The ABC's of Cooking: B Is for Bacon

Bacon rocks, pure and simple, in a world where flavors blend and come together in four-part harmony. I’m not talking about a breakfast of bacon strips, hash browns, easy-over eggs and sourdough toast, drenched in butter. No, when it comes to bacon, a little bit’ll do you in more dishes than you can shake a spatula at. 

I have been even luckier than most because I have access to farm-grown bacon. This is not the kind of bacon that you could cook in strips; I dice it up in different sizes, depending on what I am preparing, and use the grease to sauté up my onions/shallots/garlic, et al. Bacon grease with a follow-up of homegrown chicken or bone broth, is my favorite way to sauté veggies. 

When farm-grown bacon is not available, though, I am simply buying my uncured, natural bacon with no toxic additives, and putting it into the freezer. Whenever I need it, I pull it out of the freezer, give it a while on the counter, and then use my big iron to chop a chunk of it up, the same knife I use to cut up a whole chicken. Any knife will do as long as it is sharp. If your knives need sharpening, Scott is at the Laytonville market one Monday per month, so bring in your knives so you can be on top of your game.

I do not use enough bacon to dominate the flavor of any dish; I try to never allow one spice or herb to stand out in a meal. Ideally, the different flavors blend and create the desired taste as a team. I usually add salt at the end of any other spices or herbs and I do it incrementally. You can always add more but you can’t take it out once it’s in. I find it is worth the extra minute to be careful with salt.

I made a side dish of cabbage, chard and baby turnip greens yesterday for lunch, to go with my chicken in white wine and mustard sauce. As always, I started with three or four ounces of diced bacon so as to use the grease to sauté the shallot and a couple of cloves of fresh garlic. These days it could even be green garlic, since it is in season. I added a quarter-cup of balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon of maple syrup to the shallots/garlic, along with salt and black pepper before I put in the greens.

I use a giant wok so that when I add the chopped greens with a medium fire on underneath, I can put the lid on for a few minutes to reduce the volume of greenery. And I add broth as needed to make sure that the balsamic vinegar and maple syrup mix evenly with all of those greens.

I use bacon as a base ingredient for chili con carne, for cooking a pot of pinto beans, for shepherd’s pie, chili chicken, rancho steak, any kind of stew or soup, side dishes of greens, cabbage, baby turnips, zucchini, green beans (!), German potato salad and so many more dishes.

The amount of bacon I use is not prohibitively expensive, as I can get three or four meals out of one twelve-ounce package of store-bought bacon. Expensive enough, for sure, but I feel worth the cost.

The flavor of the bacon should balance itself with additions of such ingredients as fresh onions/shallots/leeks/scallions, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, basil, black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, Tamari sauce, garlic and any others you choose to work with. 

Bacon goes with almost everything and adds one more layer of flavor to your meal. Being the first step in cooking your dish, the smell of bacon mixes with the onions, garlic, et al, and infuses into your kitchen an intoxicatingly delicious fragrance. 

It’s enough to make you think you are living on a farm.

The ABC's of Cooking: A Is for Attitude or "Smooth Cooking"

Just as going on vacation with a two-year-old really isn’t a vacation, cooking for enjoyment and cooking for hungry kids/spouse are not the same experience. Having ravenous loved ones breathing down your neck does not make for especially enjoyable cooking. 

With this thought in mind, I would like to do a series  on cooking for enjoyment, the ABC’s of culinary arts if you like. Key points include the fact that I am retired and that I have access to HappyDayFarms, which covers a broad range of ingredients for meals. These include freshly harvested seasonal veggies, spices, herbs, farm-grown chickens, pork, lamb and turkey, and locally-grown beef.

These spring days I get regular infusions of fresh eggs, farm-produced lard, garlic, green garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, scallions, kale, boy choy, baby turnips, salad greens, radishes, baby carrots, beets, cabbage, potatoes and whatever else is being harvested from both farm and greenhouses (which survived the snow). I have old-growth rosemary, sage, thyme and oregano plants, and get seasonal infusions of basil, cilantro and parsley from the farm.

With access to whole chickens, ground turkey, lamb roasts, locally grown beef from Meadow and bacon, I have the basis for a multitude of lunch possibilities. All are tried and true meals which have received two thumbs up from farm staff, which means they were tasty and everyone went back to work on full stomachs.

Using the 35 years I served as Annie’s sous chef, I have become as comfortable in the kitchen as I used to feel in the classroom. The avenues I choose to follow in the kitchen do not lead me into unknown neighborhoods, so my level of comfort is sky high, not to be confused with my bong.

This is turkey broth

I like defrosting two chickens over twenty-four hours, cutting them up, cooking the breasts in water separately for the broth, and then cooking the bones in water for twelve hours afterwards. I get chicken and bone broth, two essential ingredients in a number of dishes. 

