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The smell of the oven is wafting upstairs into my study.

Mmmmmmmm.

My daughter is cooking. It’s a zucchini, cheesy, something or other casserole bake-y thing. It smells so good. I think our oven has missed us.

It poured rain today and it’s been rather chilly this week. I have LOVED every second of it. I can’t wait to make my pot roasts and baked apple cobbler and beef stews and ham and black beans soups, yum! I just love fall!

Summer food is good, too. I like hamburgers and sausages, macaroni salad and the abundance of fresh fruits and delicious vegetables. I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of salads. And the husband has become an expert in Beer Merchandise with all this summertime feasting. But I miss the smells of the crockpot simmering a pot roast. I love baked potatoes and steamed broccoli and brussels sprouts. That’s what fall means to me.

So I think today is the start of another beautiful cooking season. How about you? Have you got any fabulous cooking plans this fall?

Autumn Means Baking!

Oh I am looking forward to autumn. Soon I’ll be able to turn on the stove and bake again! Look what’s growing in my yard!

There were multitudes of blossoms in the spring, but oddly enough the apples are rather few and far between. I don’t know what happened along the way. Although I will add that right now the apples are small and green and perhaps I didn’t see them because they are camouflaged so well. Yah, I’ll have to break out my welch allyn or something, eh?

Oh well, even so I think there will be enough for a nice pie. Yum! I can smell it already!

Baking…. or… Baking?

I have this rule as soon as summer hits: NO BAKING in the house. With the sun scorching the asphalt parking lots all around my property, we do enough baking around here. :-p I cannot tolerate the heat and therefore the oven is OFF. Once or twice we’ve heated up pre-packaged burritos or frozen pizza, and I’ve always regretted it. It’s almost comical how the oven generates so much heat in the summertime but can’t seem to warm the kitchen enough in the wintertime. :-p If only we could bottle up summer’s horrible heat and dispense it throughout the winter, evenly. What a wonderful world it would be, lol.

A Twitter pal recently mentioned her recent baking exploits and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. BAKE? In July??? Then I realized that some folks have air conditioners, but…. around here we go nearly bankrupt from the expense. I have turned on my air conditioner (first one, ever!!! I’m a newbie!!) three days this summer and already the husband is bemoaning the electric bill.

Summer is a lousy season. I am smugly satisfied that some of my other Upstate friends hate it as much as I do. Summer is nice in that everything is green (I love the gardening) and you don’t have to bundle up in a billion layers to go outside… it’s also a great time for raleigh wedding photographers– can you imagine taking outdoor wedding photos during winter?! But it’s so dang hot that you can’t DO anything but sit and sweat.

Ground Turkey Recall

I usually don’t pay attention to food recalls. I know I should, especially in the summer when our purchases of processed meat rise (hotdogs, pre-made hamburgers, etc). But an Upstate news outlet had a very long story about the latest recall — this time it’s for Cahill ground turkey — and it got me thinking.

Cargill Value Added Meats Retail, a business unit of Wichita-based Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation, has announced an immediate Class I voluntary recall of approximately 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company’s Springdale, Arkansas, facility from February 20, 2011, through August 2, 2011, due to possible contamination from Salmonella Heidelberg.

Thirty-six MILLION pounds of ground turkey?!?!

That amount is staggering. And it caused me to think about some of the other recalls from much larger meat manufacturers. There was a ground beef/hamburger recall earlier this year, and I remember another one for hotdogs and another one for lettuce or spinach. And always, the recalls are huge, huge amounts. Just huge. It made think about our food industry. More and more, the food industry is being controlled by the government and extremely large corporations. It makes me nervous — not just because of any recalls but because the great power and control these men have over our nation’s food.

I really believe we need to become more self-sufficient when it comes to our food. I wish I knew more local outlets that sold local food. In my area, the “locavore” movement is beginning to blossom, but finding outlets that sell food AND trying to afford the food (which in some cases can be 3 to 6 times more expensive than the factory-raised foods) is hard. Hey, I’m not asking for solid gold golf trophies or anything, I just would like to buy my sweet corn and turkey meat from local farmers. Finding them is one thing, paying is another.

I’m hoping that the local food movement really gets moving. At my local grocery store, I spotted sweet corn for sake by a local farmer, but 99.9% of the other stuff was from… where? China? Mexico? India? No idea. Given the choice, I KNOW American consumers want to know from where their food originates, and we’d always choose local if given a choice.

Ah, but that’s the caveat: given the choice. Right now, we’re kept largely in the dark. This must change.

Lunch at the Fraunces Tavern, Pearl Street, Manhattan

When we visited New York City this past week, I decided to treat my daughters at the historic Fraunces Tavern for lunch. As history buffs, the Fraunces Tavern on 54 Pearl Street is near and dear to our hearts. This was the place that the New York Sons of Liberty met, planning their agenda against the invading British during the Revolutionary War. And this is where, in 1796, George Washington chose to address his generals and gave his farewell address to his long years of public service. The downstairs of the tavern has a dining room and bar, and two of the upstairs floors are a museum. I did not know this until after our meal, but if you dine in the restaurant, admission to the museum is free.

