Can't Go Wrong with Bacon

I love my UrbanSpoon app.  I love the way it nudges me to try new, independent restaurants all over town.  Aren't I just the queen of variety, sampling barbecue up on the northwest side, and sandwiches slicked over with garlic butter down in Bloomington and waffle cones in Cincinnati?  

Then again, maybe not.  I can pick up a menu, splashed with colorful pictures of foodie wonders and, more often than not, end up with bacon on my plate.  I've just got a finder for it.  Cats hunt mice.  Bees detect flowers.  Dust finds computer screens.  Bye-bye Nesquik's menu-searching eye skips over the meatball sandwiches, the garlicky pasta, the fried potato skins and lands straight on something with bacon in it.

I'm sure this wouldn't happen to me in an ice cream parlor, although I hear bacon has made inroads there, too.

But really, how can a wrap or a salad or a burger go wrong if you add a strip or two of pig to it?

Even when I'm not looking for bacon, it finds me.  I chose this salad because of the picture.  I didn't even notice that stuff hiding between the carrots and the spinach, but look at the ingredient list and you will see that my finder has, once again, sniffed out the bacon.  Bacon wants to be my friend.


PRETTY LAYERED SALAD

• 5 cups torn fresh spinach
• 1/2 pound sliced bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1/2 cup grated carrot
• 3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
  
• 5 cups torn romaine
• 1 medium sweet red pepper, cut into rings
• 1/2 cup salad croutons
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• DRESSING:
• 6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup canola oil 
• 2 TB sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper

In a large bowl, layer the spinach, bacon, carrot, eggs, romaine, red pepper, croutons and Parmesan cheese. In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine the dressing ingredients; shake well. Serve with salad. Yield: 8 servings.

Nutritional Facts 1 serving (1 cup) equals 192 calories.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/pretty-layered-salad 

As for the Finished Book Pile, it's more like the started book pile as I give Nathaniel Hawthorne another try.  So far, I've swallowed a short story about a minister that takes to wearing a black veil.  I understand this eccentricity about as well as I understood why Hester Prynne wouldn't reveal her fellow adulterer.  But just like we are eating spinach, carrots and peppers today, I'm making myself sit down to a helping of literary vegetables.

Please pray for me.

This is Why We Live Here

We cleaned the tile grout and the window sills and all the other parts of the house we never get to. We ran around town picking up the flowers and the wedding cake and the pans big enough to hold all the food, plus an extra fridge to hold all the giant pans. We shopped for the perfect grapes and strawberries and mixed up a fragrant chicken salad, then we stayed up a little late to make the bar cookies that go with the special soup for the pre-party lunch.

But beyond keeping track of everything that needed to be done, it really didn't feel like work.

When it all came together, we saw the people that we love best, people that we have known a long time, and a few people that are new in our lives but that we expect to know forever. I'm a non-hugger, but I just kept hugging this weekend.

I miss some places I have lived, their skyscrapers and their curvy hills. I'll go back and see them any chance I can get. But I moved here for the people, and I'm riding on that warm, full feeling I get when we come together and catch up.

It didn't hurt that the grass was a brilliant green, that the trees dressed themselves up in white and magenta blossoms.

I don't know how many times I said this to myself this week, but I'll say it again: I'm glad I live here.

If you are not so fortunate, you may comfort yourself with this soup:

Guess who taught me how to load pictures?  The happy bride herself!

CHICKEN TORTILLA SOUP

1 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 cups chicken broth
1 can (14-1/2 ounces) Mexican diced tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1-1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast, cubed
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
1/4 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
Tortilla chips, optional

In a large saucepan, combine the first six ingredients; bring to a boil. Add chicken. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 4-6 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Combine cornstarch and water until smooth; gradually stir into soup.
Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 1 minute or until thickened. Top servings with cheese and cilantro. Serve with tortilla chips if desired. Yield: 6 servings.

Nutritional Analysis: One 1-cup serving, minus the cheese and tortilla chips, is 170 cals.
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chicken-tortilla-soup-5


As for the reading pile, I'm making progress on And There Was Light, by Jacques Lusseyran, (but understandably, given the kind of week I've had, have not finished it yet) and I'm bumping it up to "recommended" status.

He's deep into the French Resistance. What does a Resistance movement do, anyway? you ask. Well, they spread information by stealthily printing and distributing newspapers. They give safe passage to shot-down fliers. And there is no Resistance unless multiple peoples in multiple places are moved upon to act and, in miraculous ways, they find and assist each other.

Which seems to be what the universe is trying to teach me: Join in. Lend your time, means and talents. Let others lend you theirs.

Agitators

And . . . I still haven't finished the Lusseyran book.

