"Like What You Like"

In relation to food, if you like what you like, what's wrong with that?

Outside of foods and practices that harm you or your family, why can't we like what we like?

If "food snobbery" has its way with all of us, we will all be consuming only that which others say is really good, or good for us, or even socially acceptable.

Were you raised with any food "oddities," foods that elicit the most winsome of memories for you, but others visibly cringe at? Often dishes like this are related to our ethnicity; they are connective to our cultures and families--they represent the best of what we knew as children.

In the midst of trying to relate the beauty of a revered food tradition, little is more dismaying than having it trounced upon and denigrated by someone who just doesn't "get it." Ten to one, this person has a precious food tradition, too. What makes his or her recipe fabulous, and yours just plain weird?

Much has to do with what we were raised with, and much has to do with how open we are to trying other people's ideas of what good eating is.

I'm willing as a baby is to taste new offerings. A bit hesitant, but mostly game to begin with. Unlike a baby, too much information might influence my taste buds. If I know that certain body parts (sometimes referred to as offal) account for a certain flavor in a meat dish, I'm affected. Why a chunk of beef roast has more "social acceptability" to me than a pile of beef brains or a pig snout seems obvious to me. But really? After all, that beef roast very well came from the cow's behind, so how classy is that?

I'd like all people to understand the appeal of "menudo," and not insult me with derision of it. In a Mexican household, this main-dish soup is practically sacred. "Menudo por los crudos" essentially translates  to "Menudo for the hungover" but you don't have to be a drinker to love it. "Crudos" is pronounced, with a rolled r,"crew-dose," not crud-os which is ironically probably more accurate; it helps rid the body of that cruddy hangover feeling.

People make big pots of menudo on Saturday evening, and dive into it after mass on Sunday morning. One (who has indulged) drags one's self out of bed to attend church for the cleansing effect of religion, then to home for the cleansing effect of this cultural mainstay. Good menudo is bold and bolstering, spicy and richly flecked with fresh garnishes like chopped crunchy onion, cilantro leaves, and a dried herb blend of oregano and crushed red pepper. It is always laced heavily with squeezed lemon for tang, and all of this put together gets the pores flowing. All is right with a bowl of menudo when it makes you sweat--and sweat as we know, does detoxify.

Menudo may be touted as a toxin releaser and a good cure for a hangover, but most everyone who enjoys it enjoys it for the flavor.

What makes for the flavor? Admittedly, it's offal--kind of awful offal: tripe, if you must know. The same word used synonymously with garbage, trash, refuse.  To thicken the plot further (oh, I mean the soup) a soup "bone" is added.

This doesn't sound as bad as a pig snout, does it? Alas, the truth is it's a pig's hoof, or foot, and that sadly DOES sound as bad.

But a pig's foot it must be. Not too long ago I trekked to an authentic Mexican market for menudo fixings, something I hadn't made in many years. In Wisconsin, I have become far removed from the idea of pig's feet in my soup, so I asked the friendly butcher if good old beef soup bones wouldn't do as well.

You'd have thought I asked him if I could made a burrito out of Wonder bread. No, Lady, he smiled. It's always been a pig's foot and always will be a pig's foot, if you want true menudo.

So menudo as I've always known it is comfortable for me, but I sense your skepticism. I get it. I decline many "foreign" dishes myself, especially when too much information is given. But I like what I like, and you should with ease like what YOU like.

"Foraged foods" are not foreign to any of us because they are a part of our collective ancestry. It's how the earliest life cycles were sustained and it's a history that belongs to all of us. Time and the ages have removed us from the constancy of need to forage, but many people are doing it now more from enjoyment than real need.

Foraging doesn't honestly appeal to me, but those who love it should love it openly. A friend of mine so successfully owns the tradition that he's become an expert at it. He has been sought out by a publishing house and of late has been making the rounds to lend publicity to his wonderful book, "Trout Caviar." He is innovative with his ways of preparing wild foods, and fearless even about his "accidents." Some of his finest moments come from things he didn't intend.

I once enjoyed a foraging jaunt with a friend who has always used the wild to complement her cooking. She explained that a creek-bank near her home harbored fresh watercress, and we were going to have a salad from that. I remember my mother adding watercress to our salads, and&n;the thought of experiencing that picquant freshness again just had me excited no end.

She plucked a bunch of the found greens, and we went home to assemble the meal. As we talked and worked, she mentioned her process of ridding the greens of "critters." The plates we were eventually presented with were beautiful, and her grilled salmon divine. Still,  with every approach of my fork to the salad, I was pretty sure what should have been cracked peppercorns was not--too much squirming going on there.

I suspect "critters" are part and parcel of foraging. Anyone who practices it  might only suffer amusement at those who would be bothered by these little natural "details."

"Live and let Live," should be practiced when we think about the foods we enjoy the most. I have a feeling my friend, Brett Laidlaw (who wrote "Trout Caviar") would not condemn my menudo, would even relish it, but the both of us (I am sure?) frown upon macaroni and cheese that requires orange powder for its finished state.