The atmosphere is OK. We chose the dining room over the bar, for obvious reasons. The dining room has several tables, some very long, and an assembly of cane chairs and very rickety benches. The seats were rather uncomfortable. I was surprised at how flexible the furniture was, lol. I guess they were going for the “colonial” look which accomplished the feat very well. The ceiling is low and has tin tiles. A bright copper duct extends from the front of the room to the back. Very quaint. The floors were creaky oak hardwood strips, not original but still very old. I love the old windows and trimwork. The place looked like a room Sam Adams or old James Otis would frequent. I was going for “atmosphere,” and this room seemed to fit the bill. It was a little cramped, a little uncomfortable, a little old. I wish the bench had been more comfy for my old bones, but I was happy enough.

The lunch menu stays true to tradition, too. With sumptuous fare like “bangers” and “raw oysters,” I really felt like a time traveler. We opted for safer meals– I got the turkey avocado sandwich; my daughters chose the barbeque chicken sandwich and the tavern burger. Looking back, I probably should have gone for the fish. My turkey sandwich was not very enjoyable, although I did try to be a good girl and eat it all (seeing it set me back $15). The turkey was simple deli meat. There was avocado and a slice of lettuce… and that was it. The roll was horribly crusty. I could barely sink my teeth into it.

Overall, the sandwich was bland but the contents were fresh. The fries were exceptionally good. For all the food cooked on the premises, the dining room smelled surprisingly fresh. I am sensitive to cooking odors, and was very pleased that the dining room didn’t smell bad or greasy. I think in NYC, smoking and stuff like acid cigars online is forbidden in public places? Not sure. Come to think of it, I never saw or smelled any smokers and never saw one cigarette butt on the street. *marveling*

My older daughter had the tavern burger, a simple hamburger with cheese, lettuce, tomato. She said it was OK, rather bland. Again, the fries were very good. My younger daughter got the best of it, I think– chicken with bacon and onions and a sweet barbeque sauce. She didn’t like the caramelized onions (thought it was cabbage slaw) and se she and I swapped half our sandwiches. Her sandwich was not bland and I enjoyed it. She, on the other hand, couldn’t chow through the crusty roll, either, and ate the turkey and avocado without the bread. The iced tea was refreshing.

The service was OK. Our server was polite when he was in attendance. I don’t know how servers are taught to serve in Manhattan– in Upstate, servers are constantly glancing over at the tables for a sign from the diners. My husband has had many jobs as a server and so I am familiar with the job. This server walked by a dozen times with nary a glance. Still, I tipped him 15% (hoping that was more than the required 10%; again, I’m unfamiliar with NYC’s customs). Here in Upstate, I usually tip 16%to 18% if the server is especially good.

So the experience was good until…. well, the bad experience. I don’t know why it bothered me so, it was an honest mistake on both parties… but the owner came to me in such an accusatory manner that I will probably never go to Fraunces again.

After the meal, I went to the cash register with my bill. The girl there (who seemed a little loopy or out of it, she was unusually perky) asked me how everything was, etc. She seemed very distracted, perhaps the young gentlemen next to her had her heart all atwitter or something. I said it was OK, and I’d also like to see the museum, and where do I go? She got all excited and handed me a card, a “free pass” to the museum because we’d had lunch. Wow, great, I thought. I asked her: so where do I pay? And she said, oh go right on up! and then turned her attention to the young man. I was a little surprised that I’d have to pay my bill upstairs, but OK, lots of strange things happen in NYC, lol.

So we went up the creaky stairs to the museum. At the desk, I met the lady there and handed her my bill and the restaurant card. Oh, wonderful! she said, and immediately waved me into the room where a movie had just begun about the history of the museum. My girls were eager to see the movie and so they settled down on the bench. I figured What the heck?! and thought perhaps I pay the bill on the final exit… whatever…

About 5 minutes later, the restaurant manager storms into the movie room, shoves my cash tip and the bill under my nose and loudly says “You didn’t pay your bill!” I was speechless. I’d tried TWICE and here was this guy accusing me in front of my daughters and other people in the middle of the movie. Hey, maybe the guy has been “had” by schiesters before, but HELLO I was waved aside twice! It was a very uncomfortable moment. I said that I was told to come up here to the museum after my meal. He said, “Oh no! The restaurant and museum are totally separate!”

Well. HOW WAS I TO KNOW THAT?!

Anyway, he asked me when I wanted to pay the bill. I looked around and, just to get the doofus away from the movie so my daughters could enjoy their first time in NYC, said “I’ll do it now.” So he gave me the bill and left me to go downstairs. Sheesh.

The remainder of the museum visit was a little prickly. I just felt unhappy. It was an important day for my girls and I feel the manager was very rude. I am very careful about my character and reputation, so I was feeling a little morose. As we left, I checked with the loopy girl at the front desk. Am I OK? Can I leave now? Is everything paid? I admit my questions were tinged with a tiny bit of smarm, but sheesh. Oh yes! Thank you so much for coming! she oozed.

I’m racking the entire thing up to just a bad day. Maybe the manager was having a bad day and was testy. The young lady was probably distracted and not paying attention. I was touchy because this was an important moment for me and my girls and therefore I felt unusually sensitive to adverse circumstances. And when I think about it, we still had a good time. We are blessed to have been able to visit NYC and see such important historic sights. In the eternal realm of things, this circumstance was just a tiny blip.

Still, the manager could have been a little more… human. It was an honest mistake.

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