Despite the colder-than-Paris weather we’ve been having lately, I’m so happy to be back in Texas for the holidays…surrounded by friends, family, and lots of love.

As many of y’all know, it’s been a wild ride this past year, with more ups and downs than the Runaway Mine Train at Six Flags. But the book’s finally finished and off to the printer, and I’m looking forward to the new year…and the adventures that it’ll bring.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Hope you’re cooking up something fun.

More Big Easy than Big D, with its bowtied waiters and simple, Cajun-inspired menu, S. & D. Oyster Company where I’ve always gone for a gumbo fix. Problem is I can’t seem to stop there. I always want fried oysters, too, and I must have fried shrimp, and since the combo plate comes with both – along with hush puppies and homemade fries — what’s a girl to do but order it all?

Which is what I did the other day when Mom and I were in Dallas for errands (mine) and hairdo (hers).

We sat down at our table for two against the buttercream wall, ordered a couple of iced teas, and snacked on saltine crackers and butter — the only pre-dinner nibble that was offered at restaurants in Dallas in the 1970s before the meal came (or the places that we went to, anyway).

Isn’t it funny how something so completely plain Jane can immediately take you back to another time and place? Crackers and butter. You’d just never think of that today.

We both had the gumbo, loaded with sweet Gulf shrimp, and I ate mine so quickly that I completely forgot to take a photo beforehand — so you’ll have to just take my word for it — it was delicious.

You can’t see the oysters underneath all of the shrimp and fries, but they’re there, and even though they were smallish, about the size of a quarter, the cornbread coating was perfectly crisp and they were just lovely. I don’t think I’ve had fried oysters since the last time I was here, which was probably four years ago.

Hush puppies, either. Ouh la la! What wonderful things hush puppies are! When I took the first bite, I remembered that I’d been wanting to make some of these for awhile, but with chopped jalapenos. I feel like there’s gonna be a hush puppy fry in my near future.

And gumbo, too. I’m already working on that (I already found frozen okra at the Kroger down the street!), so stay tuned…

(When I was in Dallas earlier this year, I had some tacos. Actually, lots of tacos. But I kept going back to this place, time and time again.)

I know what you’re thinking. Another taco stand in Dallas?

Yawn.

I thought the same thing, too. Even though my buddy Dave has been raving about this gourmet tacqueria for more than a year, I didn’t really believe him when he told me how good it was – especially when he said that this place had gotten its start in the back of a gas station.

A biofuel station in East Dallas, no less.

It all sounded so Portland.

But I love tacos, as y’all know, and I’m always up to try a new taco joint, whether Dallas really needs one or not.

Need. Want. I’m always having a hard time distinguishing between those two guys.

So one afternoon after Dave and I had spent the morning moving all of my worldly possessions from one storage unit to another, we drove out to Good 2 Go Taco to refuel.

By now, just a year and a half later, Good 2 Go had moved from its original 9 x 7 space in the back of The Green Spot station to its very own digs in a tiny strip center off of Garland Road next to a do-it-yourself car wash.

A move up, for sure. But fancy wasn’t what Jeana Johnson and her partner, Colleen O’Hare, were after. Gray walls, exposed ceiling, original terrazo tile floors. Reclaimed wood for the counters, family photos (Jeana’s from Palestine, Texas) on the wall.

Both had worked for Stephan Pyles. They were ready to move on. They wanted their own place.

Tacos seemed right.

But these aren’t just any old tacos. No siree. Four different tacos (including “Hotlanta,” made with waffle-battered fried chicken, and “Curry in a Hurry,” with bok choy and shitakes), just four bucks apiece. Two big salads, $8.50. Breakfast tacos for $2, served all day.

“Swine Bleu” is my new big love – braised pork and bleu cheese slaw – and one that I’m going to try to recreate here, with Roquefort and Kate Hill’s Gascon-style BBQ. I also love “The Jana,” a slightly dressed up version of the old-school taco salad (beef/taco seasoning/iceberg/Catalina dressing – remember?), named after Jeana’s mom, who decided that every Friday night should be taco night. In her namesake version, Jeana combines picadillo beef, romaine, Fritos, pico, homemade queso (which alone is worth the trip), and charred jalapeno-maple vinaigrette.

I drank a Dublin Dr. Pepper and I ate my Jana, and half of Dave’s Swine Bleu. We shared a bunch of chips and super-peppery salsa, and before we left, Jeana came and sat down with us.

“I remember you,” she said to Dave, who had not been in since she moved to the new location. It had probably been eight months, all told, since she’d seen him last. “You used to come in right before the lunch crowd, late morning, right?”

