Cooking with Iron

A few weeks ago, I stopped in at the doctor's office for a prick of my finger and a surprising revelation. "You're a little anemic," the doctor told me. This might explain, as I understood him, why I would get out of breath so easily walking a flight of stairs, why I would arrive home at two in the afternoon and think only of sleep, sleep, sleep. I had hoped he'd mention something about how a low iron count would also explain my inability to jump-start a simple exercise plan. However, I suspect that issue has more to do with "lazy" and "stubborn". At any rate, I left the doctor's office and headed straight to the store for supplements.

Here's the thing, though. Vitamins are my nemesis.

A strong gag reflex ensures that any time I have to swallow a pill of substantial girth (or of any girth), I take a series of steps that hint I might also suffer from OCD:

1. Place pill on tongue.
2. Fill mouth with water.
3. Toss back head, one...two times.
4. Feign to swallow.
5. Toss head again, one...two...three.
6. THIS time, swallow.
7. Wait. Gag.
8. One more toss.
9. Choke it down, dammit.
10. Follow with a tight fist, a foot stomp, and the hard crust from a piece of toast.

It's the same every time, so dramatic that my kids join in the fun, imitating me in the middle of a head toss. Since I manage to take only half the recommended amount, I boost my iron in other ways, including one that fires up my Texas roots and honors my grandmother: cooking with iron.

When I got married, one of my friends gave my husband and me a big cast-iron skillet. There's something primal about a cast-iron skillet. You're not messing around when you've got one sizzling on the stove. Mine has seen years of cooking, off and on, but it hits the gas flame much more often these days. This post on Kitchen Daily lists three healthy reasons to cook with iron, one of them being that meals made in skillets really does increase your intake of a necessary mineral.

"While cast iron doesn't leach chemicals, it can leach some iron into your food ... and that's a good thing. Iron deficiency is fairly common worldwide, especially among women. . . . Cooking food, especially something acidic like tomato sauce in a cast-iron skillet can increase iron content, by as much as 20 times."

I cook plenty in my skillet, including tomato sauce. But, this week, I fried up some Catfish.

Catfish is (surprisingly) one of the dishes my son will eat, willingly, so I cook it up knowing I'm killing two birds with one stone: fortifying my diet and tempting his taste buds. Catfish is easy to make, as long as you pay attention, and frying it in the skillet makes me feel old school and Texan all over again.

Pan-Fried Catfish, from AllRecipes.com:

Ingredients

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 (4 ounce) fillets catfish
• 1 cup milk
• 4 cloves garlic, minced

Directions

In a mixing bowl, stir together cornmeal, cayenne pepper, paprika and onion powder. Mix well. Pour mixture onto a large sheet of waxed paper.

1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
2. Pour milk into a medium bowl. Dip catfish filets into milk and hold up and let the milk drip off. Roll the milk-soaked filet in the cornmeal mixture until completely covered. Set aside.
3. Fry the garlic in the hot skillet, but do not burn. Add the coated catfish filets and cook for 5 to 7 minutes on each side, sprinkling salt on the fish after each turn. Cook until golden brown and fish flakes easily with a fork. Drain on paper towels.

One note, if you make this dish, get everything set and ready to go before you start frying. When the recipe says "do not burn" the garlic, that means watch it close. Really, you only want to let it cook for a minute or two before dropping in your catfish.

For some real Texas fun, cook up a batch of hush puppies for the side.

How do you measure up with your iron? And, what do you do to make sure you get enough?

*Vitamin photo credit: bradley j on flickr.com. The catfish is all mine.

Guest Post: My Sibling Rivalry with Food

Please welcome our guest, Hallie Sawyer, freelance writer and blogger (Write For Me).

* photo credit: kate hiscock on flickr.com

I grew up with food as another member of my family. He was a self-centered bastard, too. Our days seemed to revolve around him, especially Sundays. After church, we either went to brunch with him or we had a special crockpot meal prepared. I spent my days after school concocting funky snacks with him, one of my favorites was saltine crackers topped with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

Yes, I just wrote that.

My family was obsessed with food. We went out to dinner a LOT; there wasn't a new restaurant we didn't try. Chinese, Mexican, Italian, you name it, we ate it. And no dinner was complete without at least a couple of appetizers. If you asked my father...actually, you didn't have to ask him. He loudly proclaimed this after every restaurant meal, "That was THE best [fill in the blank] I have ever had." It became the running joke in the family which was one he never seemed to get. He still says it to this day.

