Wow! This post is way past due!

We had our final cooking club of 2011 about a month ago. We included significant others for this meal, so it ended up being 11 of us. As for the theme – each course we revisited one of our 2011 themes. Here are the pictures – they’re not great, but they’ll give you an idea:

Aperetif (local/seasonal): citrus, pear, vanilla, ginger

Appetizer (french): escargot served in the shell

Soup (mexican) : corn soup served with roasted corn guacamole

Main Course (Italian): Tuna Rollatini served with Riccota Gnocchi

Salad (Mediterranean): raw artichoke and orange salad

Dessert (no theme): this was my course and I did two desserts:

     Flourless Chocolate Chili Torte served with Salted Caramel Gelato:

     Bananas Foster served with Tahitian Vanilla Gelato:

My favorite picture of the night – Ryan burning off the dark rum in the Bananas Foster (check out how the counter is on fire!)

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If you know anything about me, you know that I love books and I love food. So a book about food and spirituality is Christmas morning for me!

I don’t know how I came to read The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God. I think it was one of the “Amazon Recommends” kind of things. But I’m glad I did. I’ve been taking my time with it for about a month, sipping it like a glass of good Port.

Of course in a collection of 34 essays, not all will connect. But at the same time, some of the essays in this collection got inside me, and made me want to cook, and to write, and to get all caught up in the mysticism of Holy Communion. I have such admiration for skilled writers. (and a fair amount of envy. sigh)

I know, everybody says they love food. But, then there are people who talk about it in almost sensual ways – and not just the food, but the preparation of it, the respect for the ingredients, the recognition that food comes from the soil, the smell, the labor… This is why I need a cooking club, because at this point, most people’s eyes start to glaze over and they think, “I wish this guy would just shut up about the food already!”

But, if you’re still reading. And you really love food. And you really love well-written essays. This is a delightful read – one to which I will return!

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I was driving into work recently listening to NPR’s ”Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” – currently the 5th most popular podcast on iTunes. “WWDTM” is a humorous, not-so-serious quiz show that looks back at recent headlines.

Anyway, one of the stories they were talking about is apparently Popeye’s Chicken has figured out a way to extrude chicken paste into a spoon shape. The idea is that you can scoop up spoonfuls of ranch dressing with the “chicken spoon,” and then eat the spoon. (Here’s the story, along with pictures.) Hold this thought for just a second….

I was talking to someone recently about creation. And about this idea that God gives our first mother & father the creation and says, “it’s yours. manage it.” (my paraphrase). And I was telling my friend about a quote I’m thinking about painting on the wall in our kitchen – “when I cook, it is an act of worship,”  - and about how, I feel like cooking is deeply spiritual in that in connects us back to this creation idea, that we take raw materials, that come out of the ground, and then in the kitchen we take what’s created and we keep creating with it, until something beautiful sits on a plate, and is consumed.

So… putting the two ideas together, brings me to this question. Is the “Dip’n Chick’n” an act of faithfulness to the creation, or is it blasphemy, or is it neutral, or maybe no one cares about this but me…

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So, I’m back in Peoria, and I think I put on at least 5 pounds in three days. I’m so disgusted with myself….but it was such a great trip. If you’re not into food like I am, you can just skip the rest of the post, because I’m just going to talk about food and beer. But before the break, let me say one thing, briefly.

When I think about the “spirituality of everything,” food is probably one of the things that comes to mind first. We probably don’t think often enough about the connection we have to food. And spending a couple days visiting restaurants & breweries where people care deeply about ingredients, and processes and the experience of eating/drinking is really inspiring and beautiful.

Now, back to my post…

Monday

On Monday – we visited a gelato factory in Fennville, MI. It was awesome. We met with the owner and to hear his passion for quality ingredients & authentic gelato was inspiring. We had lunch in Sagutuk – which is a picturesque Michigan fishing town.

Later in the afternoon we visited New Holland Brewery. The tour was okay. Their Dragon’s Milk Ale, aged in oak barrels is spectacular. I also found an IPA that I liked, New Holland’s Imperial Hatter IPA – there’s a first time for everything!

After that we went to Everyday People Cafe in Douglas, MI – what many consider to be one of, if not the best restaurant in Western Michigan. Like the night before, it was a delicious dinner, although I didn’t really care for the decor, or the small table. For the main course I had a chicken & gnocchi dish with artichokes that was excellent. I think if we had to choose just one of the two restaurants, all four of us preferred the style, ambience and food over at Salt of the Earth the night before.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we went to the food show – and it was disappointing. After visiting two fine restaurants – who pride themselves in their use of fresh, local ingredients – the food show was mostly the opposite end of the spectrum – pre-packaged, pre-assembled, “just warm up and serve” food. It made me kind of sad to think that this is what most restaurants are serving.