There is also an amazing amount of boneless dog food to be had from cooking a chicken carcass for twelve hours. Both the bone broth and the undesirable parts of the chicken that remain when we are finished eating what we like, are then jarred up and refrigerated for use over the next couple of weeks. 

I use broth in countless dishes, including stews, soups, chili, casseroles, shepherd’s pie, chicken cacciatore, pots of pinto beans, rice, including Spanish rice, cooking greens in my wok, scalloped potatoes and any number of other dishes which use a liquid base. Substituting broth for oil when cooking veggies is a tasty and healthy alternative.

So in reading any of the following pieces, beginning with B Is for Bacon, bear in mind that the scenario I will paint is one of a leisurely process, with time always on my side. Cooking with time constraints is the worst, so I don’t. 

I have an unorthodox sleep schedule, which I am endeavoring to correct, but it still means I am up before the roosters have even had their coffee. I therefore have the time and the inclination to cook at a pace that befits a man who keeps a bong within easy reach.

Just not close enough to have to worry about errant elbows…

Trouble in the Attic or TIA

Gotta say, kick-starting this blog isn’t much different than talking Old Paint, my 62 VW Bus, into winding up the rubber band enough to get me to school. But I experienced a little trouble in the attic last week, a Transient Ischemic Attack, what amounted to a small stroke.

I had never even heard the term before, which might explain why I couldn’t put my finger on it, but more likely it was because I was just plain disoriented. Not the kind of disoriented, when you have just taken the gnarliest bong rip in the history of the universe, and your head rush threatens to send you sprawling. And you are smiling like a cheshire cat.

No, the kind where you make the same statement a dozen times, each time as though you were submitting a fresh and witty comment. It was cute the first several times, but like the recent snow, it wore out its welcome soon enough.

The whole “let’s repeat something over and over again” reminds me of the time I suffered a concussion, back in 1973, while in the army and home on leave from South Korea.

I don’t remember anything at all about that day except for the doctor down at the VA hospital in Long Beach. He was smiling ear-to-ear, while asking me in a jovial tone, “So how are you feeling, Private O’Neill, about returning to Korea after your leave? This here amnesia of yours isn’t tied into that, now is it?”

I was told that I asked one question over and over that day, and always as though it were the first time: “Is Pa bummed out?” I called me father, Pa. Me father was not a fan of football, in general, and even less a fan of tackle football, which is what I was doing when I got clobbered. Hence the repetitive nature of my question.

Obviously, there was a loose screw up in my noggin back in the day. So when the same thing happened last week, and I finally stopped spinning around the track inside my head, I decided to pay a visit to my friends at the Laytonville Clinic. Though they did not ask me anything about Korea, they definitely felt that I was on leave, if not of my senses, at least part of them.

“Can you come back in the morning at 10:30?” that nice Holly asked me, and I said yes. Course, to save my life, I could not keep that time of my appointment on the white board of my brain: It kept on getting erased. I mean, sure I could have just checked the card Holly gave me, but that would have been too easy.

It was also hard to figure out that it was Wednesday, and when I did, I had to do it again. I thought Obama was President and that it sure would be nice if the car I was trying to load my stuff in would quit moving around on me.

I was dazed and confused, and downright lost. I mean, more so than normal. My son Ben was available to give me a ride down to Howard, where I was admitted to the ER. While there I got to go for a ride in the tunnel where they do CAT scans and MRI’s. I am not a fan of that tunnel.

But being able to do it provided the Pros from Dover with a negative for any continuing signs of a stroke, big or small.

Meanwhile, Casey replaced Ben and hung out with me until I was released. Though I was eventually told I could drive, I did not have to worry about that, as Casey was there to give me a ride. And when I got home, I found that Lito had come over earlier and started up the big stove. Made me feel warm and fuzzy that my sons have my back.

The obvious question is, what caused the trouble in my attic? The answer is not so obvious, but much of what I eat comes from the farm, I am not into alcohol, my blood pressure is spot on, I exercise daily and I am within ten pounds of the weight my doctor wants to see me at. 

Ben is going to schedule an appointment with a neurologist to see what's up with that. I also have a sleeping disorder and it has been way too long since I paid a visit to the dentist, so I am starting with these three items. I stopped at the Laytonville Dentist’s Office today and made an appointment, and I spent a couple of hours with Claudia on Monday, getting a plan of action for my sleeping issues. She is also going to do a hypnotherapy session with me so I can sit in the dentist’s chair without getting claustrophobic. 

So my trouble in the attic is a bit more than dusty cobwebs and trunks of old clothes, but whatcha gonna do? I’ve got to get things sorted out and put back in order, because I am only seventy years old. I have plenty of gas in the tank and my kitchen is just getting used to me hanging out in here. I still have a cookbook to put together, and I have a five-year-old grandson, who is getting pretty good as a sous chef. 

What’s a little trouble in the attic here and there, among friends?