Pesto, granola and the Facts of Life

Here’s a fact that I learned during the Pope-a-palooza fanfare going on here in 2013:  when a pope dies, he is tapped on the head by a silver hammer three times. If he fails to respond, he is declared dead. Seems like there’s room for error in that system as some people do sleep pretty hard, but there’s no instance of a pope being declared dead when he was actually still alive, so let the tradition continue.  I just wanted to share that with you all. I found it amusing and impressive that such a tradition had endured for centuries.

So this has been the story of the last month: Returned from the awesome trip to Colombia that forced me to completely reframe my understanding of that country in a very positive way (all of you: go there!), went to the very snowy Rocky Mountains for a week, went to Hawaii for a week to meet up with my mom/step-dad, stayed at home in Fort Collins for more than two consecutive nights for the first time since mid-December, visited my grandmother in eastern Washington,and now back to the Rocky Mountains.

near Kona, Big Island, Hawaii

I’ve identified a new goal to accomplish by the end of sabbatical:  nail down the best recipe for granola. I made my sixth batch yesterday, and it’s getting close, probably because I added a few tablespoons of whiskey. Creating stuff in the kitchen is about the only right-brained thing I am capable of or motivated to do. Although I did have a leading role in Tom Sawyer the Musical in approximately 1984, I had no business subjecting that audience to three separate solos like that. At the time, my singing voice sounded like a car screeching to a sudden stop. It wasn't just puberty. As an adult, one time I awoke to racoons fighting outside my bedroom in the middle of the night but was told the next morning by a roommate that I was singing in my sleep.  So I'm not a singer. And nor am I an instrument player. In junior high school I tried to play the trumpet but then got braces and my mouth would bleed because I had to squench my lips so tight into the trumpet mouthpiece that the wires from the braces cut my gums. In piano, the teacher  sat uncomfortably close to me on the piano bench while she drank vodka and told me she hoped her husband would be working late, so I stopped piano lessons by age 13. I remember it was vodka she was drinking because as a kid I thought ammonia and vodka were the same, and her drink smelled like ammonia.

So the granola recipe is below. Note: I don’t keep track of amounts. I just go by sight and taste, and you should too when you cook. Change things according to the flavors you like. Unless it’s baking, go rogue on any recipe and tailor it to what you like. This is why I don’t like to bake: it’s an exercise in following directions to exact details, and that’s not playing to a strength that I’ve ever had. Cooking without directions lets my brain rest. Let me be free, BettyCrocker! Let me be free!  

Put this stuff in a large saucepan on low heat:

About a ¼ cup of canola oil and a few tablespoons of butter.
About a ¼ cup of apple juice
A few long squeezes of honey
One second of pouring whiskey, holding the bottle completely upside down
About a teaspoon of vanilla
Let this stuff simmer for awhile on low heat to burn the alcohol out of the whiskey. After it’s simmered for awhile, add to the saucepan:

1-2 fist fulls of sliced almonds
1-2 fist fulls of crushed pecans
Up to 1 fist full of walnuts
A few cups of rolled cereal blend – the stuff with oats, wheat, rye. Lots of store-bought options.
Some flax seed, because it’s good for you
A little bit of nutmeg
More cinnamon than nutmeg

Mix all of this together until everything is coated in the liquid. Ideally, there’s not a whole bunch of liquid left sitting at the bottom of the pan after you’ve stirred this all up. The cereal blend should be absorbing most of it. If there is a lot of liquid, add more of the cereal blend.  Conversely, if it looks like the mix might need a little more liquid, add some apple juice or a little more oil.  Or a little more whiskey.

Spread it all on a cookie sheet. Go back in time and pre-heat the oven to 350-ish. Bake it. Before it starts burning, take it out.

Let it cool completely.  Put it back into a mixing bowl and add some handfuls of dried cranberries and raisins. Mix it.  Spread it back out on the cookie sheet to dryout for an hour or two. Put it in a glass container on the counter so house guests ask “Did you make your own granola?” Pride is a part of cooking.  

I’ve also tried to master a kale-based pesto. Kale is ridiculously good for you. If you eat kale you automatically live to be like 110 years old.  After three rounds of experimentation, I think the recipe is in its final stages. You’ll see some ranges on how much of each to include. You decide based on what you like. If you love basil, go with more basil. If you like but don’t love garlic, go with less garlic. And so on.

