Layered Bean & Potato Pie

    This week Dear Husband and I are trying out two new casserole recipes from the Better Homes & Gardens One Dish cookbook My Awesome Parents got me one Christmas. (My paternal unit inscribed it "You're surprising!" because he hadn't though I possessed the interest and attention-span for cooking.) DH and I have found and adapted a number of tasty dishes from it over the years. Yesterday I made a delicious concoction of pasta, sausage, spinach, and cheese, and I'll get around to posting it eventually. But the one DH prepared for tonight was so surprisingly good that I resolved to put it up immediately for your edification and delight.

Layered Bean & Potato Pie

1 lb. small red or yellow potatoes, thinly sliced -- We can get these at our farmers market.
10 3/4 oz. can condensed cream of potato soup
15 oz. can garbanzo beans -- Also known as chickpeas; not the same thing as Great Northern white beans.
15 oz. can small red beans
1 cup frozen peas -- If I had been cooking, I would have put in at least 2 cups.
2 stalks chopped celery -- I left this off because DH doesn't like it.
1 cup chopped green bell pepper -- I left this off because I think it's wasted when it's cooked.
1 cup onion, chopped -- I would have chopped the whole dang onion, but DH measured carefully because it's not his favorite thing.
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese -- I omitted this because yesterday's casserole also had cheese.

Seasonings: 4 cloves minced garlic, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp. coriander, 1/4 tsp. cracked black pepper -- The cumin and coriander were courtesy of my grandmother, who brought us back a small spice rack from Turkey. I also like to add 1/2 tsp powdered sage.

Steamy delicious goodness!

1. Wash and chop vegetables. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Cook potatoes for 4-5 minutes in just enough boiling water to cover them. Drain and set aside, or just leave them in the pot until you're ready for them. (This reduces baking time.)

3. Meanwhile, heat some oil in a saute pan. Add garlic and onion. The recipe said to cook 5 minutes or until tender--but again, leaving the heat on will reduce baking time.

4. Mash 1/2 cup of garbanzo beans. Add mash, all the beans, peas, soup, milk, cumin, coriander, and sage to the vegetables in the pan. Mix carefully.

5. When she emerges from her study, let wife talk you into using a 2-qt casserole dish instead of a pie plate, since both baking dishes are still full of yesterday's casserole. Try to remember to grease the dish. Line with potato slices. Spoon the bean mixture on top. Cover with potato slices.

6. The instructions say to bake, covered, for 45 minutes, but at that rate it wasn't going to be done in time for DH to eat before rehearsal. Since DH had not rinsed the potatoes with cold water and everything seemed to be mostly cooked already, we just popped it in the oven for 15 minutes to heat through. (If using cheese, sprinkle on top for the last 5-10 minutes, uncovered.)

    I can't tell you enough how good this tasted. In fact, the rainbow chard I fixed as a side dish with butter, onion, tomato, and salt was a complete let-down. Next time I'll add more salt, or maybe some lemon juice. If you prepare this dish, I'd be interested to know what alterations you made and what you served it with!

The Land of Lincoln

Dear Husband and I recently accompanied his parents on a day trip to Springfield, Illinois, for all things Lincoln. One thing I learned was that Springfield is the third capital of the state: the first, Kaskasia (18909-1818), was abandoned because of constant threats of flooding from the Mississippi River. From 1819 to 1839, the specially founded town of Vandalia hosted the state government (including a young Abe Lincoln). Springfield finally got the job as a large, centrally located city due in no small part to the advocacy of Lincoln, among others. (Wikipedia tells me that the town was originally named Calhoun for the South Carolinian politician, until his popularity with the public dived and the locals renamed the place for the Silicon Valley of the early 19th century: the textile manufacturing town of Springfield, Massachusetts.) In 1844 the Lincolns purchased this house in a new "suburb" of the growing municipality.


The 16th President of the United States of America spent the happiest 17 years of his life in Springfield. He and Mary Todd Lincoln lived most of that time in this two-story house, which they had bought from the minister who married them and expanded twice: once to add a back parlor on the ground floor and once to raise the attic roof to make a proper second floor with five bedrooms.

