Rolling Right Along

When I get bored I tend to get creative with my food.  When I was younger, and more energetic, I would debone a whole chicken.  Today I am more efficient and confine myself to a roulade, a piece of meat pounded to a malleable thickness spread with something tasty, and then rolled up into a tidy, tasty package.

Chili for Chilly Weather

We’re expecting sub-freezing temperatures tonight and that calls for the essential cold weather meal, classic red chili. Now chili may have its roots in Mexico, but it was only fully realized in Texas, birth place of my father. My mother made typical WASP chili...ground beef, canned kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, and chopped onion, seasoned with salt and pepper. 

Wienerschnitzel is Country Fried Steak

I am always amused when someone uses a foreign language to disguise a peasant dish, usually so unsuspecting customers can be charged a haute cuisine price.   Growing up I was told that only unfortunate children in Dickens’ novels had to eat mush for dinner.  Now everyone raves about polenta as an elegant side dish.  Corn meal mush by any other name is just as tasty and filling.  

One dish from my children’s German heritage is schnitzel, praised as one of the “Few of My Favorite Things” from the film, A Sound of Music.  As elegant and satisfying as the film, schnitzel, is really just a tarted up version of country fried steak.