HEAT Us Cheap -The (vegetable) Butcher

~from Cutiepie:  Hey y'all!  Our first hobo, The (vegetable) Butcher, is one smart mother-shut-your-mouth.  He can do stuff with a half rotten fridge that is better left untold...yet somehow hasn't killed anyone and leaves them wanting more...enjoy the treasure that a lucky few have known about for years...

---I used to cut up cows, now I cut up carrots...you won't find any strict rules with me as I'm a hobo that uses my hands...at least I wash first...(sometimes)...---

As we head into late autumn, Daylight Savings Time plunges us into darkness at an alarmingly early hour.  We stumble out of bed in our cold, dark houses, and after a full day's work we find ourselves sitting in that old familiar blackness once again...before we even get through rush hour. By the time most families are gathered to finish homework, share a meal and get ready for the next day's routine, most of the free heat provided to our homes by the sun has radiated its way back into space.  This is the time of year that mental health professionals make their quotas, thanks to Seasonal Affective Disorder, alcoholism, and whatever other disorders stem from lack of sunlight and overexposure to crappy holiday music.  We can counteract the negative effects of the changing seasons by providing an environment that promotes warmth and togetherness, complemented by healthy, hearty meals.  Before you reach for the thermostat at night, it's time to start using the oven again.

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Summer, here in the Deep South, means that I make every excuse to avoid meals that require any baking, roasting, or broiling.  You won't find any stock pots bubbling away on my stove in mid-August, either.  I've even been known to move the toaster oven to the back porch, just to bake a potato or cook a few chicken breasts.  It's just too damned expensive to keep our old house cool during those sweltering months.  In addition to cold salads, I lean heavily on that holy trinity of summer cooking...the grill, the microwave, and the crock pot.

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As the leaves turn and the mercury plummets, it is with great pleasure that I dust off the roasting pans and the soup cauldrons.  The rutabagas, parsnips, turnips, and winter squashes that I have been missing are once again restored to my shopping list. The oven is great for all of these winter staples.  It also excels at multi-tasking...while the veggies are roasting to perfection,  leftovers can be reheated in a dish to the side...and while this is going on, some flaky fish filets can be cooking away, snugly sealed in a foil envelope on the rack below.  Grab a loaf of crusty bread from the freezer and throw it in for the last five minutes.  You get the idea...the possibilities are endless.

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Our most recent roasting session included artichokes, onions, carrots, garlic cloves, brussels sprouts, and bell pepper halves...all misted lightly with olive oil cooking spray and rubbed down with a bruised clove of garlic.  I "parboiled" the artichoke beforehand by putting it in the microwave for a few minutes in a covered pot with few millimeters of water.  For the oven, 400 degrees seems to be a good temperature setting...not so hot as to char the greener veggies, but just enough to take care of the larger chunks and any of the starchier roots...that, and it's an easy number to remember.

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A watchful eye is key...for reduced fat cooking, there's a fine line between golden perfection and having to order Chinese as you fan the smoke out of the kitchen.  If you are incorporating ingredients that require longer cooking times, I would suggest using separate roasting pans.

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Things don't have to end with the main course.  Have a cobbler standing by, or a sheet of pre-arranged cookie dough ready to pop in as dinner comes out.  Even a pot of plain old water can be used to make tea or cocoa or to fill a hot water bottle for the bed, or to humidify a dry house.  The oven doesn't care if you're cooking a 20 pound turkey or a Pop Tart, so use your imagination and take advantage of every bit of that extra heat.  This isn't so much a recipe posting as it is a suggestion to use your heat creatively to bring folks together, all the while saving on the utility bill.  Do more than cook.  It harkens back to a time when every home had a fire burning in its hearth...and that fire was the center of family life.  Once the sun went down, that was it...no central heat, no TV, no artificial light.

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Just candlelight, quilts, and conversation.

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It went beyond physical survival...it was how human beings endured the cold and the darkness with their sanity intact.  Perhaps, by using the warmth of the kitchen as a means to bring us together, we can capture a small bit of that in our own modern homes this winter.

  

The (vegetable) Butcher