Archive for July, 2014

Iron-Rich Foods

Thursday, July 10th, 2014
The clams in these fritters are high in iron.

The clams, egg, and, parsley in these fritters are high in iron.

Yesterday I visited my friends at the television program Mass Appeal. We were originally scheduled to make simple appetizers and an even simpler dessert.

The producers decided to devote the entire episode to the worthy cause of donating blood, however, and asked me whether I would change the menu to feature foods with a lot of iron.

Here’s what I know about iron in food. (I started to tell this story on the air but got distracted; I’m still learning how to work on TV!)

My great-grandfather died of pernicious anemia in 1917 at the age of 56. He was a physician—but in 1917 even physicians didn’t know that iron could help with anemia.

His granddaughter, my mother, was understandably worried about anemia. When my brother and I were growing up, our mother served us liver on a fairly regular basis in order to make sure we had enough iron in our diets.

It was NOT my favorite food, and my mother learned to watch me carefully as I ate it to make sure I didn’t surreptitiously feed most of my portion to the dog.

As I grew older, I realized (and quickly informed my mother) that the liver was unnecessary. As this chart from the Red Cross illustrates, any number of foods—most of them tastier than liver, in my opinion—contain that mineral.

So of course I told the producers at Mass Appeal that I would be delighted to whip up a little iron.

We began by making clam fritters and spinach salad. Here is the video.

And here are the recipes. The fritter recipe is (slightly) adapted from Narragansett Beer; the company kindly provided me with this formula for an upcoming book!

Next, we made Kate’s Fantastic Ginger Snaps from my Pudding Hollow Cookbook. The Kate in the recipe is Kate Stevens of Charlemont, Massachusetts, who generously shared her recipe with me.

These cookies get iron from both molasses and ginger—and I have never served them to anyone who has not fallen in love with them.

Here’s the video.

And here is the recipe.

I’ll be back on Mass Appeal in a couple of weeks playing with zucchini. In the meantime, I hope my readers will make sure to eat foods with lots of iron—and of course to donate blood.

snapsweb

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The Last Bastion of Sexism

Tuesday, July 1st, 2014
My neighbors' pig doing its thing.

My neighbors’ pig doing its thing.

As July 4 approaches I know I should write about grilling. Here’s the problem: I’m not a griller. Grilling is one of the few areas of life in which I am sexist. (The others all involve home repair.) Somehow I always wait until men arrive to haul out the charcoal and the grill.

I apologize to the men in my life—and to the goddesses of feminism. One of these days I’ll work on my grilling skills. Not before this Friday, however.

So here’s my compromise: a sauce that can accompany grilled meats, poultry, or vegetables.

My neighbors the Gillans recently held a pig roast. The whole thing was incredibly impressive, and the meat was delicious. At the end of the weekend, even after giving away lots of meat to their houseguests, they had quite a bit of pork on bones remaining.

I hate to see good meat and bones get thrown out so I volunteered to take the leftovers home. (Did I mention that the Gillans are REALLY GREAT neighbors? They gladly gave me the pork.) I boiled the whole thing for a while with onions and spices so that it was easy to get the meat off the bones. I used quite a bit of the meat in a tasty bean dish.

There was still leftover meat.

So … I threw together some barbecue sauce. I know I cheated a bit with this sauce by using a ketchup base. Our tomatoes aren’t in season yet, however, so the ketchup was expedient. The resulting sauce turned out just the way I like it, with lots of sweet and lots of tart.

I wish my readers a glorious fourth! May all of you, female and male, grill up a storm.

barbecue porkweb

Kansas City-ish Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients:

extra-virgin olive oil as needed for sautéing
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chili powder
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup catsup (use all-natural and/or organic ketchup)
1/3 cup molasses (or molasses mixed with maple syrup)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
a few shakes of hot sauce
2 tablespoons water

Instructions:

Warm the oil in a skillet. Sauté the onion for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, and toss it around in the pan for 30 seconds. Stir in the chili powder, salt, and pepper, and stir to release their oils. When the spices start drying out in the pan, stir in the remaining ingredients.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Let the sauce cool briefly; then put it in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the blended sauce into a clean glass jar, bring it to room temperature, and then refrigerate it. This sauce is best made the day before you want to use it. It should last for at least 2 weeks.

Makes about 1-1/2 cups.

girlcrackerweb

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