Which he did.

Good 2 Go Taco’s meteoric rise over the last two years is well-documented. They’ve been featured on the Food Network’s “Best Thing I Ever Ate,” and have gained a fiercely loyal local following. After a year in the gas station, they searched for a bigger place.

Realtors came courting, offering cut-rate deals on rent in much trendier, tonier parts of town.

But Good 2 Go didn’t want to move on; they just wanted a bigger location – in the same very un-chic neighborhood. “These people were good to us when we didn’t have anything,” said Jeana. “I know their kids, I know their dog’s names. I’m not going to switch on them now. It’d be like changing schools when you’re in your junior year in high school.”

The next day, I realized that I needed a Good 2 Go taco fix. Needed. So I drove back to Dallas and got one.

I’ll see you next time I’m in town, Jeana. Lots.

Good 2 Go Taco
1146 Peavy Rd.
Dallas, Tx. 75218
214-519-9110

At one of my cooking classes last month, someone asked me how many pairs of cowboy boots I owned. I really wasn’t sure, but I told her that it wasn’t that many. The next day, I got them out and counted them. As you can see, it’s a small collection of eight. I also have a spare pair at my mom’s house in Texas, but since those aren’t with me now, I think that those would fall into a separate “travel boots” category.

The caramel-colored Frye boots on the end don’t officially count as cowboy, but they are boots, so if you’re counting all cowboy-like boots, then I guess that’s nine. But, full disclosure here, I sometimes wear other boots, too – I love my black knee-high Freelance boots, my two pairs of n.d.c. Made by Hand boots and, there’s a couple of pair of Uggs that I wear in the winter, too. Plus a great pair of Paul Smith ankle boots that I hardly ever wear because they’re about four inches high. I guess I should tell you about the ones that are up above my closet, too, in clear plastic boxes because I ran out of space.

But do those officially count if they’re not in rotation?

I guess if I had to count up all of the boots, cowboy and non, it would be a fairly interesting number. 20? 30? More, perhaps?

I’d have to get out the ladder.

In that same cooking class, someone else said, I’ll bet you don’t wear those little ballet flats around Paris, and of course, she was right. Ballet flats are great for – well, ballet, which believe it or not, I took for years and years – but I’m not going to be walking around Paris or anywhere else with shoes that make my feet look fatter and my legs look shorter than they already are, thank you very much.

So while it may seem like I have a boot addiction of some sort, let me assure you, I do not. A passion is not an addiction.

Which brings me to belts. Again, I say, what’s “too many?” Is there such a thing?

I buy belts like I buy scarves. Sort of all the time and often on a whim. My belts are all old (though I prefer the term “vintage” because it sounds more chic), and either found at flea markets, Goodwill stores, or they’re Old Stud belts (which are made from belts found at flea markets and Goodwill stores), which I’ve bought over the years.

I also have a few boxes of scarves, but we’re not going to get into that today. Scarves are really about warmth and keeping one’s neck protected from the harsh elements. They’re essential. Necessary. But of course, it’s nice to have a variety of colors/styles/fabrics for the abrupt changes in la meteo here in Paris. I always have a scarf handy for this reason.

Today, for example, is a springish sort of day. It’ll start out cool, get kind of warm around 3 or 4, and then cool off again later. I think my lightweight turquoise cashmere fringy scarf will be just perfect.

]]> http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/04/12/boots-and-belts/feed/ 0 http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/03/08/kebab-n-kurry/ http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/03/08/kebab-n-kurry/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:23:10 +0000 epierce http://cowgirlchef.com/?p=5425

This is my mom. Isn’t she cute?

It was her birthday when I took this photo and I think that she was saying, “Can we go inside, before the naan bread’s all gone?”

You can see by the grip of her purse that she was ready to get on with it – the eating of the birthday lunch, as it so happened to be — and ready for me to stop taking photos.

So I did. It was her birthday, and if there’s one day that Mom gets her way, it’s on her birthday. I’m really happy to oblige, anyway. Especially when she picks something that I really love for lunch, as she did recently. Mom loves curries, and so do I.

Kebab ‘n Kurry has been around since 1981, but under the ownership of Winkie and Amarjeet Duggal for the last dozen years. Which is about when I started eating here, best I can remember. I know it was a long time ago. Before, even, I’d gone to India and fallen in love quite deeply with its culture and cuisine, even more than before. I started making my own dal the week I got back. It didn’t taste as good as what I’d found in Delhi, or Rishikesh, or Hardawar. Here, however, it did.

Still does.