Maybe it's because I spend too much time on Mormon blogs.

Right now, the hot topic is ordaining women to the priesthood. It springs from an interview President Hinckley did with Mike Wallace years ago, in which he explained that Mormon women are happy. They have plenty of leadership and service opportunities. They aren't agitating to get the priesthood.

To which a few women have said, "Oh yeah? Well, we do want it. We've wanted it for years. And we start agitating now."

My thoughts on the matter?

1) It's a mistake for men to proclaim what women want, or what they like, or what fulfills their dreams. Ask the women.

2) It's not a mistake to ask questions about why things are the way they are or to ask God if they could be different. But if He says no, if He says A and B can change but C has to stay the way it is, we have to accept the answer. To do otherwise is apostasy, and Mormonism has always been about rejecting apostasy.

3) If He says yes to C, well then, cheers to you for your forward thinking.

4) I adore a rousing online discussion, where people are free to say what they think. I love finding out that I'm not the only one bugged by A and B, even if I'm not with you on C.

5) I don't long to perform blessings or ordinances or rituals. Ritual embarrasses me. But I am also embarrassed by people who call you names for wanting the priesthood. No, wait. Not embarrassed. Amused.

6) You tell me equality has a certain formula. You have read thinkers who say that anyone who doesn't agree with the formula is an agent of her own oppression. Thanks, but I'll decide how oppressed I am. If it's a mistake for men to tell me what I should want, it's also a mistake for strangers to tell me how to be and what trade-offs to make.

7) Otherwise, carry on. Your stories about what you have had to put up with in your lives embolden me and a few thousand others to not put up with the same. That effects some mighty change right there.

Now, let's bake bread:

RANCH FRENCH BREAD

2 packages (1/4 ounce each) active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (110° to 115°)
2 cups warm buttermilk (110° to 115°)
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 to 2 envelopes original ranch salad dressing mix
2 teaspoons salt
8 to 9 cups all-purpose flour
Additional butter, melted

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the buttermilk, butter, sugar, eggs, ranch dressing mix, salt and 4 cups flour; beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.
Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide into fourths. Roll each portion into a 14-in. x 12-in. rectangle. Roll up jelly-roll style, starting with a long side; pinch seams to seal and tuck ends under. Place seam side down on two greased baking sheets. With a sharp knife, make five shallow slashes across the top of each loaf. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 minutes.
Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Brush with melted butter. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. Yield: 4 loaves (14 slices each) @ 77 calories per ounce.

Editor's Note: Warmed buttermilk will appear curdled.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Ranch-French-Bread

The Week of the Clenched Stomach

It started when I stayed up late last Sunday, reading some doom and gloom on the internet. Fortified by visions of a dire future, I trudged into a week in which:

Bombs went off. Chemicals exploded. The daughter crashed her car. Tech problems up-ended the husband's workweek. A friend's mom died. Thunder crashed. Streams flooded. The toddler got defiant. And finally, PMS.

You'd think I would appreciate a gentle book like And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran. But I avoided it. If it had been a book where bombs went off and thunder crashed, I probably couldn't have put it down.

Lusseyran grew up in Paris. He lost his sight in a childhood accident. After the initial shock and pain, he found himself endowed with something he described as "light." He gained a heightened sense of the objects around him, their smells, sounds, even the very pressure from the space they took up. His parents rose to the occasion, securing an education that fit him for the larger world. His friends held his arm and guided him along on their adventures. In short, God did not abandon Lusseyran to bleakness.

But I still felt no compulsion to read. His "light" was an intangible thing, harder to describe than smell. Really, how would you convey the scent of a carnation or of campfire smoke to someone who had never experienced it? If it's tough to describe, it's tough to read.

I've stuck with him now up to age eleven. I'll keep trying. World War II and his days in the French Resistance lie ahead, so surely I will stumble into suspense and adventure soon.

Look at me, wishing suspense and adventure on people in book-world, but not on people in real-world.

And furthermore, why don't stress-riven characters in books snitch PEANUTTY CHOCOLATE COOKIES, like I did all week?

1 cup chunky peanut butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 package fudge brownie mix (13-in. x 9-inch pan size)
1/2 cup water
12 ounces milk chocolate candy bars, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup unsalted peanuts

In a large bowl, cream peanut butter and oil. Beat in eggs just until combined. Stir in brownie mix and water. Fold in the chopped candy bars and peanuts.
Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: about 3-1/2 dozen.

