Welcome to Little Jude on Food! Yes, I’m still “Baby Jude” at heart, but I’m growing up, and I need a blog name to reflect that. Mama says she wants to revamp the design of the blog, too, but we’ll see how far she gets with that. It’s summer, after all, and we have a lot of berries to start picking.
Love, Jude
That’s medium-rare steak, marinated portabella, and Papa’s own roasted pepper & tomato sauce, all done on the grill (except for the spaghetti–that would be silly).
Though I seem to have been slacking in my writing of late, I assure you that I have been well fed (even if the food hasn’t always made it into my tummy).
I currently seek counsel. You see, I have been blessed with having a few of my recipes included in a book that’s due out later this year. (I’ll include details at a later date.) The thing is, neither Mama nor I want to have a “dot-wordpress-dot-com” address in the credit, so we feel it’s time to finally buy a domain. But we’re stumped! After all, I’m not really a baby anymore–in fact, I tried on my first pair of big-boy underpants tonight after staying dry at daycare for 2 whole days! And “Jude on Food” doesn’t really convey what this blog is all about. So Mama thought I should ask you, dear reader, for your thoughts as to what I should name my blog. Please feel free to offer any and all opinions. We will entertain each of them–and maybe that’ll give me the bump I need to start writing again.
Love,
Jude
Here I am, watering our new blueberry bushes. You know how much I love bluebies.
And to my blog. Thank you for reading. I’ve enjoyed sharing with you my adventures in eating. If you’re new to Baby Jude’s Food Blog, take a moment to read how it came about. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, I’m sure you can appreciate what I’ve been going through. Either way, comments are always welcome. What would you like to see me learn to make and eat?
Remember when it was so hot outside that only a giant, tart lemonade could cool you off?
Love, Jude
We’ve used stock in a lot of our recipes, from soup to risotto. Mama often makes vegetable stock, but on occasion, she makes chicken (or turkey) stock or seafood stock. Just like roasting a chicken, making your own stock is super simple—and the end product, at least according to Mama, is far superior to anything you’ll buy at the grocery store. (The only real drawback is having to plan ahead to use it, since you have to thaw it.)
Mama explains that there are stock purists out there who believe there’s an art to making a good stock. While Mama does lend credence to this conviction, she also feels that a down-and-dirty stock can be equally flavorful. Let’s start with a vegetable stock.
Always start with mirepoix. (Isn’t that a funny word?) It consists of carrots, celery, and onion. (And of course, these should all be organic—especially the celery.) This is the basis of all great soups and sauces. The nifty thing about a stock is that you’re going to strain it, so you don’t have to bother with all the peeling and trimming you’d normally do for something like a vegetable soup. Just rough chop about equal portions of these three vegetables, say 1 onion, 2 stalks celery, and 2 large carrots. Or thereabouts. (You really can’t screw this up…but if you’re going through the minimal trouble of making a stock, why not use a whole bag of carrots, a bunch of celery, and a few onions?)
Add a bay leaf, a few peppercorns (no salt), and a few sprigs of parsley. If you don’t have these, don’t worry about it. Mama always cuts a whole head of garlic in half and throws that in. If you have fennel or leeks or parsnips, go ahead and add them, as well. (Go easy on the fennel, though, or your stock will have a slight anise taste. You also might want to avoid beets, but hey—this is your stock.)
Put everything in a large soup pot and cover them with cold water. This is where Mama sides with the purists. Warm water leaches minerals from the pipes. Or so they say. Bring it up to a simmer—never a boil, otherwise your stock will turn cloudy. Partially cover the pot so all the yumminess doesn’t evaporate as steam, and let the stock simmer for as long as you can tolerate that delicious aroma. It’s certainly possible to do a quick stock in 30 minutes or so—it’s very easy to do this with mushroom stems for a mushroom stock or shrimp shells for shrimp stock. But for maximum flavor punch, let the stock do its thing for at least 2 hours. You won’t be sorry.
Strain the vegetables out then cool and store in the freezer. Some people use ziptop plastic bags; some use glass jars. If you’re really being thrifty, use these veggies for a second go-around. Repeat the process with a little less water and simmer for a bit longer. This second stock, or remouillage, will taste a little weaker, but what a great way to get utmost veg usage! You can always use this weaker stock when you cook rice or couscous, etc.
Mama tossed a few leeks in this stock.
If you’re keen on making chicken stock, break down your bird, trimming as much of the fat and skin from the carcass as you can. (Fat makes your stock cloudy and skuzzy.) Put the bones in the pot along with your mirepoix, and proceed as above. (If you happen to be deboning a fresh chicken, it’s perfectly fine to use raw bones, as my friends Ty and Tora’s mama does, but it’s more likely you’re going to use roasted chicken bones.) It’s even more important with a meat-based stock to use cold water and a gentle simmer. Cold water helps draw out all the yummy goodness from the bones, and a simmer will keep it from getting cloudy. (Your stock should always be clear.) Mama lets this go anywhere from 3 to 4 hours. If the top of the water begins to get scummy, simply skim it off and discard. If your stock winds up very fatty, strain it then refrigerate it overnight, and the fat will solidify at the top—and then you can easily remove it.