Mom and I went for lunch, which meant the $9.99 buffet. Palak paneer, dal, two different kinds of naan (plain and one with peas and potatoes), chicken tikka masala, beef vindaloo. There were other things, too, but honestly, there was so much to choose from, it was all sort of a blur. I went back twice. I loaded up with mint and tamarind chutneys and the yogurt sauce, then drizzled it over the whole lot. Then I went back again. Then we had dessert – kheer babami, cardamom-scented rice pudding; and gulab jamun, pastry balls in honey syrup.

Afterwards, Mom and I went to the yarn store. She recently rediscovered knitting, and is teaching me how to knit my own scarf. So far, it goes like this: I knit a row or two, make a silly mistake, then Mom patiently fixes it. Just like she always has.

I’m so glad I was in Texas for Mom’s birthday again this year. And as silly as it may sound, I’m also grateful for those crazy two weeks of ice and snow. Mom and I were stranded at her little house in the country, but we had a great time. We baked, we knitted, and we laughed a lot, too  – something that we’ve always done, as long as I can remember.

Kebab ‘n Kurry
401 N. Central Expwy #300
Richardson, TX
(972) 231-5556

Our last exercise at Cooking Matters Bloggers Boot Camp was, appropriately, all of us going through a Cooking Matters cooking course back at the North Texas Food Bank.

Everything that we’d done thus far — learning about the 17 million children that face hunger in the U.S., working with the kids at Trinity River Mission, and shopping with Ellen Damaschino at Walmart — was leading up to this, what we’d all come here for, the Cooking Matters cooking classes.

It’s a simple idea, Cooking Matters, because cooking does matter – it doesn’t need to be fancy, or expensive, or difficult. It can be simple. Should be uncomplicated. It should taste good.

Really, that’s about it.

Cooking brings us together. Chopping side-by-side or sitting at the dinner table.

We got a taste of a Cooking Matters class by making a pasta lunch with a rather unlikely combination of lima beans and collard greens, something I’d never thought of putting together.

I loved it.

The truth is, I loved it all. It was a whirlwind, the two jam-packed days. At each stop, I wanted to stay longer, learn more. Our final class was slightly shorter than a normal Cooking Matters class, but I think that we all understood how impactful it can be. The response from participants, 10,000+ families each year since 1993 at 715 different sites across the country, supports this: 76% report an increase in fruit or vegetable consumption; 78% say that they’ve learned key skills that help them make healthier food choices.

Usually, it works like this. The two-hour Cooking Matters classes are taught in six-week sessions, in the neighborhoods where the most at-risk families live — at their neighborhood community centers, recreation centers and at local food banks. They are taught by chef and nutritionist volunteers who follow time-tested Cooking Matters curricula, covering nutrition and healthy eating, food preparation, budgeting and shopping. Participants receive recipes and a bag of groceries at the end of each class, to go home and practice what they’ve learned.

We left in our food-stained aprons, with our notebooks and cameras filled. The shocking statistics of hunger in the U.S. remain, but Cooking Matters is working to shrink these numbers, one family, one nutritious meal, at a time.

What you can do: To make a donation or volunteer, contact Cooking Matters.

Pasta with Lima Beans and Collard Greens

Adapted from a Cooking Matters recipe by Chef Carole Wagner Greenwood in Washington, DC

INGREDIENTS

1 13 oz. package whole wheat pasta (we used rigatoni)
1 medium carrot
2 cloves garlic
2 medium onions
2 pounds (1 bunch) collard greens
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
3 14 oz. cans lima beans
Parmesan, for serving

1. Cook pasta according to package directions, drain and set aside.

2. While pasta is cooking, peel, rinse and dice carrot and onions. Peel and mince garlic.

3. Rinse collard greens – more than once if necessary to remove all grit, remove tough stems and chop coarsely.

4. Heat canola oil in a large saute pan over medium-low heat and sauté garlic, carrot, onion and greens until onions are soft.

5. Add diced tomatoes with juice, spices and cook until greens are tender.

6. Drain and rinse beans in colander. Add beans to the greens. If needed, add a little more water to make a sauce.

7. Toss greens and beans with cooked pasta and cook for 5 more minutes or until pasta is heated through.

Note: You may substitute spinach for collard greens; white cannellini or great northern beans instead of lima beans; and olive or vegetable oil for canola oil.

]]> http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/03/04/cooking-matters/feed/ 1 http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/03/01/shopping-matters/ http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/03/01/shopping-matters/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:41:27 +0000 epierce http://cowgirlchef.com/?p=5313

On the second day of Cooking Matters Bloggers Boot Camp in Dallas, we braved the frigid north winds and drove to a nearby Walmart for a quick lesson in how to grocery shop.

