Category: Food

One of my best memories of childhood is of time spent with my Auntie Joy and Uncle Gene. Now, Gene and Joy are “aunt and uncle” merely because that’s what they let me call them, but you know what they say about friends being the family that you choose. Instead of going the “Dr. and Mrs.” route, they preferred the openness of Auntie and Uncle, and because of that, and manifold other reasons, I choose them to be family.

I met them when I was very young, when they headed up a children’s church group, Pathfinders, which is conceptually a lot like Boy Scouts and Brownies, except the boys and girls, aged about 10-17, all hang out together. We had a lot of fun — we attempted to start fires using flint and sticks (much harder than it looks on TV), sang, listened to hobo stories, roasted marshmallows, learned to bake potatoes in coals and beans in coffee cans over tripods of sticks, tied knots, identified edible plants, dug latrines, made tents out of plastic sheeting, decorated cakes, arranged flowers, identified stars, birds, seeds, rocks and cloud formations, found fossils, hunted geodes in the Nevada dessert and played massive games of Sardines in the dark with only the stars and compasses to guide us.* I was only allowed into this group for a limited time – my father had some idea that I needed to stay home — but I loved every moment I was allowed to be there. Loved it.

Uncle Gene was the Sunday morning chef on our many weekend backpack and camping trips, and occasionally he would make — for all of us — his artery-clogging, so delicious, deep fried… funnel cake pancakes. They were alleged to be pancakes, anyway, but he dropped the batter into two inches of oil, and they were lacy and gorgeous and crisp and seriously, definitely, deep fried. I remember my mother came on a pack trip with us once and was horrified — and amused — and Uncle Gene fussed at her to get out of his “kitchen” and mind her own business and eat what was put before her. Of course, even Mom loved those pancakes, even if, in good conscience, she couldn’t eat more than one. Or two.

But I still love them. I still think of them with great fondness, and a kind of bright-hearted happiness that I had when I was on those trips, away from home, being cared for as if I were the most special kid in the group. And, I have to admit, I’ve been trying to recapture those pancakes forever.

There’s a crepe shack across the street from our house. It’s a single wide trailer with lights and awnings that never moves. It opens for lunch, and stays open late into the long, light summer evenings, and when the midnight pub crowds dwindle, they often head over to get a bit of food into themselves before they wander home. We’ve seen the crepe place and heard that the crepes were “okay, if you like that kind of thing” from a couple of people, and so in a fit of randomness D. brought home a couple flavored with lemon and sugar, and one with hazelnut chocolate. They smelled nice, and looked beautiful, but they were eggy, rubbery, and not good. I sampled bites from both and gave up. When D. came up with this recipe, he was remembering the thinness of the crepes — but fortunately, without using eggs, we get a lovely, light bubbly batter for our pancakes.

Whole wheat flour can be not the most “light” ingredient, and my conscience, not to mention my pot belly, urges me not to indulge in deep fried anything. But D. came up with a pretty good sans eggs compromise on the pancakes of my imagination. Uncle Gene would probably not agree to any compromises, but he’s just not the compromising type, trust me on this. He is eighty-some odd years old, has weathered cancer and the annoyances of aging with aplomb and is still going strong way up in Oregon, growing his blackberries and with my every-young Auntie Joy at his side.

Compromise Corn Cakes

• 1 block silken tofu
• 1 cup medium corn polenta
• 1 cup AP flour
• 2 tbsp. ground flax seed
• 2 tbsp. wheat germ
• 2 tbsp. xylitol or sugar
• 1 tbsp oil
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. lavender cordial
• 1 tsp. agave nectar
• 1/8 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and nutmeg, freshly ground
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 bottle (8oz./250ml) root beer
• 1 c. water

Blend the liquid ingredients, including the tofu and flaxseed, in a blender or Cuisinart type of thing. Add cornmeal and other dry ingredients, being sure the blending of each is thorough. (We’d hate for you to get the impression that we were careful about this, but fine cornmeal will clump sometimes, so keep an eye out.) Add the rest — flour, spices, wheat germ, baking powder, and the last of the root beer. The blending will get rid of most of the frothiness, but there will be myriad tiny bubbles in this mix.

A hot pan with just a tiny bit of oil will give you what you’re looking for — light, lacy looking, very thin pancakes. They release even from a stainless steel pan with very little effort.

Yields about two dozen, medium sized, very thin pancakes, which we served with two tablespoons of a store-bought raspberry preserve, thinned down with lime juice. YUM. A serving of four pancakes is 409 calories.

*What? You don’t know Sardines? Children, let me tell you.

It’s a nighttime game, and it’s basically hide and seek reversed. The group of “Hidees” stands around and counts to 100, and the object is to find the sole “Hider”… and quietly hide with them. Whole groups of people can disappear into the wilderness, if you’ve got a good enough spot. And it’s hilarious to watch people circling, circling, trying to find you, and the rest of the gang.