Food was our connector. It was an easy conversation at the table, a way to keep things on the surface. Because we sure as hell didn't want to look at what was lurking below. A obnoxiously-stocked fridge, a packed cooler for the boat, a brand new restaurant to try, they were all just part of the family. A very dysfunctional one.

The lightbulb started to illuminate when I was a junior in high school and I was no longer hipless. Well, I still didn't really have hips as much as I had thighs. I was flabby and I still had my baby face. When my cheeks started rivaling my hair in size, I knew I was in trouble. I started to take my tennis seriously that year when my high school team started training with a tennis pro at a local athletic club. Our trainer had played tennis in college and his passed along his athletic training on to us. The club had a weight room and my mom allowed me to join. It changed my life.

I researched and purchased weight-lifting books and became a vegetarian. Visible fat completely grossed me out, therefore I boycotted eating meat altogether.Grizzle was the enemy. This drove my father absolutely crazy. My stubborn streak is wide and long and he eventually stopped harassing me about it. I got in better shape but something was still off.

In college, I continued my vegetarian diet but I didn't figure out that my biggest culprit to my continuing battle with my body was my love affair with carbs. As a vegetarian, carbs had become my new best friend. My thighs were stubborn,too. I started taking the first unofficial weight loss pill: aspirin, caffeine, and ephedrine. (A guy friend obsessed with his body image passed that little heart attack laden piece of advice onto me.) I lost weight but then I also lost muscle; I looked sick. Again, self-sabotage. Along with my stubborn streak, I also have a thick skull.

Now, at almost forty years old, my light bulb is burning bright. I have finally figured out what food is supposed to be. Fuel. That's it. Nothing more. Don't get me wrong. I still love food but I'm not obsessed with it. It has to be exactlywhat it was meant to be. Sustenance. My German genetics and a fourth of my life spent eating horrible are stacked against me but did I mention I was stubborn?

If I want to have a healthy body, inside and out, I need to have protein with every meal and every snack. Carbs are a bare necessity and veggies are my new bestfriends. If I had known then what I know now, I might have had a whole different view on life. I might have been a much more confident person growing up.

Food wouldn't have been my evil twin as much as it would have been my biggest fan.

Hallie Sawyer is a freelance and historical fiction writer, with publishing credits in KC Parent magazine. She grew up in northeast Nebraska but now lives in Kansas City with her husband and three children. As a health and fitness enthusiast, she now looks at her relationship with food as a partnership and no longer as a high school crush.

 

Bonus to the Giveaway: A Guest Post by Sandra Beasley

On Tuesday, I gave you a sneak peek at Sandra Beasley's memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. Today, I have something even better: a guest post by Sandra herself, in which she gives us a taste of her poetry, more of her memoir, and a glimpse into her life on the road.

THE VAGABOND DIET

photo credit: Matthew Wordman

I love to eat. And I love to cook. Please trust me on those two things before I tell you the rest: I have severe and lifelong allergies to to milk, goat's milk, egg, soy, beef, shrimp, mango, cucumber, some tree nuts, mustard, some melons, and swordfish. So while yes, I love to eat--and yes, I love to cook--my palate and my recipe book might be a little different from yours.

Since spring 2010, I have been on an endless if exhilarating book tour. Anyone who travels will tell you how merciless it can be on the belly. But when you're traveling with food allergies, the risk goes beyond the realm of gaining five pounds. Whether in New York City (this week), or Madison, Wisconsin (last week), or Miami, Florida (the week before that), I am constantly talking business over lunch or joining hosts for a dinner before a bookstore reading. There is often pressure to try a local specialty or share a plate. In these moments I live in fear of being reduced to a hivey, wheezing, anaphylactic mass. Where will the nearest hospital be? Will my health insurance cover me there?

In "Allergy Girl," a sequence that appeared in my first poetry collection, Theories of Falling, I describe the helplessness my parents felt in trying to feed a newborn while on the road:

My parents agree on one rule: Don't break the baby.
They pour quarters into the arcade game of adulthood,
working the mechanical claw right, left, right, back,
aiming for the stuffed bear, missing. A clutch

of cheesecake. A buttermilk biscuit. Each time
my lips swelling, breath skipping. They pace the E.R.
Did we break the baby? My mother dissects labels:
casein, protein, lactylate. Easier to cook from scratch.