Shopping Matters is a stand-alone, two-hour class that takes students aisle-by-aisle,  to point out the best buys and show how to stretch a dollar to get the biggest nutritional bang for the buck.

Mary Ellen Damashino is the chef/instructor at with Cooking Matters at the Oregon Food Bank, and she flew in to show us how to better read labels, what to look for, and what to avoid.

When it comes to price, whether you’re looking at bananas or cans of tuna, look for the unit price — the small number at the bottom of the item’s label on the shelf — and compare by ounce. Whole chickens are going to be less expensive than parts, a bag of apples will cost less than buying them individually, and — surprisingly — shredded cheese is often cheaper than the block.

So it pays to pay attention.

And to know a few tips, too. Canned tomatoes, she said, are often loaded with salt, but with a quick rinse, the sodium can be reduced by as much as 40%. How to know which grapefruit is most ripe? Put one in each hand and use your hands as “scales” – the juicier, riper one will be heavier.

DaMaschino breezes by the end caps filled with sugary unmentionables, instead highlights ingredients that are nutritionally sound money-savers. Whole grains, including oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa. Eggs. Fruits and vegetables, especially in season, when they’re abundant and priced to sell quickly. Milk, cheese and plain yogurt. Chicken and meat, used as part of a healthy meal rather than the star of the plate. Breads. And beans, to add to soups, salads, and pastas.

For some of us, this is obvious. For the low-income families that are taking this course, many of whom are on food stamps or other federally-subsidized programs, it’s a first step to feeding their families in a better way.

But, then what? What can you make with a shopping basket of inexpensive, healthy basics?

We soon find out.

(to be continued)

Next: We return to the North Texas Food Bank’s kitchens, and cook our own healthy, low-cost lunch.

What you can do: Shopping Matters always needs tour facilitators and a support team of volunteers, too, to keep the program running on track. Find out more by clicking here.

On our first day of Cooking Matters Bloggers Boot Camp, after we visited the North Texas Food Bank to get an overview of hunger in Dallas, we hopped on a bus and drove to the Trinity River Mission in Oak Cliff, to see, first-hand, how another North Texas Food Bank-supported program works to help feed kids each day.

Kids Cafes is an after-school program sponsored by Feeding America that provides kids with meals that they might not otherwise get — it’s like an early dinner for those that may not eat again until they’re at school the next morning for breakfast.

In what had been so far a grim reality check on the state of hunger — in Dallas, the state of Texas, and nationwide — it was wonderful seeing what was being done about it, and with such success.

We saw children eating rice, beans, and tortillas here. They seemed relaxed. Happy.

Then, the highlight of the two-day bootcamp: working with kids one-on-one, playing games to test their food knowledge (”I’m long and green – what am I?”), and showing them how to cook.

On today’s menu: quesadillas with fresh veggies, black beans, and corn.

This is how the Cooking Matters program works with kids. Led by a volunteer/nutritionist, the kids learn to make something that they already like – quesadillas — but in this case, they’re healthier, more loaded with good-for-you stuff than they’ve probably eaten before.

Teach. Then let them do it for themselves. I love that.

What you can do: Cooking Matters for Kids always needs volunteers for its programs. Find out how you can help out by clicking here.

Texas has the second-highest rate of child hunger in the country.

One out of three children in Dallas are living in poverty — higher, even than the  national numbers of at-risk kids, more than 17 million.

Think about that for a minute. One in three.

Not the sort of statistics that I like to share about Texas, or my country. Today, more people than ever rely on food banks and pantries to feed themselves and their families — and according to the United States Department of Agriculture, a record 43.6 million people, more than one out of eight Americans, received food stamps in November, as the jobless rate stayed near a 27-year high.

This is very bad news. Horrifying, actually.

I’ve been in business for myself since my mid-20s, and money has often been tight. But I’ve always been able to buy food.

I’m fortunate. At an early age, I learned to cook at my mother’s side, and by the time I was a teenager, I was experimenting in the kitchen on my own. Since then, I’ve always cooked, and had a pretty good sense of what’s healthy and what’s not. I also know how to stretch a dollar at the grocery store when I need to watch my pennies – or centimes, as the case may be.

This is the idea behind Cooking Matters, the program that teaches low-income families, teens, and kids how to create nutritious meals on a budget — it’s part of the national nonprofit Share Our Strength, which aims to eradicate child hunger by 2015.

Last month, I was invited to be part of the first Cooking Matters Bloggers Boot Camp, held in Dallas, to better understand child hunger in the U.S., and learn how this program works to help curb this growing — and chronic — problem.

