Fresh garbanzo beans

I first noticed them as I was making my way up what's known around here as The Avenue. The Avenue is Ventura Avenue and most people in Ventura are terrified of it because it's the main street through the Hispanic/Latino part of town. We live in a really great subdivision off the northern part of The Avenue, so it's often the easiest way home.

Among the panaderias and meat shops are produce shops. During the past few months, one of them, which usually has a truck parked out front with various seasonal vegetables and fruits, has featured big bundles of green stuff that looked hay-like with little green bulbs on it. They seemed to go fast. I was dying to know what they were, but usually when I pass I have a car full of doggies, fresh from their daily run at Cemetery park, which is a de facto dog park.

Then I had to cover a story in Moorpark about four Girl Scouts who've written a book. I usually try to avoid going the fastest way, which entails going down the 101 to Thousand Oaks and taking the 23 out to Simi Valley. I've never been a big fan of freeway driving, and my skittishness has only been made worse by getting hit by a truck. So I take the back way, using the 118, which winds through the beautiful Ventura County farmland through Somis. I may lose 7 minutes, according to Google maps, but it's worth it.

To get to the 118, you have to take the 126 toward Santa Paula and get off at Wells Road. As I was going down Wells, I noticed a dude with a pickup selling produce on the side and he had the weird green bundles. I stopped on the way home to check them out. Of course the guy who was selling them didn't speak English. "What are these?" I asked. "Five," he answered. "OK. Five dollars is fine. But what ARE they?" I asked, to no avail. No one standing around the cart was in any mood to speak English. I opened one of the pods and saw what looked like a green garbanzo beans, so I figured that's what they were. Fresh garbanzo beans.

I paid my $5 and took my bundle home. I looked it up on the Internet and, yes, they ARE fresh garbanzo beans. The next task was to shell them. I pulled all the pods off the plants, then brought them inside to shell. The entire process took about four painstaking hours.

I then cooked them up and made them into a delightful pasta dish. I tossed the pasta with the cooked beans and some roasted garlic that I'd grown. It was fantastic. Rob, of course, didn't like it. But Dena ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for days.

I had left the beans on the counter and was going to buy some fresh lock plastic bags to store them, but they went bad overnight and sprouted. It's a good thing the dish I made was as good as it was or I would have been really, really mad about spending four hours shelling beans only to make one dish.

Fresh garbanzo and roasted garlic linguine

1 pound whole wheat pasta (not the "whole grain" stuff), cooked al dente
2 cups fresh garbanzo beans
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 bunches scallions, cut into small pieces
1 head roasted garlic (drizzle head of garlic with olive oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Put in 350 degree oven for 1 hour)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in nonstick skillet. Add garbanzo beans and scallions and cook, tossing. Taste the beans and when they're warmed through and a little crusty, stop. Toss with the pasta. Add cheese and squeeze the garlic cloves out on the pasta. Toss everything together and serve.

I outdid myself this time

 

Times are tough. I'd say things are about as bad as I can remember, and I became an adult just in time to encounter WIN (Whip Inflation Now, for you youngsters) buttons. Passing a gas station these days causes a spontaneous clenching of the rectum, even if you own a small, 4-cylinder car like we do, having always eschewed SUVs. Food prices are soaring and "specials" are becoming fewer and further between.

There's really not much comfort in knowing that everyone is feeling the pinch these days. In my book, misery really doesn't love company because then misery has to listen to company complain about all of his/her problems and, seriously, I hate to whine just to be pre-empted by someone else's tales of woe. Sure things could be a lot worse, but that sentiment really takes the winds out of the sails of the bitch ship, doesn't it?

So when Lindsay said she and Ryan were coming over for dinner and that they would bring the salad, I looked for the least expensive way to make a really tasty meal for us without paying much money. One thing Rob and I have noticed is that it's often less expensive to buy 15 pounds of meat than it is to buy 2 pounds. So we often end up with the "family" sized packages and I make enough for us to eat for two or three days, but we still end up throwing out an inordinate amount of food.

I went shopping for a meal by looking for what's on special, which is how I plan meals in tough economic times. Boneless, skinless, chicken breasts were selling for the same price as boneless, skinless thighs, which were also on sale. Since we're all also trying to eat healthier, I got the breasts. I also noticed pineapples were on sale and, using a trick from Cook's Illustrated (you pull one of the leaves from the top of the crown and if comes out easily the pineapple is ripe) I picked out a good one.

There had also been a sale of Trader Joe's Soy-yaki sauce, which is a version of Veri Veri Teriyaki. I'd also picked up some Trader Joe's grill seasoning because it really looked good (it has garlic, onion and all kinds of pepper flakes and cumin seeds).

Some neighbors had also stopped by a few days ago with a big bag of apricots they were looking to unload. Ventura County use to be one of the top apricot producers in the country. In fact, one of our local towns, Moorpark, was named after an apricot. With a surfeit of fruit and a teryaki theme, my idea of making a warm fruit salad seemed a logical extension.

The resulting dish was really quite tasty, if I may say so myself. In fact I outdid myself this time.

We use the phrase "outdid yourself this time" in memory of a repulsive friend of my nephew Sean who came to stay with us for a few months after we bought our house back in 2001 (the best investment of my life -- even AFTER the market crash).

