Gothic Granola

It’s squash season, or as I say it in my head, “skvosh.” When I can use my mom’s or my grandmother’s food processors, I jump on it. I like my squash grated.

Quick Cucumber Mint Pickle This was my third-place recipe for Wednesday's Foodie Call at ARL WFM. The ingredient was mint and the challenge was to come up with a recipe, make the recipe and get set up in two hours, and "demo" it--serve it in tiny bites with an attractive display--for another two hours. While I've watched cooking challenge shows for years, this took the cake--or the cuke. Since I'm customer service, I could use any ingredient from the entire store to cook. Being vegan and gluten-free, and it being summer (tomorrow), I gravitated towards produce.

  Every artist is a cannibal Every poet is a thief Both kill their inspiration And sing about the grief --U2, “The Fly,” from Achtung Baby (1992) Why am I sharing my signature dish? Why not. It’s carried me through pre-ganism (when I was testing out this vegan thang because I thought it would keep me safe from other issues with food…subject for another post). It’s carried me through breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks as a vegan and likewise when I became gluten-free.

This recipe is ridiculously simple. I had beet stems leftover from buying beets in November. Instead of chewing through them raw or using them in juice, I decided to tenderize them in a quick “refrigerator pickle” with sauerkraut.   For fun, I threw in some raw apple cider vinegar, caraway seeds, and German mustard.   So that the beets and acidic juices wouldn’t turn a container pink, I used a glass container.   I stuck it in the back of the fridge and forgot about it for a few hours. When I took it out, the beet stems had become slightly less chewy and the sour, salty sauerkraut had balanced their natural sweetness.   Success! Similarly, I made stinky raw daikon more palatable by grating it on a mandolin cutter and combining it with sweet crushed pineapple for a slaw of sorts. Then I ran these recipes together and made daikon kraut slaw.

In 2001, my brother and I invented Minapoo Mag , the official magazine of da cat family (of which there are 282 members with my acquisition of Jaeger). Meet Jaeger, named after the protagonist in Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder comic series. Anyway, all the cats collaboratively write Mina’s egocentric magazine.  The advice columnist is Mina’s son, Scamp, who recently turned 17.  Scamp’s not so good wit spellin’ (in the same way that da Ownie Q is not good wit crowds, srsly).  He’s one half of Da Inventor Brudderz—Scamp and Pepper—the kitties responsible for Seussian innovations in KittyWorld.

Remember that old New Jersey tourism slogan, “New Jersey and You: Perfect Together”?  Can you be a tourist this holiday, observing but not being of them?  Granted, there’s also the tourist philosophy of, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”  My family’s not from Rome (Naples and Sicily, thank you very much).