Our tour guide was fond of reminding us that the Lincolns had sold all their furniture and household goods when they moved into the White House. A railroad bigwig bought the house and some of the furnishings, which returned to Chicago with him in 1869 and disappeared in the Great Fire of 1871. The rest of the pieces had been bought by friends and neighbors and came back to the house once it became a historic site. So Abraham Lincoln actually used the desk and chair in the photo (right).

The wall paper is a busy French blue design Mary picked out. I was a big fan of the woven floor covering until I asked the the tour guide how they kept it clean (being familiar with both rug beating and the anachronicity of vacuum cleaners). It  turns out that every spring they had to move the furniture, pull up the carpet tacks along the walls, cut or rip the stitches holding the pieces of cloth together, beat each piece outside over a line, and then roll them up for storage over the summer. In the fall, these were pulled out, unrolled, re-sewn, and re-tacked. Definitely a luxury only the family of a lawyer and legislator could afford!

By chance we all wore our Union blues that day.

Robert Todd Lincoln sold the house to the state of Illinois in 1887 for $1 and the promise that they keep it up and admit visitors for free. This they tried to do will into the 20th century, when it all just became too much. There was too much development around the home: a Piggly-Wiggly across the street, souvenir shops in people's living rooms, and a proposed motel on the next corner. So the National Park Service stepped in, bought up the properties on four blocks, and turned the neighborhood into a pedestrian zone. A few of the houses are used for museum purposes and the rest as Park offices.

We also visited the Abraham Lincoln Museum, where we saw both the regular exhibits and a special display on Civil War weapons and medicine. We had just enough time to stop by the Lincoln Tomb. It was closed, so we couldn't go inside, but we could rub Abe's nose for good luck!

If the Ponyshoe Fits...

Growing up I was a kind of picky eater. As I recall, items on my Do-Not-Eat List ranged from tomatoes and mushrooms to bananas and kiwis. I believe raisins and pears made brief appearances, as well as anything considered "hot" (like salsa) or "spicy" (like my dad's chili). Interestingly, brussels sprouts and lima beans never made the list. Once in college, however, I discovered Indian food. More specifically, lamb saagwala (spicy spinach): yum. Since then, I have gotten even more "adventurous," branching out into heretofore-unknown vegetables, as I have chronicled on these pages before (turnips? kohlrabi? kale?!). Being something of a food historian now, I try to keep an open mind. I figure I can try almost anything once. On a road trip with my in-laws recently, I had the opportunity to put this philosophy to the test with a dish original to Springfield, IL: the horseshoe.

A horseshoe is an open-faced sandwich composed of Texas toast, meat, french fries, and cheese sauce. Sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen, doesn't it?

It's a midwestern spin on Irish bar food, now served in Central Illinois diners and greasy spoons to the delight of carnivorous customers, who compare cheese sauces and meat selections in their online reviews. Because my arteries had started to harden already while locals described it to me after a church meeting, I resolved to order the horseshoe's smaller cousin--a ponyshoe--and split it with Dear Husband. (Our waitress said the horseshoe comes with an extra handful of fries and an extra scoop of sauce.)

Somewhere under that mountain of fries is a layer of
corned beef, and under that is a thick piece of buttery toast.

We opted for the corned beef and put the cheese sauce on the side (otherwise the fries get soggy). Also a large house salad to share (otherwise my healthy-eating conscience would wilt). DH was decidedly skeptical about the whole business, until I was able to coax him to try the cheese sauce. He pronounced this "pretty gouda" and proceeded to dunk his fries alternatingly in ketchup and cheese sauce. It really was delicious, but of course we didn't use even half of the cup that was provided. Maybe our arteries will last a little bit longer for it!

All in all, I found the horse/ponyshoe to be a delicious dish that--with the addition of a salad--makes a passing "sometime" meal to share on a special occasion.

Cut & Paste

Because sometimes writing really is a matter of cut and paste/tape/staple:

This is what the conclusion of my dissertation looked like on a recent afternoon. I have since scribbled three more pages of handwritten paragraphs. The document open on my laptop is still blank.

