March is a lousy month for eating - but it's not as lousy as it used to be. It used to be difficult to find much of anything except apples and root crops in the produce department, or maybe cabbage.

Iron Chef America's secret ingredient tonight was cabbage, except that the ingredient was really cole: they included bok choy and brussels sprouts in their definition of cabbage. I don't normally watch ICA, but there wasn't much on my TiVO, so I was looking around a sparse wasteland for something decent to watch. I strolled past ICA as they were announcing the secret ingredient, so I decided to save this episode; Blondie thinks cabbage is the best vegetable ever. I have a considerably higher opinion of cabbage than I used to, having experienced Blondie's use of it, but it still is far from my favorite.

Meanwhile, I headed downstairs to eat a late supper while TiVO started to recharge its hard drive.

Stuffed Pepper

Stuffed pepper has never been one of my favorites, either, and especially not cold, left-over stuffed pepper, but it wasn't bad tonight. Normally, the pepper is all overcooked, mushy, and flavorless, but Blondie managed to retain some texture and flavor. She was sleeping while Daniel Negreanu was bluffing on her television, so I didn't ask her what she did differently.

Maybe it was the hamburger. Glenwood Foods had huge chubs - five or six inches in diameter, like a big bologna, and about 30" long - of frozen hamburger for 99c a pound. On the way home, I was kicking myself for only buying one. We've got plenty of room in the deep freeze this time of year, and it's not like we're going to run into hamburger any cheaper than that. On the other hand, it's hard to use. One has to melt the whole chub in order to break it up into 2-3 pound pieces, and then refreeze it. Except that you're not supposed to refreeze meat, so I stopped kicking myself.

I Need A Band Saw

Maybe I should get a long blade for my reciprocating saw. When I lived on the farm, we would cut up chubs like that with the band saw, and it worked pretty snazzy. I thought that a clever idea until someone told me a year or two ago that bandsaws were originally invented for butchers, not woodworkers. It'd be nice to have chubs just a little smaller than that, maybe four inches in diameter, and then you could saw slices to make a perfect hamburger patty.

Before Blondie came along, I would buy hamburger in 1.5 pound packages, plop the entire package on one lump in the center of a cast iron skillet, and toss it in the oven with one big or two small taters on the bare rack, and call that supper an hour later. I ate it on a paper plate, so all there was to cook was the silverware and the glass. Come morning, I'd slice the leftover potato, and fry it in the leftover hamburger grease for breakfast, crumbling in the leftover hamburger when the taters were about done.

I'd have to clean the skillet after that, but a cast-iron skillet is non-stick; it's just a matter of spooning out any chunks, then spilling a little water into the still-hot skillet, and swirling a stainless steel scrubber around as the water turned into steam, then inverting the skillet to air-dry. I tell you, I had this bachelor thing down pat. And I'd eat a salad for lunch, also on a paper plate, so fairly decent nutrition, and only a few silverware and glasses to wash.

It's Not Meatloaf - It's Better

Blondie wanted to know what I wanted for supper the other night, right after we'd scored that chub, so I told her to just bake some hamburger and make baked potatoes, and she was astounded at how good it was. She thought you had to add pork and bread crumbs and ketchup and brown sugar, and she wasn't too fond of meatloaf. Turns out she likes ground beef just fine. The only thing was, I wasn't too explicit about how to make it, and she filled a loaf pan with the burger. The advantage of a lump in the middle of a cast-iron skillet is that the grease drains off. Still, even if it is greasy, it's pretty good.

I also had apple salad for dessert. Waldorf salad originally consisted of apples, celery, and mayonnaisse, and we put lots of other stuff in apple salad, so we call it apple salad instead of calling it Waldorf salad. You can call it whatever you want; I won't get into your face about it.

We normally put grapes in it. Mama always used Thompson grapes, but that's because they were available, and it's something all the kids would eat. Blondie likes to use a seedless red grape, and there are different flavors. When there aren't grapes available, we use raisins.

Why Do You Never See Green Raisins?

Blondie was asking me why you never see green raisins. Don't green grapes make good raisins. "When Thompson grapes get old," I asked her, "what color do they get?" She blushed and put her hand over her mouth. Then she asked me where golden raisins come from. I didn't have an answer to that one. It turns out they come from Sultanas, which I don't know from Adam. Blondie may be ditzy, but she's not dumb.

Mama usually included colored mini-marshmallows in apple salad, and she always used a generic Miracle Whip, but Blondie never uses marshmallows, and lately, she's been using a 50/50 blend of generic Miracle Whip and unflavored yogurt. I like the yogurt blend better - it isn't as sweet as Miracle Whip. If truth be told, I think Mama used a little evaporated milk in the Miracle Whip in order to thin it out a mite, and cut the sweetness. Store-bought apple salad has never tasted as good to me as Mama's.

Nutty Ideas

And, of course, everybody uses nuts in their apple salad. Sometimes, Mama would use spanish redskin peanuts. They're cheaper than tree nuts, but after a day in the refrigerator, they get pretty soft and unappealing. Usually, it was walnuts, but when we didn't have walnuts the other day, Blondie used julienned almonds. The price of julienned almonds is atrocious in the produce department of the supermarket; they're much more affordable at Sharp Shopper, and found in the bulk foods department.

The biggest thing about apple salad, though, is getting the right apples. The problem with Red Delicious is that Red Delicious looks like an apple, but it's really just a hunk of wood. A Red Delicious is beautiful to look at, and it has a wonderful snap, but when it comes to taste, there's just no there there. Macintosh and Winesap apples taste great, but they usually go bad before this time of year. Yellow Delicious apples taste considerably better than Red Delicious, nothing to write home about, but the yellow color is disappointing in an apple salad. Granny Smith apples taste better than Yellow Delicious, but the green color is even more disappointing.

Looking For The Perfect Apple

A couple of weeks ago, Blondie tried making an apple salad with Gala apples. They were sorta disappointing, too, although they were better than red delicious, and their skin is really pretty. Tonight's apple salad used Rome apples. If anything, Rome apples look even more like an apple than a Red Delicious, and they taste fairly good, but they were too mealy.

We're still on the lookout for the perfect apple salad apple. If you have a suggestion, I'd be happy to consider it. What I'd really like is a red skin, the kind of winey tart flavor that a Winesap apple has, and the crispness of a Yellow Delicious without being as crunchy as a Granny Smith or a Red Delicious.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
bachelor - band saw - cabbage - cast iron skillet - Gala apple - Glenwood Foods - Granny Smith - grapes - hamburger - Iron Chef America - Macintosh apple - potatoes - Red Delicious - redskin peanuts - refreezing - Rome apple - Sharp Shopper - stuffed peppers - sultanas - Waldorf Salad - Winesap - Yellow Delicious - yogurt