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If you’ve never had them, they’re an absolute MUST. There are Thai and Vietnamese versions, both of which usually come with shrimp in them (yuck!), but we make ours completely vegetarian, (so no extra time spent deveining anything), and they’re fabulous. Most of the time spent is in prep: shredding cabbage (or some people use iceberg), julienning carrots, cutting up tofu into slivers, match-sticking cucumber, cutting long lengths of noodles into mouth-sized bundles … The rest of the prep time is in assembly, which is just rehydrating your Vietnamese Fresh-Roll Skin (bánh tráng) in water (they start out looking like a pancake, but are the consistency of a dry noodle, and they’re made of tapioca or rice starch and water) slapping down some ingredients, and wrap-rolling the thing up like a Vietnamese burrito.

Usually cilantro or mint is the herb which flavors these rolls, and ground roasted peanuts often accompany the Thai versions. This batch contained a bit of green curry paste, ground almonds, green onions, tofu, bean-thread noodles, cucumber, and tofu. That’s it: no harder than that. Wrap them up, hit them with some Mae Ploy Sauce, and you’re in heaven. Really and truly the best Asian food invented, ever.

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Really, the deal with the rain isn’t that bad. I mean, it’s not like it’s cold rain. It’s actually kind of warmish out, the heavy clouds insulating the temperatures to the low sixties, which means it’s possible to run out and do errands and get doused, but not freeze to death.

Thirteen days straight of rain and overcast is sometimes inconvenient, but it’s …doable.

It’s still summer, anyway. Loads of fruit and veg come in to the “Bin End” grocer, and they have peaches four for £1. (And limes twelve for £1. What is up with THAT? You can bet we’re juicing, zesting, and freezing as fast as we can.) And corn — fresh, succulent and sweet, not too starchy. Little kernels of summer on the cob.

In moments of nostalgia, we remember when we grew corn, only two summers ago. We put little wizened kernels in little hillocks in the tilled garden, in groups of six. It takes up a lot of room, corn does, and you have to compete with its natural eaters — birds and rodents — but it’s worth growing if you have the space. The leaves are tough and will slice your hands, but when the wind blows, the suserration is another summer sound that reminds me of childhood in suburbia, when everybody on our street had tomato plants in the backyard, and the ubiquitous stands of heavy-headed sunflowers, and corn.

But I digress.

I’m not living in suburbia, but in a city full of stone and cement, and the best I can do right now is a pot of basil. But this doesn’t stop me from taking in summer’s bounty. And, while the rain falls, we eat the summer sun in a way that satisfies us, and warms us up. We make chowder.

According to the thick paperback doorstop known as The Food-Lover’s Companion, chowder is:
A thick, chunky seafood soup, of which clam chowder is the most well known. The name comes from the French chaudière , a cauldron in which fishermen made their stews fresh from the sea. New England-style chowder is made with milk or cream, Manhattan-style with tomatoes. Chowder can contain any of several varieties of seafood and vegetables. The term is also used to describe any thick, rich soup containing chunks of food (for instance, corn chowder). While there are arguments over what a chowder actually is, we can attest to the fact that we’ve made a milk-based soup with chunks of veg in it — sadly, sans the special cauldron.

Whether or not you lack a proper pot, chowder’s the perfect thing to make when you’ve got an ear or two of leftover corn. (You could also make Elle’s fresh corn cornbread and topping — YUM!)

Chunky Hot Corn Chowdah

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 tsp. smoked yeast
• 1 yellow onion, diced



• 5 small potatoes, peeled and diced
• 5 c. water or vegetable broth
• 3 ears of corn, with the kernels sliced off, or 2 c. corn
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 2 ribs of celery, diced
• 1 c. soymilk
• 1 tsp. each, freshly chopped sage, thyme, freshly ground black pepper
• dollop of Greek yogurts, OR, Tofutti sour cream
• crumbled ground meat, optional

1. In a medium-large pot, sautée your onion in the olive oil and smoked yeast until translucent, or you feel it’s cooked to your liking,
2. Add your potatoes, celery, and carrot, and brown for about a minute,
3. Then, add your water and/or broth. We have broth powder, so we just add a tablespoon of dry broth to our water, and go from there. If you prefer it saltier, adjust to your own taste.
4. Simmer your veggie and broth mixture on a medium-high flame for about ten minutes before adding your corn and seasonings. Because our veg was diced small, it didn’t take long for them to cook through. Test your potatoes to make sure they’re done,




5. Turn the flame down to low, and add sour cream, mixed with milk. DO NOT let this boil; soymilk will curdle, and if you’re using dairy products they also might not appreciate the high heat.
6. Simmer for about two minutes, just enough to be sure the milk is up to temperature, then remove from the heat and serve.

We used Realeat brand ground “meat” for topping on our soup. If you’re using ground beef, you know best when to add it, we assume, but we tried this two different ways, sautéing the meat crumbles with the onions, or adding it “raw” at the very last second. (Please, don’t do that with ground beef. Sautée it first?) It’s good either way.

Enjoy the taste of summer — any way you can get it.

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