Early Thanksgiving and Sandy

This past weekend, we took delivery of a new stove. The old one still did fine as a stovetop, but the oven had given up the ghost. Even if we "fudged" the inaccurate temperature and set the beast much higher, we would not have been able to get the oven any hotter than 325 degrees, and the cost of the repair was about half the cost of a new unit, so we swallowed hard and took the hit on the budget. I unofficially broke in the oven by roasting pumpkin seeds from our jack-o-lantern (cinnamon sugar - yum), but the official first dinner came on Sunday night. It somehow seemed appropriate to make something special, something that would make good use of the larger capacity and the full stovetop (the new unit has five burners, higher potential BTU output, etc.), so I opted for a quickie version of Thanksgiving dinner. 

If I were doing a "real" Thanksgiving dinner, a whole bird would have been brined. The stuffing would have been made from scratch. The veggies would have been fresh, not frozen. And I might even have made a bread from scratch as well, rather than just buying a tub of croissants. Even the cranberry sauce would have been homemade, not from a can. Instead, the turkey was a breast only (bone in, at least), and I did a simple sage, salt, and pepper rub on it. The mashed potatoes were the real deal; I couldn't let the little one down, as she seems to have developed a fondness for daddy's mashed potatoes. But the rest was as I have described.   Thankfully, the oven worked wonderfully, and I was even able to work in the croissants for a quick warm up at the end of the turkey's cook time. And the stovetop got a reasonably good workout, even if not all burners were in action at once.

Frankly, I hadn't considered writing about the meal. But reading about so many of my friends and family back on the east coast who have endured hurricane Sandy gave me pause, and made me reconsider. As I was finishing up the last of the leftovers at dinner tonight with my wife and two girls, I realized that this pre-Thanksgiving meal was just that; something to make me reflect on what I am grateful for in my life, the comfort of the mundane, and just how fragile these things are.

The verdict

The meal is not generally what I write about when I write here, and this is certainly the case tonight. I think back this evening on my childhood and early adult years in NJ, and hearing about and seeing pictures and footage of the places in NYC and NJ that were so familiar to me has had me swimming in memories (if you will pardon the awful pun). I recall celebrating with family at my Aunt Betty's in Westwood for Thanksgiving dinners, and so many other memories of that town that I could write several books. I remember flood waters in the mid-1970s when I was living with my Uncle Billy in Kendall Park, and how the stream a good bit behind his house had turned the back yard into a mucky lake (and how I swam in it with my cousins, even though it was far from safe). When I heard about the towns of Little Ferry and Moonachie, the former where I lived for a year with my dad, and the latter where he had worked at the time, I think about how I would never have imagined that area being overrun by water. I remembered the frequent flooding in Hackensack (was it River Road?), and visiting the USS Ling submarine docked along the river there. I thought about trips to the Palisades. I thought about heading to NYC with my father to visit relatives (and his old stomping grounds near my birthplace in the Bronx), and later by myself, sometimes on the sly, sometimes not. Trips down the shore. Hours on the Parkway and the Turnpike, with friends, with family, and alone. All of this seems so very different and very distant right now as I see the images on TV, on Facebook, on the local newspaper sites from around NJ, and the like. It's been years since I called the area home, but I was shaped by my childhood there, and seeing the destruction and loss so many are facing there pains me to my core.

I know what it feels like to live with the kind of devastation my friends back east are facing now, having endured a few hurricanes myself. I will do what I can to help. Maybe slate a blood donation later this week (if I can hydrate and keep the blood pressure up), donate to a good cause, offer what I can in kind words, good thoughts, and other distant deeds - whatever is possible from halfway across the country. I am already thinking that a visit when spring or summer comes around might be nice; put some money back into the rebuilding economies along the shore that will surely need it. But as is all too often the case, when we are physically removed from a disaster, we are largely at a loss to think of how we can really help those in need. 