Later, revisiting the incident in Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, I filled in the narrative details:

Take the Biscuit Incident: On a trip through Nashville, after hours of
driving with a squalling, hungry three-year-old, they checked into Opryland
and tried to figure out how to quell my growling stomach. My
father’s plate came with a plain-looking biscuit on the side.

“You barely had a crumb,” my mom said, still defensive after all these
years. “We didn’t know it was buttermilk.” I began wheezing and hiving,
spluttering at the liquid Benadryl they tried to ease down my throat. They
waited, watching closely, unsure what to do. After an hour, I calmed
down—probably as much from exhaustion as recovery—and fell asleep.

The next day my father was tied up in a conference, and my mother
would not drive in an unfamiliar city. “The worst part was going back to
that same hotel restaurant the next morning,” she admitted, “and having to
try again. We didn’t know where else to take you.”

Over the years I've developed my collection of short cuts for eating meal after meal after meal on the road. Make sure the server knows "tree nuts" includes pine nuts and pestos. When in doubt, order the french fries. Don't even step into a pizza joint. I've accepted that my cravings might have to yield to my common sense, and I've gotten used to paying full price for an entree stripped of the chi-chi garnishes that justified the $5 upcharge in the first place.

I've spent the last four days in New York. On one level, my index of the trip's adventures reads...

-Food Allergy Initiative's ball at the Waldorf Astoria;

-Meeting with my editor at Crown;

-Date on Cornelia Street;

-Meeting with my assistant editor at W. W. Norton;

-Meeting with my literary agent;

-Interview for TRIP CITY, an online Brooklyn-curated arts salon.

On another level, my mind indexes...

-safe halibut, fancy dessert fruit plate (picked around the cantaloupe);

-hijiki and salmon maki (success!);

-pasta with mussels (convinced the kitchen to switch out an egg-y pasta for linguine);

-quinoa salad (sent back for de-cucumber-ing);

-fried plantains (the Cuban equivalent of my standby, french fries);

-hummus & carrot sticks (good but for $11, I wish I'd been able to eat the pita).

Soon I'll be home, this time for a month. That is an eternity in the vagabond's world. I can't wait to fill my refrigerator with arugula, peppers, avocados, roasted chicken, wild rice. Breakfast? Almonds, bananas, orange juice. Every day: the simple and the Sandra-friendly.

My favorite meal of the last month on the road was not in New York at all. It was actually a bowl of potato-leek soup at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse in Madison, Wisconsin. Not because it was exotic or rich; it was rustic and, if anything, it could have used a little salt. But before ordering I got to look at the hand-lettered index card where the vegan chef had written down the handful of ingredients. I felt taken care of with each hearty, safe spoonful.

Sometimes, your appetite is not for what's exotic or rich. Sometimes, it's the comfort food you need--the comfort that, wherever else the day takes you, it won't be to the emergency room.

~

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl was a finalist in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Food & Cooking, and Publisher's Weekly calls it an "intelligent and witty memoir." Sandra Beasley is an award-winning poet and the 2011 Writer-In-Residence Howard County's Poetry and Literature Society. Check out her website here, follow her on Twitter, or like her page on Facebook. 

And, for you Readers...We're still giving away a copy of this excellent book, but you don't have to go clicking around town to enter. To make it easy, leave a comment here if you haven't already dropped your name in the comment section on Tuesday's post. We'll draw for the winner on Monday, December 12th.

How's that for hospitality?

Day trips and pumpkins lead straight to the kitchen.

This blog is the perfect venue to introduce you to a dear friend and a food confidante: Sarah, author of the blog Celiac in the City. Sarah and I work our day jobs together, but during our off times - or during a spontaneous coffee run - we talk food. Food allergies. Food substitutions. Food frustrations. I'm the mom of a child with egg and nut allergies, and Sarah faces her own personal food challenges. She doesn't let it get to her, though. In fact, she's embraced the challenge by starting up a blog of her own and converting recipes like a pro.

Who am I kidding, she is a pro. She's my go-to person. And, if you're looking for gluten-free recipes, or restaurants with gluten-free menus, or some gluten-free fun (she organizes a get-together every month in our area), then Sarah should be your go-to person, as well.

