’re cheaper, and because of high turnover, much fresher. I put it in tuna, sprinkle it on my oatmeal, add it to breading. It adds flavor, texture, vitamins and minerals.
Campbell’s chicken and stars soup. I haven’t bought or used a can of cream soup since the (First) Bush administration. But when you have a cold and sore throat, or are just feeling sorry for yourself, nothing goes down easier, or makes you feel so loved. But there’s so much sodium in it, the next day I blow up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float.
Espresso powder. I use a bit of this whenever I cook with chocolate. A little just enhances the cocoa flavor. Some more gives you a mocha taste. And there’s nothing wrong with coffee with a slight choco-kick. You can also stir it into things like peanut butter, mascarpone, and whipped cream. The espresso is ground super fine so there’s no grit.
And for the last item: Kraft macaroni and cheese. In thirty-five years of marriage I have never not had this in my pantry. The are many nights that without Kraft dinner, as the Canadians call it, I may not have made it to morning (Honestly, it has gotten me through some very tough, very dark places). But I use cream instead of milk; it’s comfort food, Gentle Reader, you might as well go all in.
If there are any foods in my pantry you’ve never tried, give it a whirl.
Honey, you let that food-stained freak flag fly.
Thanks for your time.
Are you old enough to remember that? Every time I went to Belk Tyler’s and JC Penney’s with my mom, she’d get a small bag of cashews. They were kept in a small, lightbulb-warmed, glass-fronted case that sat on the wrap desk. The nuts were scooped into little lined paper sacks that made a delicious, anticipatory crinkly sound when the sales lady filled them.
Looking back, when I was a kid there was a lot of stuff that went on that didn’t make a lick of sense. But at the time, those things seemed perfectly reasonable to everyone.
I was in junior high before our family car had seatbelts. The only baby seats were the laps of adults. I and every kid I knew regularly napped in that shelf between the back seat and back window. In the mid-seventies, our family owned a VW bug, and when there were more people than seats, I sat in the tiny space behind the back seat. If we’d ever been rear ended, they would have had to use tweezers to gather me together.
I’m not sure if we had toys or potential exhibits at the manslaughter trial. Lawn darts: sure kids, here are some metal darts with tips sharper and more lethal than the arrows headhunters use. So make sure you throw them into the ground and not at your little brother.
Slip & slide? More like slip and call the insurance company and see what our deductible is for personal injury. Older children with a scientific bent were given chemistry sets—basically child-sized meth kits.
Our Halloween costumes came in boxes; cover-alls that tied at the neck and plastic face masks that stayed on by a thin elastic thread. If we behaved while trick-or-treating and Mom was in a good mood, we’d get to wear them to bed. We had choices like Barbie, GI Joe, and Underdog. But these suits were so flammable it was like we were running around the neighborhood wearing shiny, colorful explosives.
Upset tummy? Every home medicine cabinet had a bottle of Paregoric, which settled even the worst stomachaches. The reason was it was chock full of morphine, which effectively paralyzed our innards. A cold with a cough was treated with a heaping spoonful of medicine full of codeine. A scraped knee could give you a touch of brain damage when the antiseptic dabbed on it was Mercurochrome, a mercury-laden wonder drug.
Thinking about the vast difference between my childhood and kids of today makes me think. I wonder if, in thirty years, parents will be shocked and appalled that when they were little, they were actually allowed to walk in the scary, dangerous outdoors on their own two feet, they used their teeth to chew potentially harmful solid food, and they hadn’t even invented bubble wrap suits yet.
I spent the last couple of weeks prodding The Kid to purchase a Father’s Day gift for paterfamilias Petey.
In the entire twenty-seven years that our offspring’s been on the planet, I’m guessing my spouse has spent a grand total of three to five minutes doing the same for Mother’s Day
Guys are lucky. They’re lucky we make a fuss for them, and they’re lucky that we, sadly, expect and accept much less fuss in return.
1 cup toasted pecan halves with ½ teaspoon vanilla extract stirred in while still warm from toasting
Press it evenly into bottom of prepared pan. With straight edge cut down into dough for eight lines in one direction, and three on the other, making 24 shortbread bars. With floured fork, prick each finger length-wise down the center of each bar. Bake until lightly golden, 30-35 minutes.
Cool 5 minutes in pan. Use foil to lift shortbread from pan onto cutting board. With serrated knife, carefully separate warm shortbread into the 24 pieces. Remove from foil; cool bars completely before drizzling.
4 ounces white chocolate with at least 31% cocoa butter
Preheat oven to 250. Place white chocolate in small, shallow oven-proof dish. Cook 10 minutes, then remove and stir. Continue cooking, stirring every ten minutes, until chocolate has turned the color of peanut butter (50-60 minutes). If it gets stiff as it roasts, pour in a little oil, then stir some more. Keep adding oil, a few drops at a time and stirring until it becomes silky smooth. When chocolate is browned and smooth drizzle over the shortbread and let set before serving.
If desired, sprinkle a tiny pinch of the sea salt right after drizzling. Keep covered in a cool place for up to one week or freeze for up to a month.
Thanks for your time.
I started visiting because my Yugo-sized dog Crowley is obsessed with birds of every kind.
When the winter came to an end, two couples; a pair of Canadian geese and some mallards decided to stay and set up housekeeping.
Once the eggs hatch though, and the male regains the power of flight, he’s history.
Then the geese mate for life. The female makes a nest and lays four to nine eggs. She sits on the nest with the gander nearby. They also molt now, and for the four weeks the eggs take to hatch, the female doesn’t get up, eat, or drink.
Crowley and I visited the pond every day. Soon five tiny ducklings and four little goslings made an appearance. Like a scene out of Robert McClusky’s Make Way for Ducklings, tiny fuzzy birds walked in straight lines with parents both leading the way and bringing up the rear.
The route we use takes us through a field, then out onto the sidewalk of a busy road about fifty yards from the pond. As we came around, I noticed something in the street that looked like a tree stump. As I was trying to convince myself it must have fallen off the back of a landscaper’s truck, we got closer.
The next morning, I hurried to the pond.
My best guess is the male made a test flight to try out his regrown feathers which weren’t quite ready, and he fell into the path of a car. But he was a good mate and a good dad.
Thanks for your time.
bull city mom 