Nana Googles and Cooks

Summer will officially end this week, but I’ve felt it coming.  There has been a chill in the air when I go out to the hot tub at night and last night it rained.  Every day I have been harvesting tomatoes from our tiny garden and I keep thinking that each harvest will be the last, but they keep on coming.  I had so many today I had to make another batch of tomato sauce,

I have written before about my lack of culinary skills, so making tomato sauce was a challenge for me.  I kept my laptop with me in the kitchen so I could Google for emergency directions.   I found a recipe that didn’t require exotic ingredients and collected the necessary equipment.  The first step was to peel the tomatoes.  I vaguely remembered that it involved boiling water and a slotted spoon.  Google found me explicit directions and soon tomato skins were effortlessly sliding off the fruit.

The recipe called for several cloves of garlic.  Is a clove just one of the sections of the bulb or the whole bulb?  Google once again answered my question.  One of the segments is a clove of garlic.

The preparation process probably took an hour:  Google, skin, chop and stir.  The pot of sauce has been simmering all day.  It has reduced down to half the original volume.  We had spaghetti for dinner, with what the spouse called V-5 sauce, because it has five vegetables.   

I read a blog ( The Simple Dollar) about  frugality and once a week there is a feature about frugal tactics that might not save money.  Making your own tomato sauce probably falls into the no savings category.  Even though the tomatoes were free from my garden and there was no cost for my labor, I have no idea what it cost for that giant pot of vegetables to bubble on the stove for hours.  So we had one free meal of tomato sauce tonight and as soon as the sauce cools down, I’ll put another five containers in the freezer.  All that work to save $2.50 on a bottle of spaghetti sauce?  I’ll have to be satisfied with the praise from my family….

Me:  “How is it?”

Son:  “It’s okay.”

Spouse:  “It  certainly has better  flavor than that bottled sauce.”

Such high praise.  I should cook more often!

Why Nana Hasn't Posted For a Few Weeks

This is the reason that I haven't posted for the past few weeks.  I'm in Austin, Texas with my granddaughters.  I borrowed my five year old granddaughter's laptop to write this.  I'm in Austin because we wanted the girls to have swimming lessons and since both their parents work, the only way that was going to happen was if Nana drove them back and forth each day.

For the past few weeks I have been the director of Camp Nana.  My sole responsibility is to keep my granddaughters, ages four and five, constructively occupied.  They have kept me running from morning to night.

Every morning we go to swimming lessons.  The girls have back to back lessons and I sit under the canopy with the parents and grandparents and cheer every accomplishment of  our respective charges. 

After swimming lessons we go home for lunch and then to the neighborhood pool for more swimming.  Despite gallons of sun screen, all three of us are quite tan.  The girls practice swimming and are dangerously confident in the water.

Late afternoon we go home to work on projects.  We have painted sun catchers and wooden princesses, done paper mosaics, and decorated cards with glitter.  Despite numerous cleanings it is still impossible to cross the kitchen floor barefoot without getting sparkly feet.  When the creative juices are flowing the glitter seems to just fly!

We don't ignore the culinary arts at Camp Nana.  Faithful readers will recall that Nana isn't especially skilled in this area.  Fortunately four and five year olds do not have discriminating palates.  We successfully made scrambled eggs and instant chocolate pudding, but not at the same meal!

We've taken field trips at Camp Nana, mostly to local play areas.  It has been over 100 every day in Austin, so last Thursday we went to the play area at the mall.  When it's 103 if Nana isn't sitting in a cool pool of water, it better be some place air conditioned.  The girls enjoyed the play area and Nana enjoyed sitting on an upholstered bench in a fully climate controlled area.

Last week one of the girls asked "Nana, tomorrow can we stop at the blow up kitty and take pictures?  So, the next day I pulled into the parking lot of the cat hospital and we all piled out of the car and took the picture above.  The blow up kitty is a lot bigger in person than it appears when you drive by it on the way to swimming lessons.  Tomorrow we're going to take pictures with the giant wild animals at the dental office.  It's true that everything is big in Texas...in Austin it's giant animal yard art!

So, that's why I haven't posted.  I am at the mercy of two little girls.  There are only so many summers in a childhood, and Nana doesn't want to miss any of them.

I'll be back to my regular posting schedule next week.

Jann aka Nana

Nana Channels Julia Child or Maybe It's Chef Boyardee

I have written here previously about my culinary legacy. My mother was English and in the English culinary tradition I grew up eating family favorites such as beans on toast, toad in the hole, and watery over-cooked vegetables. 

My palate was trained on the popular foods of the 50's and 60's. Highly processed foods were the norm...cheese whiz, Velveeta, and anything made by Hostess!  The TV dinner was invented in the 50's and it was an exciting meal when we actually got to eat one.  My parents liked an English breakfast complete with bacon and eggs fried in the grease.  My dad liked a side of fried bread too.   My brother and I liked cereal and fought over which of us would get the free prize.

I was labeled a picky eater at a young age.  I prefer to think of myself as discriminating, but  I admit that I am not an adventurous eater.  I bought a clove of garlic for the first time in my 50's.  What?  Garlic salt isn't the same thing?  Last week I cooked lentils for the first time.  The week before I cooked barley.  The beef and barley soup was a hit, the lentils and chicken sausage not so much. 

If I were just feeding myself, I would survive on grilled meat, pork and beans, and potato chips.  Well, that and snack food like microwave popcorn and M&M's.  Wash it down with a diet coke and life is pretty near perfect.

Earlier this month I visited my granddaughters in Austin.  One thing we do when I visit is cook together.  That is something of a challenge for me given my culinary background.  Early one morning Megan was eating her breakfast (healthy cereal with no sugar or free prize) and watching me make her lunch. 

"I really like when you make my lunch for me, Nana." she said. 

"Why is that?" I asked her. 

"Because you make triangles" she told me. 

It's reassuring to know that I don't need to have great cooking skills to please a five year old.  I just have to take the time to cut her sandwich into quarters.

After school that day I taught my two granddaughters a secret family recipe and let them make it themselves.  Into their cups of milk they measured two spoons of Hershey's syrup and then gently stirred. 

"Oh, look Nana!  It's turning CHOCOLATE!!!"  Megan shrieked.

They had never made chocolate milk and it was as if Nana had performed a miracle.  I guess I do have a few culinary skills to pass on to the next generation after all.