I thought to myself tonight that, if I had a job that allowed it and didn't have a family relying on me here, I would get myself out there and help cut up downed trees, clean up flooded basements, help tarp up some rooftops - anything to be of clear and direct help. But having a pre-Thanksgiving meal also made me realize that having a job that needs me and, more importantly, a family that needs me, is the very thing that many of my friends are realizing right now as well. As they get together to grill up the perishables with neighbors (knowing that if they don't, things will spoil), many of them will grow closer to their neighbors over a meal shared from the heart. I try to do this without a disaster at hand, but I also know the special kind of camaraderie folks can build in those moments when the lights won't work, and all sense of normalcy has been removed. I am sure someone is running an extension cord from their generator to help out a neighbor tonight, sharing what they have, and in doing so, giving thanks for what they have. Some folks are feeling the stress and strain of loss. Loss of power, sure, but also loss of property, and a loss of the sense of security and stability that ordinary life brings. Thankfully, I'm not aware of any friends grieving for lost life directly, but I am sure that they mourn the losses they hear about just as I do, and in doing so, they are thankful to have survived intact.

I hope that in a few weeks my friends and family back east will have some of the comfort returned, some of the stability, security, and normalcy back, and I sincerely hope that they will have a solid recovery to be thankful for. Tomorrow, I will enjoy a kind of special normalcy, one of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, another comfortable meal at my table, and of course, the love I share with my family. But I will hold all of you on the east coast in my thoughts as I do these things, knowing that many of you will not have these simple joys tomorrow. I ask that all of us who weathered this storm unscathed do something above and beyond to help. Tonight, I am thankful for all I have, my safety, the four walls and a roof, passable roads, and relative peace and calm in a way I wasn't on Sunday when I first cooked our meal. In the spirit of my Quaker friends, please hold all who are suffering in the light, and please do what you can, if you can, to help ease the pain, loss, and suffering. Give someone else something to be thankful for.

Spicy Pork Empanadas

Growing up in northern New Jersey, I vividly remember seeing ads for Goya Adobo Sauce. They aired with greater frequency than I would have imagined on network TV of the 1970s and early 1980s. Sure, I also would occasionally tune into the Spanish-language UHF stations to watch a bit of "lucha libre" on weekends, but that was a rare indulgence. (No, really it was). I recall seeing cans of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce in the "ethnic foods" aisle in the grocery store. These always seemed exotic to me, a mystical thing that, as a boy, I would never have imagined having as part of a meal, never mind an item simply "on hand" in my pantry. As I think about it, few foods in the "ethnic" aisle would have seemed viably edible when I was a boy. Part of the reason, I'm sure, was simply my youth and lack of experience, but another part of it probably stemmed from living in a household that was not all that open to cultural "otherness." About the only food we bought from that aisle was the canned La Choy products, and the thought of canned Chow Mein still triggers a gag reflex deep inside for me.

I have come to appreciate a reasonably wide array of foods from other cultures over the years, and I have a fondness for empanadas, not only because they are delicious (really, I don't think I've ever had a bad one), but also because the basic concept is so appealing. Think about it; a delicious filling in a bread/pastry that is fried. Simple, easy to handle, comforting. And yes, I know that baking is an option, but if you can fry, why not? I had not made them before this evening, so the challenge for me was to keep the record perfect; I simply refused to taint the track record by making bad empanadas.

I started with some onion and oil, a bit of tomato paste, the chipotle/adobo goodness, cumin, and garlic salt, and added in small cubes of pork tenderloin and some water. I kept letting the sauce reduce, then adding a bit of water to keep the dish cooking, until finally getting the pork nice and tender (and still juicy). Once reduced down, I felt the filling needed a bit more sweetness to balance the flavors, so I added a bit of turbinado sugar. I confess that I decided on frozen "discos" for my first outing, in part because I wanted to eliminate a point of possible failure, but in larger part because I knew that, like most weeknights, my time would be limited. As a personal goal, I plan to make those from scratch next time.  Once constructed, I fried the empanadas in a mixture of canola and peanut oil until golden brown. 

The verdict

To put it simply; hot and spicy, but delicious. In addition to opening up that can of chipotle/adobo from the pantry, and my time-saving (yes, also a bit lazy) move of using the perfectly acceptable frozen discos, I served some canned pineapple on the side. The sweetness, and more importantly, the acidity really complimented the heat from the filling. 

I thought for a minute about my pantry as I was writing this and realized that, in the event of a long power outage or natural disaster, I would still be able to cobble together some rather interesting meals from the shelf-stable things I tend to keep around as a matter of course. It might be a fun challenge to cook for a few days with only things that are shelf-stable and already in the house just to see what I would end up with. I know this, for certain: it wouldn't be anything like I would have imagined walking those grocery aisles with my aunt when I was a young boy or teenager.