Today, Sarah dresses up her guest post with some lovely photos and teases our tastebuds with a dee-lish recipe.

*****

Hello, Writing Up an Appetite friends!

Happy to be hanging out over here today – honored that Christi asked me to stop by and do a guest post. My home territory is over at Celiac in the City – A girl. Gluten free. Loves food. Will travel. That pretty much sums up who I am. Feel free to stop by sometime and check in on my latest adventures.

Two weekends ago, we were out on the Harley, in short sleeves. Warm rays on our faces. Camera strapped securely around my neck. Snapping pictures of the changing season.

As I edited the photos, I found this one, at the very end of them all.

Not only did it make me smile – watching the kiddos run around at the pumpkin farm, on a mission to find THE best pumpkin, but it also gave me an idea for today’s post.

It was nearly 80 degrees that day. And although I loved every minute of that weather, as the heat kicked in this week, I was reminded that fall has arrived (with high heat bills to follow).

One way I ease my summer-lovin’ self into fall is baking.

And lots of it.

These pumpkin spice cookies will heat up your place and make it smell heavenly. You will be tempted to eat one right out of the oven. As an experienced baker the girl who burned her tongue eating one straight from the oven, I will tell you this is not the best idea.

They are moist cookies. Very moist. So you don’t want to put them in a sealed container to store them. Just leave them out or drape a towel over the tray.

You’ll notice the recipe uses gluten-free flours. It’s how I roll. Because I have Celiac Disease, my baking world has seen some changes over the last three years. If you are able to eat regular, all-purpose flour, then by all means you sure can. Just use 2 ½ cups of all-purpose flour instead of the GF flour blend and xanthan gum.

Let’s warm up your kitchen.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes approx. 36 cookies

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Unless you bake using a Silpat, (or other baking mat) you will need to grease your baking sheets.

12 oz gluten-free flour blend: 4oz each of sorghum flour, sweet rice flour & tapioca starch (or 2 ½ cups of all-purpose flour)

*you can use a mixture of any gluten-free flours/starches: white/brown rice flour, millet flour, potato starch, cornstarch, etc.

1 teaspoon xanthan gum (omit if using all-purpose flour)

1teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼  teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼  teaspoon ground ginger

*you can play with the spices, use nutmeg, allspice, etc. instead of the pumpkin pie spice, or use a mixture of both, as I did here)

½  cup sugar

½  cup brown sugar

1 egg (see egg substitutes here)

½  cup butter softened

1 ½  cup pumpkin puree

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine flour mix and xanthan gum with baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Set aside. Cream sugars and butter. Add in pumpkin, egg,  and vanilla. Beat until nice and smooth. Slowly add in flour mix, until well blended. Drop by tablespoons onto baking sheets.

 Bake 15-18 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are firm enough to hold their shape. (I used a 1 ½ tablespoon scoop for mine, so they took around 18 minutes) You might like yours baked a tad longer. Go for it. Let them rest a few minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to cooling racks. When cooled completely, frost.

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

The thing about frosting is that you can make it any way you’d like. So take these measurements as a guide. Throw it all in a bowl and beat ingredients to your desired texture.

2 cups powdered sugar

1 package cream cheese
1/4 cup butter

2 tablespoons real maple syrup

1 teaspoon cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice, or skip it if you’d like)

Maybe frosting isn’t your thing (it shocks me when people say this). That’s okay too, you can serve them up with just a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Now grab a cup of coffee or a chai. I recommend eating at least two.

Read more from Sarah, “Celiac in the City,” on her website, www.celiaccity.com, like her page on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter @celiacinthecity.

Three Keys to Success in the Kitchen (and with your writing)

I learn a lot about writing a novel when I watch my husband, Bill, work in the kitchen. He doesn't cook often, but when he is called to the stove, he arms himself with determination, sharp tools, and an apron. A recipe acts only as the structure for a dish that he makes his own, and he rarely experiences (what I like to call) "Dinner Fail." Maybe he's always lucky with a chef's knife and a wooden spoon, but every time I watch him, I see him incorporate the same three techniques.

1. Focus.

When my husband is in the kitchen making dinner, everyone else is out of the kitchen. There's a look in his eye that says, "talk to me if you must, but don't expect a response." He has a plan, and he knows that success depends on his own execution of the plan. Rambunctious kids in the hallway won't pull him away, and status updates or tweets never cross his mind. In fact, he isn't even on Facebook (oh, the horror!).