3-5 large kale leaves, chopped up without the stalky stems
4-6 fresh decent-sized basil leaves
A handful of cashews
1-2 cloves garlic
Up to a few ounces of goat cheese
A quick squeeze of honey
Few squeezes of lemon juice
Up to a cup of olive oil.
Salt

First, blanche the kale, garlic and cashews. And now I will connect making kale pesto to why I left Loyola Marymount University (LMU) after one semester in 1989. By ‘blanche,’ I’m not referring to either of the two fictitious beauty queen television sitcom female stars of the 1980s with the name Blanche:the snobby teenager from Facts of Life nor the glamour grandma from Golden Girls.The snobby Blanche was often very rude to the Natalie character on that show,and in 1989 I attended LMU for one semester with the real-life Natalie, Mindy Cohn.  I hated that school. Even Natalie/Mindy couldn’t make it better, despite sharing the same row in COMM 110: Media and Communication together. Maybe that’s why I had such a hard time, because I never got a glimpse into her Hollywood world when it sat right there in the same row with me for an entire semester. Though I probably hated it more because I think my roommate was a drug dealer. One time we got a phone call in the middle of the night which was picked up by the recorder (if you were born after 1992, google “phone recorder” or ask your grandparents) and then my roommate picked up, which means the whole conversation was now on tape about going to locker #19 in the downtown bus station at 3am and the conversation signed off with “you know where to take it from there” before my roommate abruptly left.  I think he also used my bed to host his sexual relations while I was away, which led to me placing 2-3 unraveled wire coat hangers under my sheets whenever I left for a weekend.

Natalie from the Facts of Life. Object of Blanche's high brow demeaning behavior.

I also disliked LMU because another student in the wing of my dorm had a birthday party on the boat owned by L.A. Lakers coach Pat Riley, and when we showed up we were instructed to pay $200 but this detail failed to be shared with us ahead of time. I suspect that in this crowd, $200 was no big deal and isn’t something that needed to be explicit at the point of invitation. So I stood there with one other naïve friend, as throngs of well-to-do and nice-smelling 18-year olds passed us by, nonchalantly pulling $200 out of their wallets and purses similarly to how I might pull out a Supercuts valued-shopper punch card from mine.  

It felt weird to be embarrassed in that situation because I hadn’t really known anyone prior to that night who was 18 and had that kind of money to throw down on a Friday night.  There we were, looking across a gangplank at peers living their parents’ upper-class lifestyle, and that’s fine. But what wasn’t fine was the birthday friend realizing the situation and shouting to us to just ask one of the car service vehicles that were steadily dropping party-goers off at the pier to give us a ride back to the dorm. Disappointed but realistic,we followed her suggestion. We asked for a ride from one of the car service vehicles with the tinted windows, thinking we would at least get to ride in a car like a rich person. Alas, it was not to be. We thought the car service of the rich meant they also drove around the rich’s friends for free.  Nope. It would cost us, and that takes us back to the source of this entire situation: we had no money.  And so we walked, carrying with us our limited knowledge of Los Angeles geography to return to the LMU campus, and even more limited by the fact that we had taken an interstate at some point during the drive to the marina, and now we were pedestrians. It took us nearly two hours of post-dusk wandering. The independence I craved so much by going out of state for school really sucked at that moment. 

And so began the countdown of my remaining days at Loyola Marymount University and subsequent enrollment in my homeland's land grant institution, Washington State University, where $200 would be enough money to regularly buy bottle rockets at the nearby reservation and enough Natural Light to drink every time Theo got in trouble or Vanessa said something stupid in The Cosby Show.

Back to kale pesto.  By blanche, it means to first get some water boiling. Place the kale, cashews and garlic in the boiling water and don’t answer your phone or feed the dog because you’re not leaving it in that water for more than a minute. This is getting the sharp taste out of the raw garlic and the bitter taste out of the raw kale. Not longer than a minute or the kale is gonna get mushy. Pull the kale and garlic cloves out with some tongs or if you have something to prove, use your bare hands.  Give the kale a shake to get rid of excess water.  Keep the cashews in there for a few minutes to soften them up a little more.

In a food processor or blender, mix all of the ingredients together except the lemon juice, until it’s pesto-thick. At the end, add the lemon juice. Too thick? Add olive oil. Not thick enough? Add more kale or cashews or basil or goat cheese or some combination based on your tastes.

And there you go.  As usual, sorry for those I offended somewhere along the way.  But remember, I also turned you on to kale pesto, whiskey granola and reruns of Facts of Life.