Dallas was chosen for a couple of reasons, Stephanie Childs, spokesperson for the ConAgra Foundation, the national sponsor of Cooking Matters, told me — its high numbers of at-risk children, and it’s where the North Texas Food Bank is located, which has an on-site Cooking Matters coordinator.

First, a little background.

The North Texas Food Bank, a 75,000-square-foot warehouse on the edge of Dallas in Oak Cliff, serves 13 counties across North Texas. Imagine a super-sized Sam’s Club, floor-to-ceiling filled with flats stacked with boxes of every kind of food imaginable, from peanut butter to canned pineapple, all either donated or paid for by donations. Shipments arrive daily and are unpacked, inspected, repacked, and redistributed to more than 300 area food pantries, kitchens and shelters.

In 2010, NTFB provided 45 million meals to needy people in North Texas; that’s up 21 percent from 2009. This year, NTFB is aiming for 50 million, and according to president and chief executive officer Jan Pruitt, that goal’s already within reach.

That’s the good news.

Now, the not-so-great.  The thousands of kids that show up for school each day and rush the lunch line because they can’t wait to eat. Who eat food off the floor when no one’s looking. Some may be enrolled in the federally-subsidized breakfast, lunch and after-school snack programs, but the NTFB saw a gap in the weekends, and filled it with the “Food 4 Kids” backpack program, which now sends food-filled backpacks home to 10,000 Dallas-area children each Friday.

Still, this isn’t enough.

(to be continued)

Next: America’s Kids Cafes and Cooking Matters for Kids

What you can do: Contact the North Texas Food Bank (or your local food bank) and volunteer, make a donation, or both. To volunteer immediately at the North Texas Food Bank, send an email to: volunteer@ntfb.org — beginning in March, every Saturday’s open for new volunteers. To find out more about child hunger in the U.S. and the Cooking Matters program, click here.

]]> http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/02/17/cooking-matters-and-the-north-texas-food-bank/feed/ 6 http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/02/16/maple-motor/ http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/02/16/maple-motor/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:12:52 +0000 epierce http://cowgirlchef.com/?p=5272

When I wrote about the hamburgers at Kincaid’s in Fort Worth recently, I was slammed with comments about other burger joints in the area – most notably, Dallas’ newest, Maple & Motor. Open just a year, in an old taqueria on Maple Ave. across from Elliott’s Hardware,  M&M’s brisket/chuck half-pounders had already achieved legendary status among the Dallas burgerati, and lines out the door into the parking lot were common, I’d heard.

Y’all know how I love burgers, so I made a mental note to swing by next time I was in Dallas, which turns out was sooner than I thought.

After rescuing my 20-year-old fringed cowgirl jacket from the storage unit in East Dallas – how did I manage to leave this behind? — I called my friend A., who, besides being the perhaps the best traveling buddy ever (we have taken road trips, plane trips, and even trips on tacky cruise ships together), is always up  for a burger.

So at 1 p.m. on a recent Saturday afternoon, we pulled in.

Outside, lots of trucks and SUVs.

Inside, a mixed-up crowd. A familiar-looking man with shoulder-length dreadlocks. A table of high school boys. Couples from the Park Cities swallowed up by the booths along the wall. College guys in the back, near the jukebox, waiting for an order of cheese fries with bacon. A banker in his weekend jeans and crisp pink button-down.

And us. The girls with the boots.

We stood in line. Ordered our cheeseburgers, fries, tots, and onion rings, too, and grabbed a couple of DDPs and slid into the only open booth, near the bright afternoon sun and the front door. Somebody played Queen’s “We Are The Champions.”

The burgers were indeed wonderful. Perfect in their pinkness. Fluffy bun domes with that unmistakable — and highly desirable — greasy shine (see napkin cast-offs below). And in my case, a couple of fat, thick strips of bacon, because, why not?

Jack Perkin’s the front man behind this decidedly un-slick burger joint, who teamed up with his neighbor to make burgers the old fashioned way – simply served up “pink” or “not pink” – with a 40-year-old grill from Vernon, Texas. They pooled their money, opened the place, and after six months, the initial investment was recouped, and the business was operating at a profit.

He’s now looking at opening a second location in Waxahachie.

Not bad for an ex-high school English teacher/former Navy officer/short story and screenplay writer with a reputation for being cantankerous.

“People will call and say, ‘Is there anything on your menu for a vegan to eat?’” said Perkins, who by now had joined us in our comfy booth.

He laughed.

“No. Go somewhere else.”

(Yes. Terribly cranky.)

Maple & Motor
4810 Maple Ave.
Dallas, TX 75235
(214) 522-4400