Cow Myth

Overheard in the grocery store:

the speaker was a ten or eleven year-old boy holding up a bag of shredded cheese and questioning his mother.

"I forget -- does cheese come from milk or does milk come from cheese?"

More From Eleanor

Eleanor: "Are we EVER going to make olive hats?"

Me: "I hadn't thought about it, but that sounds like a good idea."

Eleanor: "Maybe tomorrow we could make them?"

Me: "Maybe we could do it next week. Do you like olives?"

Eleanor: "Um, yes. Well, kind of."

Off With Your Head

Your New Secret Weapon

A magical creature was born in my house last Sunday.

My mama taught me how to craft it. (Mothers, I've decided, do indeed still know best, even after all these years.) I will tell you that it involves a crock pot, and crock pots tend to make me a bit edgy, a bit concerned. When I got my crock pot years ago, I promptly burned down the house with a recipe for "overnight oatmeal" that, apparently, could not actually withstand that sort of commitment. Okay, so I will spare you the panic -- there was no actual fire, just a completely blackened crock pot filled with a few traces of barely recognizable oatmeal bits and a horrible burnt-maple smell that lasted for days. I was furious. It made me into a crazy person. Why would I use this terrible machine if I could prepare a perfectly civilized batch of stress-free oatmeal with the STOVE? You know, oatmeal that ends up looking like oatmeal. Oatmeal that isn't charred. Oatmeal that doesn't have a commitment problem.

The crock pot, thus confined to its dark punishment corner of the kitchen cabinet, has been nice and quiet since then, and I make sure to glare menacingly at it every time I open the cabinet to pull out my rolling pin or the hand mixer.

My mother, knowing lots of mothery sorts of things, has had solid, equality-based relationships with many crock pots, and, after watching her engage in some pretty special crock pot antics a few weekends ago, I decided I could try again. Perhaps, I thought, those three years in confinement really set my crock pot straight. No more antics, I snarled at the (very innocent-looking) crock pot as I pulled it from its naughty corner for its re-try. Behave! I threatened. This is your last chance! And, like magic, I was obeyed. Obeyed! (Could this please also happen when I ask for the dishes to be done or for the floor to be swept? Can crock pots do other chores when asked?, I wondered.)

Crock pot success was -- finally! -- mine.

Anyway, I am not going to fuss around with too many more details of this saga, because I need for you to hustle over to your butcher shop, swing by the 7-Eleven, and then rush on home to make this extremely delicious thing. It's relatively urgent.

First, thought, please answer this questionnaire to find out if you are eligible for creating this dish.

1. Do you have a crock pot?

2. If not, do you have a dutch oven or some sort of large, ovenproof vessel with a lid? If not, can you buy one and/or craft one out of household objects?

3. Do you like to eat shredded meat pieces?

4. Do you enjoy convenience from time to time (or all of the time)?

5. Do you know how to pour liquids and use a fork?

6. Do you like Marvin Gaye?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, then you have been accepted into the Slow and Low Cooking Club. Congratulations! (If you did not pass the test, it's okay. You're still a good person.)

Okay, so now it's time to cook. And by "cook," I mean, put stuff in a hot container and walk away for a very long time while you do more useful kinds of things, like reading the newspaper from February that you never got around to reading, or scrubbing sticky milk spots off the counter top, or taking Motrin until your freaking headache actually goes away. See? This pocket of Slow & Low time will serve you so well.

First, let me sell it to you, in case you aren't all that attracted to this whole idea yet.

Here are the reasons it's good:

1. According to my mother, the sandwiches that one can craft with this meat are so good that a visitor to my parent's once ate "about a hundred" of them. Um, Suz, I think you know this person well and have fed him large quantities of meat every day for many years. (A hundred might be a slight exaggeration. See where I get my excellent hyperbole skills?)

2. When we ate this meat as sandwiches on Easter, my dad called it "the best lunch I've ever had." Again, Hyperbole Family. But, honestly, it was a pretty perfect lunch.

3. Both my dad and Matthew ate this meat for the next two or three meals AFTER the initial meal. Matthew actually ate it 7 or 8 times in a row, and he has since morphed into a brisket. (Yes, a brisket can snore just as well as a man can.)

4. As you can tell from the above anecdote, this recipe makes A LOT. You can also make a smaller amount, but I kinda feel like if you're gonna cook something in a big container for a long period of time, it might as well be a large quantity.

Okay, sold!

Here's what you do.

Mother's Secret Weapon 

2 or 3 lbs. beef brisket, beef shoulder, or pork shoulder
2 cans Coca-Cola*
1 bottle barbecue sauce
salt and pepper

*My mom wants you to know that she only uses 1 can of coke. I used 2 cans, plus a little extra barbecue sauce (totaling out at about 24 oz. of sauce). The more meat you have, the more liquid you'll want, but just use whatever combination pleases you.

Pour liquids into your crock pot or dutch oven. Add salt and pepper. Whisk or stir. Put in your meat piece. Submerge it by poking it down into the liquid with your finger. (Add a little water if you want it to be completely drowned.) Put the lid on! Cook for a thousand hours on crock pot low heat or for much less time in an oven temp of 200 degrees. Seriously, let it cook overnight if you're doing it in the crock pot. When I cooked it last Sunday in the crock pot, I think it cooked in its hot bath on low for at least 12 hours, although you could probably get away with 6 or 7 hours if you needed to. Just poke at it every few hours and decide when you and your meat are both ready for the next part of your relationship. When you're ready, shred it (we like to do it in a 9"x13" pyrex cake pan) and return meat to your vessel. Keep it warm while you get your other meal supplies ready.

It's terrific on a sandwich roll with blue cheese and/or slaw, but it also makes amazing tacos. Matthew and I really loved the taco-combination of cabbage slaw (red cabbage, cilantro, lime, garlic, jalapeño, olive oil, vinegar), queso fresco and caramelized onions with the brisket version of Mother's Secret Weapon. I imagine it would be good in any scenario, though. (And yes, we've eaten the brisket straight out of the tupperware with a fork. And we're not ashamed! It's that good.)

My Favorite Smell

Well, one of my favorites. Tomato stems. (I may or may not save them and sniff them until they dry out and lose their smell.)

Speaking of Pink

Remember when I went to Los Angeles and then I came home and told you about the kumquats?

Well, something pink (not a princess cake) appeared during that trip, and it contained donuts!

Let's all just take a moment to admire this very beautiful and special box, with it's donutty stamp and overall pleasantness. I mean, who on earth doesn't want to eat their food out of a pink box?! Hell, fill this box with fill dirt and I'm all over it.

If you find yourself in Los Angeles, you can get your very own pink box by going to Primo's Westdale Donuts, although there are approximately 800 kajillion donut shops in L.A., so there is probably more than one pink box to be had out there. What do I know? There are exactly, uh, two donut shops in all of Chicago, give or take, so I'm kind of out of the loop with donut-box culture these days. Although! There is a bakery here that serves their donut boxes all tied up in string and -- brace yourself -- there's a machine that does the stringing, crisscrossing it around all four sides in a nice, clean four-segment design. It's completely amazing. A gosh darn machine!!! But that? That is the extent of my donut box knowledge. So far, anyway...but you watch out, donut-box world! I'm going to catch you and figure you out!