After the food show, we visited Founder’s Brewery in Grand Rapids. I can’t say enough good about Founders, beginning with their philosophy:

“We don’t brew beer for the masses. Instead, our beers are crafted for a chosen few, a small cadre of renegades and rebels who enjoy a beer that pushes the limits of what is commonly accepted as taste. In short, we make beer for people like us.”

A couple of my favorite beers at Founder’s: Oatmeal Stout (like Guinness, they use nitrogen at the tap, so it’s super-creamy), Backwoods Bastard (this is a limited run beer, but it’s one of the most interesting, complex, balanced, yummy beers I’ve tasted – even a guy who was with us that doesn’t really like beer liked this one), and Dirty Bastard (a Scotch Ale – one of the beers they produce year-round).

All-in-all, a great trip!

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A friends of mine owns a restaurant in Peoria, and asked me if I wanted to attend a food show with him this week.

I thought about it for about 3 seconds, arranged my schedule, and this morning I find myself in a cabin overlooking Lake Hutchins in Fennville, MI sipping my morning French Press. Ahhh…. life is good.

On our way to the food show tomorrow, we’re hitting a couple restaurants, touring a gelato factory, and taking a couple brewery tours.

Last night, we started by eating at Salt of the Earth in Fennville. There was lots of good food, a delicious Malbec, and their artisan bread is worthy of a meal in itself. Here were the highlights for me:

• One of our appetizers was pork belly with a smoked bleu cheese. The pork belly was good – how can you go wrong with pork belly? But the smoked bleu cheese stole the show for me. It was delicious.
• For the entree, two of us just asked the chef to cook whatever he wanted. One of those dishes was seared scallops over a butternut squash risotto. The scallops were perfect, the risotto creamy and the bits of apple, potato and pork belly on top were amazing. You can see the picture at the right.

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Yesterday I retweeted this from @jeffvcook: “That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.” #Thoreau.

It seems that issues of contentment and gratitude are all around me right now. Maybe I’m the only one, but I find that our culture constantly reminds me of everything that I don’t have. That’s why Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts has been such a point of conversation in our home over the last couple of weeks. It’s spiritually challenging to me to cultivate the practice of gratitude. I’m not bad at gratitude when I feel it… but what about the times when I don’t – which feels like much of the time?

Yesterday, a friend stopped by the church and as he was leaving, he reached into his truck and pulled out a beautiful, ripe peach. He had been at the farmer’s market and it was sitting in his front seat and he gave it to me. For him, probably no big deal.

A couple hours later, at lunch, I ate perhaps the best peach I’ve ever eaten. It was just perfect – not too firm, not too mushy. It dripped juice down my chin. It was spectacular. So spectacular that I felt the need to tell Jennifer about it last night. So spectacular that I thought about it several times last night, to the point that if I had a couple bucks in my wallet, I might find a reason to drive over to the farmer’s market and buy a couple of those peaches this afternoon!

I read yesterday that there’s been an online spat between Paula Deen (Food Network star, famous for lathering everything in copious amounts of butter) and Anthony Bourdain (chef, author, food commentator) about cooking for “real people” versus food snobs. (link to Huffington Post recap). I get it. I have a proclivity towards food snobbery. And yet I wonder if this is a symptom of my ingratitude. I always want what is rare, unachievable, unsustainable.

What if the simple joy of one good peach is ultimately more fulfilling than eating in the best restaurants in the country?

If I give myself over to food snobbery – wine snobbery – coffee snobbery -music snobbery – do I actually limit my experience of pleasure? Do I lose wonder throughout my day? If I can only be satisfied when I eat at a high-end restaurant, then I’m going to be pretty miserable the other 364 days of the year.

Hmmm. Something for me to ponder…

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Bring up the words environment or green these days and you better brace yourself for a fight. For many, environmentalism has become a cause to champion or rail against. Our belief or rejection of global climate change has become a line in the sand – a way of defining ourselves as “us” against “them.” And maybe these debates are good. Maybe these are things that should be argued about with passion and intensity. But the danger in such an ideologically charged cultural climate is that nature becomes only that – a cause to argued about – a reason to write vitriolic blog posts and to create a Facebook group “for,” or “against.”

But ultimately nature isn’t a cause to be defended, it’s a gift to be experienced. In the creation poem, found in Genesis 1, Scriptures tell us that the creation was created as a gift for our ancestors. It tells us that God gave the creation to Adam & Eve for food, yes, but he also created it to be beautiful, populated with a diverse collection of life – a gift to be marveled at as well as used and managed.

Last evening, I came home from work, grabbed a book and sat outside on the deck, enjoying the cool weather, the sounds of birds and the freshness of the air. Dinner was had on the same deck – as it has been about 5 nights in the last week. And then, because friends were coming over, I quickly made a light snack of caprese salad, with 3 different varieties of tomatoes fresh out of the garden and basil-infused mozzarella I had made the night before with raw milk provided by friends from their dairy. A pile of cucumbers on the counter were transformed into a sorbet along with fresh mint from the garden, and one of our friends brought a bottle of red wine.

