July 4th redux

I've let this post languish for too long - to the point that I question its relevance anymore. But its absence has kept me from posting regularly, so I think it is worth including, especially since it involves food, family, and tradition, the three pedestals upon which Cooking 4 Four is build. So, if you can forgive me for not being timely, I give you the Annual July 4th Lobster Luau!

Every July 4th (or thereabouts, depending on when the holiday falls), the family gathers at my grandparents' house on Cape Cod. And by 'family', I mean the lot of us - aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, brothers, friends, etc. This past 4th, there were 20 people there, which is actually one of the smaller gatherings we've had - over the years, as the family has grown, various factions have moved farther away or have other responsibilities. Whomever can come does, and those that can't make it we hope to see next year (though we'll see them in a month or so as well - family gatherings are a common occurrence). And every 4th my grandfather organizes the "luau", by which he means a traditional New England lobster and clam bake. There's actually something quite funny here - you have an Italian-American family cooking a traditional American meal and calling it by a name usually associated with pineapples, pig-on-a-spit, and grass skirts. Not sure why my grandfather started calling it a luau, but that is its official name. So if I ever invite you to the Cape for a luau, you can leave the plastic flower lei at home.

The main menu for the luau includes shrimp, lobster, chicken, steamers, potatoes, corn, carrots, and onion. The shrimp get served two ways - as shrimp cocktail and sauteed in olive oil and garlic (really, what's a luau without olive oil and garlic?). The rest get thrown together into some lobster pots along with some corn husks and garlic (again, you gotta have the garlic). Actually, "thrown together" isn't really correct - each item is placed into a pot in a particular order, all of which is orchestrated by my grandfather. Honestly, the order of things isn't that important, but you have to make sure that things are evenly distributed and that there is enough space between everything so they cook together. A couple of lobsters, a potato and onion, a few carrots, a couple cloves of garlic, a piece of chicken, some corn (halved) and some corn husks. Repeat until all the food is in the pots. Turn on the gas and cook until done. When is that? When the last potato you put on top is tender enough you can slide a knife easily into it. Somewhere between 1 and 2 hours. Throw the steamers on top during the last 15 minutes or so.

My brother, Carl, with today's entree

Ready to cook

My grandfather making sure I did everything right


Time to eat!


The rest of the celebration involves plenty of wine, beer, and desserts (as usual). This year I brought along some of my homebrew and made this awesome blueberry and strawberry buttermilk cake. And when not eating there is plenty of time to hang out, catch up, go to the beach, play some bocce and do a little night fishing (for the record, I caught two stripers - both too small to keep). All in all, our 4th of July Luau is one of my favorite family events - we have 4 generations enjoying each others' company, keeping traditions alive, and eating great food. If only we had some hula dancers too...

My brothers, Jeff and Carl, fishing in the fog

Uncle Dougie playing bocce

Jack showing off his bocce prowess

Jack at the Sundae School

Your basic cheeseburger

Sometimes, a simple meal is best. Nothing fancy here - just your basic cheeseburger, some Cape Cod potato chips, a nice green salad with balsamic vinaigrette, and a homebrewed pale ale. The only thing to add would be a nice fresh tomato from the garden, but that will have to wait until mid-summer. Linda and the kids like to add some ketchup and mustard, and the kids go even further by adding relish and pickles, especially if the relish and pickles are made by our good friend, Sarah.

I don't have much of a recipe to give here. The hamburger is from our monthly meat CSA share from Chestnut Farms in Hardwick, MA. I don't add anything to it. Each burger is hand-formed and about 1/3 lb apiece. I grill them for about 15 minuted over medium heat, flipping twice, with the second flip coinciding with the cheese addition. A perfect medium to medium-rare.

Every Last Cookie

My wife's cousin, a freshman at NYU, has a great blog about a great idea. She's baking her way through every cookie in Martha Stewart's cookie cookbook and blogging about each one. She hopes to complete her mission by the time she graduates. She's through Cookie #10 in only 8 weeks or so. At this rate, she should be able to do it. Of course, she'll have to forgo graduating early.

If you like cookies (and who doesn't?) you should definitely check it out: Every Last Cookie

PS Her photographs may be more impressive than the cookies

A Philosophy of Eating - Part 1

The following are the tenets that drive my eating-related actions. Or rather, these tenets inform my food-based decisions. (At least in an ideal world) Essentially, these are things that I believe and therefore things that I try to follow. These are the major themes of Cooking 4 Four.

1. Prepare as many meals yourself as you can
Basically, if you can cook it yourself, you should. This puts you in direct control of the ingredients and the process, which allows you to decide which ingredients and which processes are included (and which are excluded). You can eliminate low quality, artificial and/or unnecessary ingredients and processes. The assumption, of course, is that what you eliminate isn't good for you and/or isn't particularly tasty. Home cooked is generally better than non-home cooked.

2. Cook and eat as much variety as you can
Food and drink sustain us - there are a multitude of components found in them that we need to survive and be well. We can't possibly get them all from one food. Nor from some pill or extract - in many cases, the form of the compound or the interaction of that compound with other compounds matter. If you eat a variety of different foods chances are you're getting most every coenzyme, cofactor, and trace mineral that you need. Besides, eating the same thing over and over is depressing - it makes eating not very enjoyable. Eating should be enjoyable - if it isn't, eating becomes more of a chore and you stop caring what you eat (so you end up eating nothing but hot dogs, twix bars, and coke and that's not good)

3. Use as many locally-produced ingredients as you can (the more local, the better)
If it were possible and feasible to produce everything we wanted right here on our own property, I would. But we can't. So, instead, we produce what we can, when we can - our vegetable garden grows a bit every year. We're going to plant some fruit trees. (if only I could have my own hops and barley field!) For those things we don't produce ourselves, we get from increasingly expanding circles of proximity (is that the opposite of degrees of separation?) - first friends and family (my dad has a great wild blueberry patch in his yard and some friends harvest honey from their bees), then from local farmers (our milk comes from a local dairy, our meat from a local farm, and we try to get eggs and as much produce from local farm stands and farmer's markets), then regional producers (for example, I'm more likely to buy Maine potatoes than Idaho potatoes). Clearly, living in New England, especially during the winter months, we can't get everything locally. So, sometimes I have to make a compromise between this tenet and the one above - I either have to sacrifice using local ingredients or sacrifice variety. So I do. We always have bananas in the house, yet I refuse to buy asparagus in January.

My order of preference:
1) Eat something that we prepared ourselves using ingredients we produced ourselves.
2) Eat something that we prepared ourselves using ingredients from as local as possible.
3) Eat something that was prepared locally using local ingredients
4) Eat something that was prepared locally using non-local ingredients
5) Eat something that was prepared non-locally

Please remember that all this is under ideal conditions. Hockey practices, basketball games, grading lab reports, sick kids, harsh winters, uncooperative geography, and general crankiness do not always lend themselves to ideal conditions. During such times of less-than-ideal conditions, take-out is certainly a viable option.

(to be continued)