Kyle was a smarmy ass who wove fanciful tales about his acting and pretty much everything else. One day I'd prepared a meal and invited the boys down for a taste. Kyle came up to me, his sunglasses dangling from his shirt in that completely asshat way of the clueless. He swung his arm around my shoulders -- a very unwelcome gesture -- and proclaimed, "Anne, you've really outdone yourself this time," in his best, booming man-voice. OK Kyle? I don't even KNOW you so how the hell would you know if I've even "done myself" this time, much less "outdone myself." Of course the phrase is now part of the family lexicon.

This recipe combines ease of preparation with wallet-friendliness.

Teryaki chicken and grilled fruit salad

4 whole skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into two pieces
6 chicken legs (these are usually inexpensive and people love them)
Veri Veri (or Trader Joe's Soy-aki) Teriyaki sauce (the kind with sesame seeds)
Trader Joe's barbecue grill & broil seasoning (this is salt free with mustard, red pepper flakes, garlic and onion flakes, thyme and whole cumin)
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

Place chicken in container and cover with teryaki, seasoning and ginger and let marinade for a half hour in the refrigerator. Remember, the chicken should be always refrigerated as it is a veritable petri dish of bacteria. You should never marinate chicken breasts more than about a half hour or the meat gets mushy; chicken meat is pretty delicate. Grill over low flame (I preheat the grill on high and then lower it just before I put the chicken on) for about 10 to 15 minutes a side (start with 10 minutes on each side and then turn and cook as needed to cook the chicken through)

Fruit salad
1 whole fresh pineapple, cut up into 8 spears, with each spear cut in half
10 whole apricots, pitted and cut in half
2-3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon grated ginger
Juice of 1 orange
1/4 cup coarsely chopped mint leaves

Put the fruit in a plastic bowl. Mix the honey, mint, ginger and orange juice and pour over the fruit. Let sit for about 15 minutes. Take the fruit out, leaving the juice behind, and grill using either a grill skillet, which we have (it's a skillet with holes all around the bottom, that's designed to be used on a grill) or make an aluminum cooking tray by folding a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum in half and poking holes through it. Grill over high heat for about 5 to 10 minutes or until the pineapple just starts to color. Put fruit back in with the juice and toss. Place mint leaves on top.

But you might not want to serve this just after someone has passed a gas station, because I don't know about you, but I lose my appetite each time I see how much the stuff costs.

The family trunk

I've been saying for a while that the pictures of Cody show that he's looking more and more like my younger brother Rodger looked as a kid. Of course, no one listened. Or if they did, they dismissed me with a so-what? So when Courtney sent me this photo, I put it next to a picture of Rodger and me from our childhood. Both are looking in the same direction and, to me, the similarity is eerie.

Of course Rob said, "Cody looks like your brother and you're surprised? It's not exactly like your family tree has branches -- it's more like the family trunk." That Rob's a funny guy.

It's just the big, old head atop the small neck that looks the same. And Cody has the habit of pulling his upper lip up and out, the way Rodger used to.

I remember taking the picture with Rodger. I'd just stolen his toy tractor. We'd both been given toys to carry for the picture and I had my rag doll and Rodger had this tractor. Of course, seeing Rodger with anything that gave him pleasure always was a source of great annoyance to me. My mom always tried to tell me that I felt this way because I was evil and black-hearted, but I've spoken with other older brothers and sisters and we all agreed that we had but one mission in our young lives -- to make sure that these new, younger, cuter upstarts that our mothers produced and preferred, got nothing. Ever.

So in this picture I'm gloating and Rodger's about to go after his tractor, which he wasn't allowed to because of the pictures. There's an entire series. In the next photo he has his hand out reaching for the tractor. In the final one there's just me, holding the tractor; grinning in absolute triumph. Rodger's not in the picture because by this time he was in tears. Mission accomplished.

It's weird, almost 50 years later, I can remember it all. I remember HATING the short hair my mom insisted I have -- she always sought to be "different and original." I used to put towels on my head to pretend I had long hair. My first act of self-determination was to grow my hair and to this day I abhor short hair, especially on me.

As far as our ongoing medical battles, Rob and I are now in the recuperation period. Rob's eye is healing nicely and his vision is about where it should be, the doctor assures us. I'm walking better all the time. I pretty much ignore all the physical therapy exercises and instead walk and garden and do housework all in an effort to get back to "normal." It seems to be working because even though I had to skip an appointment/torture course, I was actually doing better and had increased my range of motion.

We're almost functional. I was able to get Rob to L.A. without help and I can actually shop for groceries again.

People ask me all the time about the knee replacement and right now, I don't have a lot of good to say about it. I suppose it's because my knee really wasn't in terribly bad shape until right at the end. It was a little sore and swollen, but I could walk on it just fine when they did the first MRI, which showed all kinds of problems. By the time I had the surgery, the knee had frozen and couldn't bend at all. But it had been that way for just a couple of months.

Most people who get knee replacement surgery have been limping around for years getting ever more invasive procedures. When they finally get the surgery, they rejoice to not have the pain and disability. For me, the surgery came quickly after the complete collapse, so I'm not feeling quite the sense of relief.

It's really hard to learn to walk again. I have to remind myself with each step how to walk -- heel, sole, toe. Bend the knee. Extend the knee. I have a tendency to do a stiff Frankenstein walk and I have to continually stop and tell myself to walk correctly. I'm still using the cane because the knee will still give from time to time, but I put less and less weight on it. It's also become painfully apparent that each and every pound of extra weight I'm carrying is an extra burden on my knees, so I'm watching what I eat.

All in all things are definitely looking up, although both of us are ready to say adios to this little time in our lives.