When I took this picture I don't remember noticing that my feet were in the frame, so I must not have been wearing my glasses. However, they are not among the objects scattered on the floor, so I'm not entirely sure where they were while I was engaged in this activity. That empty spot on the floor is for me.


Editor's note: I have been too busy cooking up fun, recuperating from it, and immersing myself in work to make up for my lack of productivity while traveling/recovering to write anything to post to this blog. I have a few hours this evening in which to rectify the situation, so email subscribers don't be surprised if you receive some back-dated posts over the next week or so.

"Chef Salad"

Upon my return from Germany, Dear Husband had an excellent idea for dinner: "chef salad." He had planned the week's menus so that I wouldn't have to cook while I was getting over the jetlag, and because our local farmers market offers so much wonderful produce--and then a friend had a bumper crop of garden lettuce--I have continued to include it in our rotation of meals for the summer. Now, the typical chef salad contains hard-boiled egg, meats like ham, cheeses like cheddar, and some veggies. In our household the term "chef salad" encompasses any entree salad, preferably although not always containing at least two of the classic ingredients. The really nice thing about our "chef salad" recipe is that the concept is so flexible: greens + toppings + protein + grain. The kinds we make tend to involve quite a bit of prep, so we usually fix these together. Here is a representative sampling:

lettuce, tomato, green pepper, carrot, radish, cheddar cheese, half a hard-boiled egg each, and a piece of French baguette


You can see my favorite mustard: 3 Monkeys sweet and spicy, which we discovered on our anniversary trip to Madison, WI, last summer.








This salad comes with a salad!


Greek salad: tomato, cucumber, feta cheese, olive oil, and dried oregano and basil


Entree salad: mixed greens, chunked ham, club crackers


(Sorry the photo is so blurry--I must have been in a hurry to eat!)

Next we have two variations of the same salad, because DH wanted to keep his tuna fish separate:

lettuce, tomato, carrots, cucumber, cheese, raspberries, pine nuts, whole-wheat roll, tuna fish drained and mixed with mayo and (in my instance) topped with sweet relish, because there is no other way to enjoy tuna fish


The cat was happy because he got to lick the extra tuna fish from my finger twice!


I generally don't use salad dressing, but I thought the French dressing on DH's salad made for a lovely combination of reds and oranges.

Instead of mustard, he ate his roll with raspberry jam (not pictured).


With chef salad, everybody can have his or her favorite condiments. Other popular toppings include grapes, blueberries, walnuts, strawberries, almonds, and sweet or dill pickles.

What do you like to put on your "chef salad"?

Wenn in Bayern...

...eat like the Bavarians do. At least, that is what the menu at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich promises tourists from in- and outside the country. I visited once with my family back in 2000 but don't remember anything except my parents drinking beer. I got another chance to appreciate this "cultural landmark" after the graduate-student German history conference I attended at the end of May/beginning of June. While an oom-pa-pa band led drinking songs downstairs, our group had two tables reserved upstairs, where it was quiet enough to hold (bi-lingual) conversations with one another.

Although we had a special, limited menu, I found myself overwhelmed by the choices. It all looked so good! Knowing the size of the entrees was likely to be bigger than anything I could eat on my own (and travel made leftovers impractical), I eventually opted to have two appetizers and share a dessert. A nice glass of white wine rounded out this three-course meal. (Ich trinke kein Bier.)

Rinderkraftbrühe mit großem hausgemachtem Leberknödel

First up, soup. I chose the "beef broth with large house-made liver dumpling." I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture, because the dumpling really was the largest ball of meat I have even seen. It was savory, delicious, and soon all gone.

Next was a cheese course of something I had never heard of before: Obatzda. This typical Central European biergarten food is a mixture of soft cheese, butter, and spices like paprika and cumin. Served with two slices of bread, onions, and a garnish of lettuce, it was almost too rich for me to eat by myself. Here I am, cheesing it up for the camera.

It's hard to go wrong with powdered sugar.