But isn't orange-powdered mac 'n cheese considered an American mainstay in many homes? Is my food snobbery about this as wrong as someone's else's ripping on my menudo or his foraged delicacies?

Live and let live....and if we want to LIVE well, enjoy it all in moderation.

Final comment on this: Just saw a Food Network episode where Guy Fieri was tasting someone's enchiladas topped with barbeque sauce. Some things are just WRONG and this would be one.

Pictured: Classic red sauce enchiladas....haven't made menudo lately.

In My Own Backyard

It's starting to feel alot like spring here in Wisconsin.

The apple blossoms are struggling to fight off some lolly-gagging morning frosts, but the days are emerging radiantly warm and sunny.

This time of year exemplifies that "hope springs eternal." Despite its troubles, life never seems to give up on trying to renew itself. Appropriately, all the new growth of the season marks the time as a harbinger of the many good things to come.

Like babies of every species, and trees, fruits, flowers, plants and grasses. No withering now; everything is smoothly-skinned and pliable, because life is just beginning and it's all good.

The inhabitants of a country property should know enough about the plant-life on their place, but twenty-some years into here we are still pretty clueless. We know enough to avoid poison ivy and stinging nettle on the skin, and we've successfully tapped maples for syrup and transformed wild plums, apples and berries into yummy preserves. We recognize a great many birds and critters, and some of their calls and sounds. Mostly, we enjoy what we see and hear and use what we're certain of to modest degrees. After all, wild creatures need to eat too.

One berry bush that we failed to identify is the source of a funnily ironic story. Until recently I was the proprietor of a shop and cafe, "Corner Cupboard," where we worked hard to establish a small but strong following for handmade, from-scratch pies. One customer, Tom, often drove in from his outlying town to have a light lunch with us and a full wedge of pie. We always loved to see Tom--such a dapper guy, friendly and conversational always in a most appealing way.

A great promoter of my place, Tom poked his head into the kitchen one day to tell me that he would soon be treating a special friend to lunch at Corner Cupboard. This friend had a quirky inclination to always ask the server at any restaurant for one particular pie--gooseberry.

He had yet to receive a "Yes, we have gooseberry pie," answer, but this never deterred him from trying wherever he went. Tom's request to me was that whatever it took, he was willing to pay any price for a gooseberry pie on board when that lunch took place.

None of us had ever made a gooseberry pie, or even tasted one. I'd never noticed the fruit in a store and of course when I looked, it wasn't there--not in the frozen or canned aisle, and not in the fresh produce section either. 

That next Sunday my husband drove me to an eastern "burb" of the Twin Cities. After a few stabs in a melange of stores, I did find gooseberries in a high-end gourmet grocer's market. I was worn out from the trek through various unfamiliar stores, so the fact that they were only available in cans did not stop me from grabbing the only two that were on the shelf. I realized beggars can't be choosers, but I certainly didn't pay a beggar's price for them.

When the big day arrived, my pie-maker turned out a beautiful speciman, even if we were all put off by the filling that had gone into it. Do you know what gooseberries look like? They are round and green and look like slimy globules in questionable goop (in a pie)--not an appetizing sight whatsoever to any of our eyes.

But we figured Tom's friend knew his gooseberry stuff. He would happily expect them to look this way, and not be able to contain his gushing over the thrill of it all. The three of my whole staff were so excited we all managed to place ourselves in the vicinity for his, "Do you have gooseberry pie?" inquiry.

The question happened as predicted, but his response couldn't have been more different than we had imagined. No light sparked in his delighted eyes, no beaming smile of disbelief crossed his lips. Instead came a flat and to-the-point "Okay, I'll have a piece," statement, one void of all the enthusiasm we had so braced ourselves for.

The crescendo of our anticipation descended its incline so abruptly we could almost hear the "whoosh" of deflation. The fellow quietly enjoyed his pie, and asked for another piece to take home. Tom purchased the remainder, and our adventure was over.

We weren't so big about it that we didn't mutter a few expressions of disappointment over our anti-climatic experience, but we agreed that it probably paled compared to Tom's. We were sorry to see that his gleeful plans and benevolent plotting went unrewarded.

A few weeks later, my granddaughter was trail-hiking our place with the neighbor boy, a knowledgeable little guy when it comes to identifying creatures and plants of the natural world.

They stopped to pick small berries I'd never noticed before--or if I had, had probably avoided in a "better safe than sorry" mode.

But on this day my granddaughter was encouraged to try these "perfectly safe" GOOSEBERRIES--a tried and true fruit the boy knew well.

Gooseberries

To think: we'd traveled a distance we didn't commonly go, and paid a price we found ridiculously high--all for something that grew right in our own back yard. Now THAT'S ridiculous.

There's alot to learn on a country place, and it really pays to learn it. I like to think that the waste and cost of that experience was still an experience, and one that taught me a lesson: Know what you have, or pay the price of ridiculous.