Oops, Mom and Dad, I Lost Her

Somebody in my writing group keeps handing us chapters of her novel about a family broken up by a fatal car accident. The narrator girl and her father struggle through the year after losing Mom and Big Brother. We get a lot of silence-at-breakfast scenes, losing-ourselves-in-competitive-swimming scenes and re-entering-teen-life-with-a-birthday-party-at-the-country-club scenes. (Where, naturally, a hunky boy appears. With an Aussie accent. And he's a swimmer, how handy!)

As she perfects her book, I'm tempted to suggest a look at Francine Prose's Goldengrove. I would mean it as a helpful gesture. I just don't know if it would be taken that way.

Basically, Prose already wrote the same story. Two sisters laze about in a canoe on the lake beside their rustic upstate New York home. The older one jumps out, as if to swim ashore. The younger one rows to the dock. In the house, the parents ask, "Where is your sister?" The answer is not good.

Prose walks us through the next year, as this family struggles up from the depths of loss. The book jacket promises a "risky relationship" between the thirteen-year-old surviving girl and her sister's boyfriend.

Oh, great! I thought, a bunch of unwarranted, highly anatomical sex scenes. And if anyone complains, they are told, 'Teenagers have sex these days. Get over it.'"

But no, Prose keeps it less about sex and more about head-games. It all rang quite true to me. I found this grieving family utterly captivating.

Not so for the next book I picked up. Brunonia Berry's Lace Reader is a tale about moms and aunts who can tell fortunes by looking at -- you guessed it -- lace. The story bolted out of the gate with a whole lotta characters (way quirky, of course)and a whole lotta details about nothin' that I quickly suspected I had fallen prey to an amateur author. When she finally introduced me to the second aunt, who greets the protagonist with a hug and acts quite normal given the family death they have all just experienced, I pictured a quite normal woman who, I found out a page or two later, is brain damaged.

"Foul!" I cried. "Game over."

Seriously, the Amazon reviews made far better reading.

Maybe somebody in Berry's writing group should have handed her an already-published masterpiece about fortune-telling women who come together after a death in the family and . . . oh never mind!

Anyway, to finish up with our Tex-Mex series, you can celebrate warmer weather with:

TEX-MEX CHICKEN SALAD

1 medium sweet red pepper, julienned
2 teaspoons canola oil
2 cups Tex-Mex Chicken Starter
1 package (10 ounces) ready-to-serve salad greens
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1-1/2 cups salsa
1/3 cup prepared vinaigrette salad dressing

In a large skillet, saute red pepper in oil until crisp-tender. Add chicken starter; heat through.
In a salad bowl, combine the greens, tomato, onion and cheese. Top with chicken mixture. In a small bowl, combine salsa and vinaigrette until blended. Serve with salad. Yield: 6 servings @ 430 cals. each.
http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Tex-Mex-Chicken-Salad

Go Home, Young Man

I once had an English professor who wrote a book on postmodern trends in fiction in which he proclaimed that many of us find the open road, and its escape from our hometowns, appealing. But ultimately, we have to re-embrace our past. We may be happier far away but, especially if we are writers, we have to return or we choke off the headwaters that feed us.

Plainly, I have resisted this notion of his. But then, my hometown lacks the spicy, Wild West past of his native Dodge City, Kansas.

However, the professor took his own advice. Succumbing to nostalgia about the dusty landscape from which he came, he has now published his memoir, Dragging Wyatt Earp.

Author Robert Rebein grew up as one of seven closely-packed boys in a Catholic family. His father was one of those handy sorts who had a hard time resisting major renovation projects on the house. He drew plans for new kitchens, or bricking the exterior, on some handy envelope and, before long, had the family camping in the basement, eating chicken noodle soup on rice for days on end.

For years, the father owned an auto salvage yard, providing a richly imaginative playground for the young Rob, not to mention a cast of hired help that limped and swore and came in late after sleeping one off.

Later, Dad Rebein sold the salvage yard and bought a ranch.

In Rebein's classes, he occasionally mentioned his Kansas-ranch past. I always wondered if his family regarded him as a fiddlehead who writes useless stuff, we have no idea what, and goes nutty for poetry. But when Rebein describes the chores he mastered, everything from repairing the sprinkler system to pouring concrete to herding cattle, I gotta admit, his family probably respects him, whatever they think of his profession.

His life-journey from fenced fields to bookshelf-lined professor's office reminds me of Black Earth and Ivory Tower, a book of essays written by former farm kids who ended up teaching at universities. Each essay muses on the tyranny of the agricultural life and the wide gulf between the parents who met its demands and the children for whom it holds no future.

For those I know in Kansas (and their book-clubbing friends) Rebein will appear at the Leawood Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, April 10th, at 7 p.m.

