For better or for worse, in squash casserole and in health.

Food did not factor in to my decision to ask Kris to marry me on Christmas Eve in 1997. I mean don’t get me wrong, the smorgasbord that her family put together at Granny Pat and Pap-paw Bud’s house on Christmas Eve back then was an unwaiveringly direct route to a man’s heart, but we were young and in love and I had (hm. . . hmm. . . ) other things on my mind at the time.

I had begun wooing Kris with food early on in our relationship. As I recall, we celebrated the one month anniversary of our first date over a French Silk Chocolate Pie that I made from scratch from a recipe out of one of my mother’s cookbooks. It was not something I had ever made before and I still think that it didn’t set up exactly right but it was chocolate and I was hoping it would seem exotic or at least romantic. It was after all French Silk Chocolate Pie. I mean give me a break already! We were young and in love and by the way, that was March of 1991 and we have now been married for twelve years so I must have done something right!

Anyway, at some point I knew Kris was the one but, I honestly never gave much thought to what she might bring to the marital table, literally, pun intended.

Actually, I am incapable of describing the joy and happiness that Kris brings into my life and I can’t imagine life without her now. I am so blessed to have Kris at my side as I am recently and woefully reminded of family and the fragile and fleeting nature of human life. Right now I need to celebrate both. I need to revel in family tradition and wrap myself up in the bonds of my kindred and bask in the harmony and peace of home. I need to reassure myself of continuity and recommit to loving my loved ones. I need the kind of comfort that comes from collecting sun warmed vegetables at the farmer’s market with my kids; the peace derived from half an hour in the kitchen crying over onions, a cutting board, a huge casserole dish and several cans of Campbell’s cream of something soup. Right now, I need to stand in the tread of those who have gone before me and to feed, nourish and satisfy those who will go beyond me.

Kris brought squash casserole to the table. Kris’s squash casserole is, for me, just that quintessential comfort food. Yes, squash casserole offers that warm and satisfyingly starchy, creamy, summer sunshine yellow, goodness that we all seek from time to time. But more than that, this is the kind of food that follows blood lines through generations, that joins families and makes friends, food that is as comforting to prepare and serve as it is to eat. This casserole feeds body, mind and spirit.

Kris made squash casserole for me the first summer we were married. I think the recipe was her mom’s or maybe her grandmother’s and as I recall she had to call one or the other of them to jot it down. (An aside: I don’t specifically remember watching Kris make the casserole the first time but thinking back now, a smile sweeps across my face as I imagine her toiling in our exceedingly hot, sparse, college apartment kitchen which we had just painted a sunny but subtle and warm “firefly” yellow, ironically, it was exactly the color of summer squash.) So mind you, Kris has a written recipe for this casserole as to this day, she still rarely ventures into the kitchen without very specific written rules of engagement which she then follows with slavish precision. I've made it enough now that it has become part of my culinary repertoire and I don't need the written recipe. Besides, while I understand there is certainly a time and a place for precision and exactness, I find it infinitely more comforting to cook from course of habit than from a written recipe of rules and measures.

My Mom and Dad are hosting our big family reunion this weekend. I need to be with family and I need to feed them from an enormous crowd size pan of Kris's Summer Squash Casserole, for better or for worse, body, mind and spirit.

Kris's Summer Squash Casserole

Ingredients:

yellow summer squash
onion
stuffing style bread crumbs
2 cans of cream soup
butter
salt and pepper

Choose young tender blemish-free squash with shiny pale yellow skin. Wash and trim away the ends of the squash and slice into round disks. Peel and trim the onion. Slice and separate the onion into rings. Mix the cream soup with two cans of milk and warm gently. We usually use cream of celery but use what you and yours love. Line the bottom of a large deep casserole with a layer of squash slices and onion rings. Season the squash and onions with salt and pepper and evenly spoon over about one third of the soup. Cover with a thin layer of bread crumbs and dot with bits of butter. Repeat the layers until you get to the top of the casserole or you run out of squash. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in a 400 degree oven until the squash and onions are tender throughout. Uncover and bake until top layer of breadcrumbs are crisp and golden.

Pancakes for Sharks.

For me there really is nothing like having fifty pounds of ravenous 6 year old offspring land squarely in your abdomen at 7:00 a.m. on your day off and announcing as if it is in some way different than the other two thousand two hundred and thirty four days of his life that he is hungry. In six years time his weight has clearly increased (just ask my spleen). He has improved the speed and agility of his approach from his bedroom down the hall and subsequently the length and height of his take-off from the floor onto my groggy but panic stricken torso. He has also become unwittingly adept at communicating his urgent message of imminent starvation in a clear and concise intelligible language. After moaning loudly and writhing in pain from the impact,

(me): "Have you brushed your teeth yet?"

(Offspring #1): "No, I'm waiting until after breakfast so I get all the germies."

(me, having been outsmarted and trying to buy a moment for the pain to subside): "You need to get dressed first, O.K.?"

(Offspring #1): "I'll get dressed after breakfast. We're not going anywhere before breakfast anyway."

(me, clearly not on my A-game): "I will make you guys some breakfast as soon as your brother gets up, O.K.?"

Suddenly like a fly shooed from the cole slaw at a picnic he is gone and like the same fly he is back, immediately. Except now he brings his equally ravenous and even more tenacious little brother. They bound simultaneously into the bed with absolutely no regard for my life or limb.