When he's cooking, he's just cooking.

And, he never walks away from a recipe in the middle of measuring ingredients.

2. Clean as you go.

So, I guess I should clarify that "just cooking" bit: when he's cooking, he's all about the whole process of meal-making. "Clean as you go" is a given. Let the dirty dishes mount while you chop, stir, and simmer, and the whole process becomes overwhelming. You run out of counter space; the recipe goes missing; chaos ensues.

Welcome, Dinner Fail. 

3. Spice it up.

I mean, Really. Surprise your audience.

Once, when my husband was in charge of making chili, he threw together more than just onions, meat and beans. He searched the cabinets and the pantry for something totally unexpected, because what's a cook if he isn't inventive? That pot of chili melded together the flavors of cayenne pepper, Tabasco sauce, coffee grounds, and maple syrup.

That's right. Coffee grounds. Never mind the syrup.

It was a "Bill" original, and, well, we're still talking about that chili.

But cooking dinner and writing a novel aren't exactly the same, you say. A novel doesn't get written in two hours or less, and it's much more complicated than "chop, stir, and simmer."

Okay, but there's still plenty to take away here.

When I sit down to write, I could shut down the internet, focus on my task at hand -- be it word count or page edits, filling in plot holes or looking at structure. And, while shitty first drafts have a definite place in my writing process, there is some planning I can do, before I sit down and after my writing time is finished, that may help me organize my limited time more efficiently. Also, I don't need to be afraid to spice up the story with whatever I imagine. As James Scott Bell says in his book, Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, cooking - like writing - is "a formula [with] a whole range of outcomes. . . . You still have to add your spices, your skills, your talent" to make the story your own and a success.

And, that's what I'm after, in the kitchen or in writing: a "Christi" original. 

Are there techniques you use in the kitchen that you could be using at your writing desk?

~

* photo credits: 1. Good enough..., Thierry Draus on Flickr; 2. Spices, Maks Karochkin on Flickr

Perfect Sauteed Tofu Cubes Every Single Time

By Lisa

Just a little over a week ago, E. Victoria Flynn and Christi Craig and I were tossing around the idea of a group blog over hot-from-the-brick-oven Flying Cow Pizza from Oconomowoc's Farmers Market (I ordered one with artichokes and olives and left not so much as a crumb) and coffee/tea from Whelan's Coffee and Ice Cream. Thank you to the kind worker at Whelan's for documenting our day (we took it as a good sign that we arrived color-coordinated):

Lisa, Christi, Victoria

The result of our conversation? Writing Up an Appetite: Wisconsin Writers in the Kitchen, and I am delighted to start us off with the answer to a question I hear often, both from seasoned cooks unfamiliar with tofu and from young adults who want to learn to make more vegetarian meals: How does one cook tofu so that it's not a flavorless, unappetizing blob?

The secret to crispy tofu that will absorb the sauce of your favorite dish is a three-step process. First, a towel soaks up excess moisture. Then the intense heat of sauteing browns the tofu. Finally, the dry heat of baking firms it up. Time consuming? A little, but the result is well worth the wait. If you thought all tofu had to be bland and mushy, you are in for a real treat.

1. Start with one pound extra firm tofu. Remove from package and drain.

2. Cut in half to form two blocks, then slice each block to halve the width.

3. Lay the four slices evenly on a clean, non-fuzzy kitchen towel.

4. Wrap the towel around the tofu.

5. Weight down with a heavy bowl or pan for at least 30 minutes. The towel will absorb excess moisture from the tofu.

6. Unwrap the tofu and cut it into cubes.

7. In a wok or large skillet, heat a thin layer of peanut or other oil (I like a garlic-flavored stir-fry oil). When oil is hot (and not before!), add tofu cubes, salt lightly, and saute until golden brown, stirring occasionally. (After this step, if you wish, you can marinate the sauteed cubes for 20-30 minutes in your favorite marinade or sauce.)

8. Transfer cubes to a baking dish, and bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes, until firm and a little "puffy." You can make these ahead of time and refrigerate for later use (warning: very high snack-ability factor, so you might want to make extra). This is another point in the process when you can marinate the cubes, if you wish.

9. Add to stir fry, pad thai, kung pao, spaghetti sauce, or whatever catches your fancy!