Since you'll be busy reading Rebein's absorbing recollections, you may look up sometime around dinner and panic over what to fix your crew. If you froze last week's Chicken Starter, you'll be well on your way to a meal of:

TEX-MEX CHICKEN PASTA

1 package (16 ounces) linguine
1 medium sweet red pepper, chopped
2 teaspoons canola oil
2 cups Tex-Mex Chicken Starter
1 cup fresh or frozen corn
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
minced fresh cilantro, optional

Cook linguine according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute red pepper in oil until crisp-tender. Add the chicken starter and corn; heat through. Stir in cream and cheese.
Cook and stir over medium-low heat until the cheese is melted and sauce is thickened. Drain linguine; top with chicken mixture. Sprinkle with cilantro if desired. Yield: 4-6 servings.
www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/tex-mex-chicken-pasta

Mormons As They Really Are

How did you feel when you read your first Mormon novel? Did you read about sacrament meeting and Dad being the bishop and look over your shoulder and wonder, "Can we talk about this stuff?" Or was the romance so hokey, the conversion plot-line so ham-handed, that you wanted to round up and burn every copy before outsiders could get a peek at it and decide we're all even weirder than they previously thought?

Well, thank goodness Mormon literature seems to be growing up a little, offering characters that feel as real as the folks who sit beside you at the driver's license bureau. One good example of credible Mormon fiction is Death of a Disco Dancer by David Clark. Clark's people play pranks with ripe oranges. They tell ghost stories at the scout camp-out. They quake under the commands of their cruel gym teachers and they try to figure out whether their older brother's warnings about junior high are credible, or just so much leg-pulling.

And they deal with Grandma. Like too many grandmas, she's not all there, but she has come to live in their house. She often visits Dancer's protagonist, Todd Whitman, in his bedroom in the middle of the night. She totes along a Saturday Night Fever album cover and speaks cryptically of "The Dancer" from her past. Grandma's nocturnal visits are the least credible part of Clark's story, but I played along anyway. He seemed to need the plot device. And anyway, it wasn't too long before we got back to that older brother, whose mind games against Todd raise the spectre of Fred Savage's Wonder Years siblings.

And let me just put in a word for Dancer's publisher, Zarahemla Books.

Judging by Mormon comment boards on the Twilight series, some Mormons don't want to read anything riskier than a conference anecdote and others long for a Mormon tale that's at least as interesting as the most middling book on their library shelves. What we need are readers that understand that the pulpit and the reading chair needn't cancel each other out. One is a place to talk about how we should be. The other is a place to reveal how we are right now, which is messy, mistake-prone, capable of monumental selfishness, but capable of great nobility, too.

Zarahemla and similar publishers (Parables, Covenant) offer Mormon fiction for those who have tried it elsewhere and found it not worth their time or their money.

All publishing houses struggle, but those who cater to whisker-thin niche markets like us Mormons, live a special kind of hand-to-mouth existence. If they topple, Mormon writers have nowhere to send their stuff.

So check 'em out on Amazon. See if they've got something that piques your interest.

Now, since Dancer is set in Arizona, let's go Tex-Mex.

TEX-MEX CHICKEN STARTER:

1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup canola oil
3 tablespoons chili powder
1-1/2 teaspoons each garlic powder, ground cumin, dried coriander and dried oregano
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, optional
3 pounds Member's Mark® Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, cut into 1-inch strips
3 medium onions, halved and sliced into rings
4 garlic cloves, minced

In a large resealable plastic bag, combine lemon juice, oil and seasonings. Add chicken. Seal bag and turn to coat; refrigerate for 1 hour.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, bring chicken and marinade to a boil in batches. Reduce heat; cook and stir for 6 minutes or until juices run clear. Remove chicken with tongs to a large bowl.
In the drippings, saute onions and garlic until onions are crisp-tender. Pour over chicken and mix well. Cool for 30 minutes.
Divide mixture among three freezer containers; cover and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw before using. Yield: 6 cups.

Nutritional Facts 1/2 cup equals 231 calories.
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/tex-mex-chicken-starter

Use this chicken mix for TEX-MEX CHICKEN FAJITAS:


1 medium sweet red pepper, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons canola oil
2 cups Tex-Mex Chicken Starter
2 tablespoons water
8 flour tortillas (7 inches), warmed
Shredded Monterey Jack cheese, shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, sour cream and salsa, optional

In a large skillet, saute red pepper in oil until crisp-tender. Add chicken starter and water; heat through. Spoon filling down the center of tortillas; fold in half. Serve with the cheese, lettuce, tomato, sour cream and salsa if desired. Yield: 4 servings, 505 cals. each, not counting the toppings.
http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Tex-Mex-Chicken-Fajitas

More ideas for using up the Chicken Starter in future posts.