Despite the copious amounts of food and alcohol being consumed around the table, one of the conference organizers thought we would be able to polish off an order of Kaiserschmarrn, a sort of chopped up pancake served with powdered sugar and applesauce. Despite the promise of an "authentic" Bavarian experience, however, this dish originated next door, with Kaiser Franz Josef (1830–1916) of Austria!

Hochwasser in Dresden

In August 2002 I was finishing two months of language summer school at the Goethe Institut in Göttingen in the center of Germany. I hadn't expected the summer to be so cool and wet and ended up wearing the same pair of blue jeans and a gray flannel sweatshirt borrowed from a classmate pretty much the whole time we were there. I can still smell the rain-soaked mornings that came through the open, unscreened windows of the room I shared with a girl from Korea.

At the time, the Germans all said this was unusual weather, but when I was back in 2006 for pre-dissertation research and again in 2007 for the German Historical Institute's archive seminar and found similar weather, I wondered whether the Germans were familiar with their own summers? At any rate, those trips confirmed me in the belief that there is no time of year during which one should travel to Germany without an umbrella (ein Regenshirm).

Looking upstream from Carolabrücke, c. 4pm Tuesday

Anyway, in Göttingen we would read the newspapers in the mornings together, and I remember seeing pictures of devastating flooding in Dresden (among other places). Wikipedia tells me that "the Elbe River reached an all-time high of 9.4 meters (30.8 feet)" during this "Millenium Flood." 30,000 people were evacuated, and there was substantial damage done to residences, businesses, and landmarks like the Semperoper theater (click both words for previous blog posts).

Supposedly it was the kind of flooding that only happens every century or so, but some of my acquaintances in Dresden think climate change means more frequent flooding. They are now worrying whether two weeks of rain will mean a situation "as bad as ten years ago" [sic], when it rained and rained, and then after the rain stopped, the water came down from the headlands, leaving destruction and "all manner of junk" in its wake.

Thus far the famous Blaues Wunder bridge has been closed since Monday for fear that at 120 years old it could not handle both high water and modern traffic. That has meant serious transportation difficulties, as the ferry upstream has of course been stopped, the nearest bridge is under construction (causing delays and detours itself), and the next bridge (die Albertbruücke) well into town.

None of the more modern bridges have been closed yet, but everyone is carefully watching the official reports online. I bought some flowers for the family that hosted me for dinner tonight, and the shopkeeper said to me, "Es ist was los in Dresden." (There's something going on/happening in Dresden.) I agreed: all day sirens sounded as the fire department and army sped around town laying sandbags and erecting barriers to flooded low-lying areas. Even the Main State Archive had sandbags out front!

In fact, they've closed the archive for the rest of the week. Wednesday was supposed to be my last day, but to my complete surprise, I managed to finish what I needed to do on Tuesday. In fact, I got out a few hours "early" (i.e. before closing), so I wandered over the Carolabrücke to take photographs. Lots of locals had come out to look at the water, too.

They were still out on the bridges when I crossed the Albertbrücke at 6:15 pm on my way to dinner, and then again at 10:15 pm on my way home after Hauskreis (Bible study). There I found the scene less serene than at the other bridge earlier in the day. In the shallows, the water merely reached out wherever it could, but in the deep center of the river, the water gushed angrily around the supports of the bridge, making eddies and even some white caps. I found the noise and the sight of the speed of all that brown water angstproduzierend (alarming, fear-producing). It didn't help that the wooden foot-traffic bridge shook gently when a bicycle or jogger went by.

If you're curious what the situation looks like right now, click this link and then pick any one of the camera icons for "aktuelle" (current) images. This map is collecting data about problem areas where help is needed. These are probably better pictures than mine. Here is a graph of water levels (at 8.05 m = 26.4 ft as of this writing). This blog post shows what the Elbe River usually looks like. Editor's note: the river crested at about 8.8 m midday onThursday.

I should add that Dresden isn't the only city threatened by flooding; rivers around Germany are higher than normal. And of course, once the water passes us, it still has to pass Magdeburg and eventually Hamburg before exiting into the North Sea. Here you can see that the flooding was much worse in other parts of Germany, and in Austria and the Czech Republic.

In the right foreground stands a blue sign advertising where to pay to park. It is taller than I am.