For a fish stock, use the fish bones, or go with crustacean shells. You can get away with simmering these for 2 hours.
For a beef stock, you definitely want to roast your bones first. This is where you’d get bones from a butcher or farmer specifically for stock. Roast them in the oven (400°F) for about half an hour, add your mirepoix, and put it back in the oven for another half hour. Since this is going to yield a brown stock, you should add some sort of tomato product–paste is generally your best bet. Take the bones and veggies out of the roasting pan and put them in the soup pot. But before you do anything else, deglaze that roasting pan with a bit of cold water or red wine. Scrape up all those browned bits of goodness, then add them to the stock pot. Add water to cover, along with your herbs. Simmer for 4–6 hours, then strain.
As you can see, making stock isn’t such a big deal. Usually, all that gets in Mama’s way of making stock is….well, me!
Love, Jude
It used to be that I ate an egg for breakfast every morning. Then it was smoothies. And now it’s oatmeal. Because my oatmeal takes about half an hour to cook, Mama usually makes a big batch one day so that it’s ready for me to eat on the other days. She tried something new today, though: baked oatmeal.
A friend of Mama’s told her about a delicious oatmeal she made with bananas and blueberries and she shared the recipe. Because I was still sleeping when Mama made it, I can only report on how delicious it is. But Mama said it was supereasy. It was sweet from maple syrup and the fruit, and very hearty. We agree that we might try it without walnuts next time, and this morning Mama dolloped some banana yogurt on it for me. What a treat!
Mama says if you want to make this the night before, you can pull together the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry in another, but don’t mix them, or the oats will absorb all the liquid before it has a chance to bake in the morning. Sorry, not much of a shortcut here, but just think of how yummy the house smelled as it baked while Mama was wrangling yours truly. And I can eat it for breakfast tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…
I really REALLY like oatmeal, and this one is fantastic.
Then for lunch, we made an old standby: egg salad. I helped Mama crack and peel the boiled eggs, then I mashed them with a fork. After we mixed together the mayo, mustard, vinegar (which I tasted straight from the bottle), dill, salt, and capers, we did something very important: we tasted it to see whether it needed anything. “More capers!” I said. (It’s true. I really did.) So Mama obliged, and we ate the egg salad on toasted English muffins. Well, I ate most of mine. But I picked out all the capers.
Yes, I’m still in my jammies. The title of this post is “Lazy Sunday” for a reason.
Love, Jude
Happy New Year! I don’t know what this means, but I’ve been taught to say it whenever I see someone. Last night during dinner (pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes), Papa asked us what our resolutions were for 2013. Aside from keeping up with her Italian (which she didn’t do yesterday, by the way), Mama said she’d like to help me keep up with my blog. We all agreed that that was a good resolution. After all, I’ve been eating, and Mama’s been teaching me how to make things, since last I reported, and we have all manner of pictures showing me stuffing food into my mouth. We are going to try to catch up, so please excuse us if our content is out of season and I have a different hairstyle.
We will try to do better in 2013.
What happened was a difference of opinion… which resulted in a bad case of writer’s block. Mama thought a post I’d written about her getting dinner done in under half an hour made it sound like she was showing off. I disagreed, since she had cooked dinner in less time than it takes me to put my books back on the shelves. This little setback stymied my creative flow, and I just… well… stopped writing. But not because I didn’t want to! In fact, Mama and I both received e-mails and verbal requests for new topics and posts and ideas, which we duly filed in our collective memory bank, all the while intending that tonight will be the night we start again.
January 2 seems like as good a time as any to start fresh. Tonight was leftovers, so I have no lessons to relay, but seeing as you haven’t seen me for a while, I’ll post a recent picture. Yes, that’s an actual marshmallow that Mama toasted while I was playing with my friends Quinn and Leyna. I thought they were only for camping!
Not only did I get this melty marshmallow all over my face, but I got it on my jacket and my mittens.
Love, Jude
I’ve received a reader question! Thank you, Miss Jessica, for asking about the origins of phyllo dough, especially since Mama seems to be using it a lot lately.
This tissue-thin pastry dough is used in many Greek sweet or savory dishes—think baklava and spanakopita, those little spinach & feta–filled triangles. But it’s also widely used in the cuisines of other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries. Like other pastry doughs, it’s made from flour, water, and fat—in this case, oil—with a splash of vinegar; sometimes an egg yolk is added. Phyllo literally translates into “leaf,” if you were wondering, and much like a pepper, you can stuff practically anything into a phyllo pocket.
You can buy phyllo in the freezer section of most supermarkets, but be sure to thaw it overnight in the fridge. When you work with it, keep a damp paper towel over the “exposed” sheets to prevent them from drying out. They tear easily, so this little bit of moisture is key. Use several layers, always brushed with oil or melted butter, to roll, fold, or layer your already-cooked filling. Then bake until the pastry is golden and flaky.
Please let me know if you give phyllo a try, and tell me what you made!
Love, Jude
Meatloaf. Kale. Cauliflower.