(Offspring #2): "I'm hungry da-da."

(me, now defeated): "Good morning baby. Did you sleep well?"

(Offspring #2): "I'm hungry!"

Resistance is futile. Like sharks circling their prey they will not let up now until their appetites have been satisfied.

This morning, like so many others, requires immediate action. Not because I don't have time, let us recall it is my day off, but because there are two little ticking time bomb male metabolisms sitting on my chest threatening epic repercussions for any failure on my part to feed them.

My trusted and typical solution for these urgent early morning meals is a big pan of six fluffy, buttery and most importantly, fast, scrambled eggs. The boys love scrambled eggs and I love to make the boys happy but a man (read, growing boys) cannot live on eggs alone. Enter homemade instant pancake mix. To be honest, this is Nigella Lawson's recipe in which I regularly substitute whole white wheat flour. The whole white wheat flour makes these pancakes golden and slightly nutty without being suspiciously dark and grainy. It also makes me feel more paternalistically virtuous.

Homemade Instant Pancake Mix

Combine well and store:

4 cups all purpose whole white wheat flour
3 tbsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tbsp. sugar

I keep a canister of this mix made up in the cupboard. With a little help from the boys (read, circling sharks, which also helps to distract them from their grumbling stomachs) whisking together

1 cup pancake mix
1 cup milk
1 egg, and
1 tbsp. melted butter,

I can have a couple stacks of delicious kid size pancakes glistening under a slick of melted butter in a matter of mere moments. A dark amber drizzle of pure maple syrup and "VOILA!" time bombs diffused, metabolic disaster averted!

I cannot describe the joy that comes when that hungry silence falls back over the house early in the morning as my boys tuck eagerly in to their breakfast.

May you experience that kind of joy today.

The Wisdom of Tomatoes.

Please allow me to just get something out of the way.

With all the good intentions and positive energy in the world, I came down this morning and did NOT make biscuits for my boys. And by "did NOT make biscuits," I mean of course that I pulled out all the ingredients and did exactly as I have watched my mother do approximately one hundred million (100,000,000) times in that comfortable, casual, effortless way that she has in the kitchen. My result was of course as always, flat dense hard floury hockey pucks!

Those of you who know me will recall the ways in which I have suffered over biscuits in the past and those of you who don't yet, warning, this will not likely be the last you hear of the perpetual self mutilation of my culinary ego.

In the interest of preserving any hope of a cheerful productive day, I have decided to focus this, my inaugural blog entry, on a more successful recent culinary effort.

A friend of mine posted an interesting comment on facebook this morning and the irony was just the spark I needed to fire this engine.

She advised, "knowledge is being aware that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in fruit cocktail." Indeed.

And yet . . . my Grandma Webb was unquestionably possessed of immeasurable amounts of both knowledge and wisdom but she was also supremely practical and incredibly creative person, particularly in the kitchen. Grandma raised nine children starting in the 1930's in the central Appalachian mountains of West Virgina. By the time I came around she had also had a hand in raising two or three dozen grandchildren. There was another dozen or two after me but whenever there were mouths to feed or, for that matter, food to be eaten, my Grandma could go to the kitchen and produce a truly remarkable meal from what often seemed to be a bowl of leftovers in the fridge, a mason jar of something put up from last summer, and half a box of something else from the pantry under the stairs. It was often a stew or a soup or sometimes a casserole and it usually contained things that conventional "wisdom" might not combine but it was always really, really, good. Grandma's "technique" of bravely combining whatever "ingredients" she had on hand is now affectionately referred to as "Webb Stew."

It is with a wink and a nod to my Grandma Webb and a thumb of my nose to conventional "wisdom" that I raided the crisper drawer of our fridge last night for a fresh salad to accompany the leftover beans and rice from the night before. Here is my recipe for "Webb Wisdom Fruit Cocktail." Have faith my friends. It never failed Grandma.















WEBB WISDOM FRUIT COCKTAIL

1/2 fresh pineapple (diced into 1/2 inch cubes)
1 cup of fresh blueberries
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 large cucumber, peeled and seeded and diced to 1/2 inch
1/2 cup shredded carrots
juice of half a lemon
2 tbsp. salad oil
1 tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and toss to season and coat in lemon vinaigrette.

Now, there is no question that this salad will initially attract some strange looks and even an obscenely contorted expression of disgust from a chronically finicky four year old who undeniably loves each of these ingredients when served by their puritanically minimalist lonesome. However, after convincing everyone at the table that life as we know it would not come to a catastrophically painful end by tasting this salad they all ate and most importantly enjoyed my creative combination. The wonderfully sweet and slightly citrussy cherry tomatoes were from our own vines, an heirloom variety called "cerise." We also grew the cucumber, a bright white heirloom variety with a clean mild flavor and an incredible crunch. The oregano too came from my garden, primarily because that's what I had the most of. Thyme or tarragon or even mint would be great. Any good fresh berries would be a fine substitute for the blueberries and had I not been already really pushing the envelope with the delicate palates of Kris and the boys, I might have snipped in a few chives or a little green onion.

The point is when it comes to loving and providing for a family, sometimes conventional "wisdom" doesn't hold all the answers. I think one should know the rules and challenge them often. Tomatoes, it turns out, are great in "fruit cocktail."

I didn't know it then but Grandma was teaching some truly invaluable lessons when she set to work in the kitchen and this probably won't be last you hear of those lessons either. Thanks Grandma.