Posts Tagged ‘Oakhurst Eats’

Jami Moss — JamiMoss@gmail.com
My primary goal for the Eats this month was to avoid a predictable piece on something you might do with pumpkin. I try to offer ideas for seasonal cooking, but as I considered October, I began to realize that it isn’t the most exciting of food months.
October has none of the holiday fare associated with Thanksgiving or Christmas. Halloween candy, while appealing, doesn’t offer a lot of recipe options, Snickers pie and objects made with corn candy notwithstanding. And for me, cocktails aren’t as much a part of the holiday as they might have been in past years. Gone are the days when a “Halloween party” meant finding a revealing yet flattering costume and heading out to a floor-shaking event around 11 p.m. Now I’m of an age when the words “revealing” and “flattering” no longer go together, and my idea of a Halloween blowout is two glasses of wine consumed while passing out candy to a parade of small bees, fairies, Spidermen, princesses, pirates, and ghosts.

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Jami Moss, JamiMoss@gmail.com
This month marks the second (and potentially last) installment in our series on how to love vegetables. As it turns out, we’re just in time. Lent and other unpleasant periods involving penance and fasting are behind us, but we now face shorts and swimsuit season — and  some of us are facing it with about 15 fresh new pounds. Vegetables can help. If you don’t already love them as they ought to be loved, these ideas will sneak them in to your diet and help you to wow — not terrify — the beach crowds. Read the rest of this entry »

Jami Moss, jamimoss@gmail.com
I live with four carnivores — three cats and my husband. Before we married, Fred’s vegetable intake consisted of the following:
> Celery sticks (served with the wings at Twain’s).
> Salsa (came with the chips at Los Bravos).
> French fries. Read the rest of this entry »

This month we focus on Georgia Tearoom Swiss Steak, a cozy, classic wintry dish from Southern Living circa 1985, featuring cubed steak baked in tomato sauce. The recipe entered my mother’s repertoire after I’d left for college, but I loved it so much it might as well have been a childhood favorite.

And like many other things from childhood, Georgia Tearoom Swiss Steak soon led to family discord.

Sometime in my 20s, I called my mother to get the recipe. The idea was simple enough: Coat the meat with flour, brown it, and bake it in a tomato sauce that thickened in the oven. The recipe called for a quarter cup of flour mixed with seasoning. I measured this out into a bowl and began dredging the steaks.

It soon became apparent that this was a very, very small amount for coating six steaks. But I soldiered on, scooping up thimbleful after thimbleful of flour, dusting it over the meat in layers as thin as fairy wings. I browned the meat. I poured on the sauce. I baked.

The dish that emerged was not the Georgia Tearoom Swiss Steak I knew and loved — tender meat coated with a thick, rich sauce. Instead, the steak swam about in a pool of tomatoes and onions that most closely resembled a soup you would serve to prisoners in a gulag.

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Jami Moss, jamimoss@gmail.com

Starting in about 25 days, you know that your good intentions are going out the window. It really would be best if you would stop pretending that you are going to load up on carrots so you won’t eat quite so many of those cookies at the holiday party, or that you will limit yourself to just one glass of wine at John and Mary’s this year. It’s going to be too cold to exercise. You’ll need the comfort of a big bowl of mashed potatoes to deal with your friends, relatives, or lack thereof at Thanksgiving. And you do love pecan pie. Read the rest of this entry »

Jami Moss, jamimoss@gmail. com

In the spring of 1991, my reputation as a pie baker was born, emerging out of a strawberry-rhubarb pie I made for my roommate. Until that point, she believed that pie crusts were available only in the freezer section of your local supermarket, so mine was a revelation. She talked about it non-stop for weeks.

So thrilled was she that she gave me a copy of Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook as a birthday present that year. Written in 1965, this book chronicles a lifestyle that was already under siege by the agricultural- industrial complex the moment it hit the shelves. Read the rest of this entry »