Can you believe I cleaned my plate? Mama and Papa can’t either.
Love, Jude
Mama is very big on thank-you notes, so she enouraged me to take a moment to thank everyone who’s been reading about my adventures in the kitchen. Thank you for reading my posts–and thank you for liking them, commenting on them, sharing them with friends. I really did start this blog just for fun, but it’s been heart warming to know that there are those of you who’ve been following me and interested in what I eat (or not). As I continue to broaden my palate and expand my culinary acumen, I’ll keep the stories coming.
My favorite part about having cereal is the milk you can drink right out of the bowl…except I can’t really wait until all my cereal is gone before I tip back the bowl.
Love, Jude
Well, it finally happened. I burned myself. Mama doesn’t ususally let me so close to the pan when we cook, but I’ve been wowwing everyone with my big-boyness of late, and I guess she thought if we were very careful, I would be fine. She and Papa are always saying the stove is hot, but whenever I put my hands on the burners, they never are. Or they say the grill is hot, and when I go touch it anyway, it never is. Yesterday morning, Mama brought my hand near the pan so I could feel the heat and told me it was very hot and not to touch it. I think she felt satisfied that this time I knew it was hot, and I think I did understand that because I did a pretty good job scooping pancake batter into the pan, then tossing blueberries on the pancakes when they started getting bubbly.
We had done about half the batch when—and I don’t know what came over me—I tossed in some blueberries with my left hand and grabbed the pan with my right. I think I might’ve been trying to bring it closer, but I don’t know for sure. Or I just forgot how hot it was, so caught up was I in my task. Mama tells me it seemed like I held onto that pan for a full second before I registered the pain and let go. She rushed me to the sink, where she ran soothing cool water over my fingers; it made me feel better enough to interrupt my crying and eat the blueberries I was still holding.
But my fingers sure smarted. They were red and shiny. I managed to eat my breakfast then go off to play with my books, all left-handed. Mama finally thought to give me something for the pain, and then she called my doctor, who advised her, since the burn was on my hand, to take me to a place called the E.R. I walked into the hospital on my own, and because it has a special E.R. just for kids, Mama didn’t even have time in the waiting room to get a book out of her bag for me. We went to a room just for us, where I stood on the bed (to be weighed), and a friendly man gave my leg a hug (to take my blood pressure) and put a funny red-light band-aid on my finger (to take my pulse?). The other nurse asked Mama where I was burned, and she said, “The hand that’s currently clutching my shirt.” And it was true. My hand hardly hurt anymore, and I was using it like normal.
I wasn’t scared at all! I read a little Frog & Toad, chewed on my train, and felt a lot better. The pain meds might’ve helped.
We read books, played with trains, watched the ambulances come and go outside my window, and danced a polka while we waited for the doctor. It turns out that only my index finger, the very tip of my thumb, and just a wee part of my middle finger got burned. It was my index finger that concerned the doctor, since there was a possibility of it blistering. She decided that even though there were no blisters, because I was using my hand so much, it might be best to wrap it up. She told Mama that they’re very proactive about burns now, especially if they’re on the face, genitals, or hands.
So the nice nurse came back, put something goopy on my fingers and wrapped it up with gauze. Mama tried to convince me that it looked like a dinosaur hand and that we could have fun with it. I wasn’t buying it. You’re not seeing a picture of it because it wasn’t on my hand long enough. C’est la vie.
We were actually at the hospital quite a while, so we missed lunch. Mama took me to one of her favorite places to eat: a burrito joint where she says she ate at least once a week when I was growing inside her. There are two things she loves best about the place: its smoked tofu and its fish tacos. This was my third time going where Mama actually ordered something for me, instead of giving me bites of her food. You know I can be a picky eater, but I have to tell you, I love the food here. I can eat almost an entire beef taco or cheese quesadilla by myself. And I like dipping their homemade tortilla chips in the different salsas. (Yesterday they had pineapple-mango.) Neither of us know what it is about the place, why we like it so much. Its food is superfresh and locally sourced when possible; it’s reasonably priced and fast. The music they play is pretty cool, too.
I liked dipping my quesadilla in the salsa and was ready for a nap afterward.
So what did we all learn from this experience? Let’s review:
1. If Mama says something is hot, do not touch it. I wanted her to hold me while she cooked my eggs today, and when she told me the pan was very hot, I didn’t even reach for the spoon to stir them. I now know that hot means hot.
2. Mama should not be letting me near the stove, no matter how careful she thinks we’re being. (The same goes for using knives around little fingers.) She knew this but thought I might be ready to assist her. I’m not even 2 yet, so we should really be sticking to mixing cakes and scones. No matter how fast you think you’ll be able to react, it’s really hard to anticipate a kid reaching out and grabbing something he wants. It’s okay, though. She’s still my mama, and I love her. And if my finger ends up a crooked little hook of its former self, leaving me unable to operate as a right-hander, I’ll be able to lord it over her when I’m 16 and she won’t give me the car keys.
3. When you go to the E.R., you later get to eat at the best place on earth.
Love, Jude
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