And then, together we sat outside under the beautiful stars and enjoyed each other’s presence – sharing our lives to the soundtrack of the tree fogs that populate the woods that abut the house. And for a couple hours we enjoyed each other’s company, enjoyed the creation as a gift. And even though I suspect that my friends and I may have different views on climate change and environmentalism, on this we agree: nature last night in Central Illinois was a beautiful gift from God.

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To be honest, it wasn’t my idea to start our garden. It was Jennifer’s. Of course, once I begrudgingly got involved, I found out that I loved it, and then went over the top, adding space and complexity, as I’m wont to do.  Two summers ago, I was surprised by the spirituality of the garden. I’ve commented before that there is something deeply spiritual about walking across my yard, scissors in hand, to harvest food that will be consumed directly.

After reading authors like Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver over the past couple of years, Jennifer and I decided that it’s important that we teach our kids where food comes from – namely NOT the supermarket. And so when we serve meat, we regularly explain, “this is the butt of a pig,” (which they, being boys, find hilarious) or, “this is ground up cow.” But as Christian parents we not only want them to understand that food comes from nature, but that nature is given to us by God.

So especially in the summertime, where at most meals we’re eating something from the garden (last night: squash, jalepenos, pickles, tomatoes, cucumbers), we often pray something like this: “Dear Father, thank you for rain, that makes the green beans grow. Thank you for the soil, where our potatoes are hiding until the fall and gives nourishment to all the fruits and vegetables. Thank you for the sun that turns the tomatoes red. Amen.”

Last week sometime, we were trying out a new recipe for cold green beans (we’re going to have get really creative, because we have lots of ‘em!) and our oldest son volunteered to give thanks for the meal. And he thanked God for rain and sun.

There are a lot of days (most?) where you don’t feel like you’re doing anything good as a parent. But in that moment, there was satisfaction; he’s starting to get it.

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We had our third Cooking Club this weekend. The theme was tapas. If you’re not familiar, tapas is a Spanish style of food that was originally meant to be ate standing up. The intent was that the smaller portions would keep the focus on the company one was in and not on the food. Over time, and especially in North American versions, tapas is generally still Spanish food that is served in small portions, albeit sitting down at a leisurely pace. One of the guys had to call off at the last minute, so there were only five of us. First course hit the table around 6:20 and we put up 12 courses, the last hitting the table about 11:05.

So, below the break – for those of you that are interested in this kind of thing, I’ll just give the picture, plus a brief description. I made the first course, the squid and the flan. Here’s the Spanish version of the menu (missing the calamari course – I forgot to add it to the list until after I had taken the picture):

Orange Slices in a Red Wine Reduction (and of course, Sangria)

Garlic Shrimp

Mussels in Escabeche

Rosemary Pear Flatbread with Mozzerella

Garlic Soup

Braised Oxtail

Roasted Leg of Lamb with Honey-Garlic Aioli

Spicy Potatoes with Aioli

Crispy Duck Breast with Coffee BBQ Sauce

Squid with Garlic & Parsley

Churros with Chocolate Dipping Sauce

Flan

And yes, it was an AWESOME meal. And, even after 12 courses, I wasn’t “stuffed” in the same way you generally are after eating a big plate of food. I’ve found that I much prefer this style of eating – a couple bites here and there, spread over 4-6 hours. Again – I’m so glad that we started this club! Everyone should start their own!

Up at next club: Summer Produce – where the stuff we’ve grown all summer will be the star attractions.

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I mentally geared myself up for what I was expecting to be a tough meeting first thing this morning, but it was cancelled. Since I have a couple minutes, here’s some stuff on my mind.

• The garden is starting to come to life. I’ve got my first asparagus sprouts pushing through the soil, blue potatoes seem to be going gangbusters and some of my tomatoes (the Romas in particular) seem to be growing so fast that you could almost watch them grow. That late frost last week hit some of our green beens, the watermelon and cantaloupe, but it’s early enough in the season that we can just replant.
• This weekend was pretty slow in the Dean household – in a good, much-needed way.
• Final SNL of the year. “What’s my Name – Celebrity Edition” was hilarious. As was Seth Myers heading off to vacation with Stefan. I don’t get Lady Gaga.
• Saturday morning I made breakfast burritos for everyone then sat on the deck in my pajama pants and did the crossword while I drank coffee. Simple pleasures!
• Saturday was Opening Day at the Kickapoo ballpark. Three boys in baseball this year!
• We went to the Chiefs Game Sunday afternoon. It was a nice day for it. As the boys get older, it’s more and more fun to take them to baseball games.
• Beginning tonight, we’ll have baseball games 5 nights a week through the rest of May, all of June and into July. I hope we have friends still when we resurface.

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