I offer

04-11-06 Of Soup and Sandwiches:

Summer meals. Soup heats without steaming up the house. Crock pot meals produce less heat than some other options. Sandwiches don't have to be the same old boring bologna on the same old boring white sandwich slices. Nor do the have to be PBJ's. Check in the library for a book of soup recipes and for another of creative sandwiches.

I often get my bread from a bin at the thrift store, or the soup kitchen. I also buy bread out of the mark-down cart at the grocery store, or at the bread store. So, I very often have bread that is not Wonderbread slices. The greatest thing since sliced bread is rolls, buns, muffins, English muffins, baguettes, round loaves, and other kinds of unsliced bread. You can get a pretty good bread knife in a second-hand store, or for retail price. (That would be a serrated knife, and it would not be electric.) Until you have a bread knife, try splitting the bread, rolls, muffins etc with a fork; fork-splitting is the preferred method for most of the smaller shapes of bread.

One need not spend big bucks at the deli counter to get tasty filling for sandwiches. Some traditional sandwich components include lettuce (leaf type is easier) sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, sliced bananas, finely shredded cabbage, diced or shredded leftover meats and cheeses, pickles (sliced, cubed, chopped, or small whole ones) olives (black or green or both, and as many cuts as the pickles), sliced or chopped onions, whole or chopped scallions, crushed garlic, peppers (hot, mild, medium: roasted, pickled, fresh; any size and shape that works for you) apple butter, raisins, sardines, bacon, marshmallows, pineapple (drain it well, but use the juice in something else), sausage, fried or scrambled eggs, sauerkraut. There are salads that are dandy for sandwiches; egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad. There are unusual ingredients; potato chips, purple yam spread, minced prawns, eggplant, Marmite, sliced apples, mashed avocado, fig jam, fried zucchini, cottage cheese or tofu, pickled beef tongue or heart. I've used some very strange things, that got grimaces even from people who eat them other ways -- like miso paste (very salty, use sparingly) and Japanese cucumber, aka bitter melon.

Speaking of Japanese, sushi is a kind of sandwich. It has the fish for protein, the rice for carbohydrates, and the seaweed wrapper for vegetable. It often also has cucumber, onion, or some other vegetable. That's not the only Japanese sandwich -- there are the rice balls (often made triangular with a cute little form) that have some kind of filling in the center. People tote them along for lunches, that's traditional fare for the working man.

In Mexico, the sandwich might be a taco, burrito, quesadilla, zapatilla, or something else. In the Scandinavian countries, the sandwich might be lutefisk on lefsa (YUMMY, but definitely an acquired taste). In Italy, it could be one of those folded-over pizzas. In the British Isles, a sandwich might be a turnover, or a meat pasty. In Greece, it might take the form of giros (say Gee-rows with a hard g, or heroes), or stuffed pita. And don't forget some favorite American sandwiches with German names, the Hamburger and the Frankfurter. Or you can opt for "the father of all sandwiches," the Dagwood, layer upon delicious layer of everything edible.

There is no end to the variations of the lowly -- or not so lowly -- sandwich. Get creative! Enjoy!

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I offer, not recipes, but tips.

My strategy of using only enough water to cook pasta avoids the process of draining it. That means you can skip pouring hot water (and nutrients!) down the drain, while releasing steam into the kitchen air. That detracts from comfort two ways -- heat and humidity. (I use one cup of water for every four ounces of noodles. This requires a little closer attention than the traditional method, but eliminates the risk of a burn.)

I make lots of one-pot meals.

I make much use of frozen foods to avoid having to heat the kitchen. Frozen vegetables can be stirred into hot food such as pasta, and it will cook just enough, while bringing down the heat of the noodles. This works so well because vegetables to be frozen must first be heated to destroy germs and the enzymes that cause spoilage. Some other nifty frozen foods to save heating the kitchen include the many microwaveables, and frozen cheese-filled raviolis.

Another source of heat-saving ingredients is the produce aisle. Fresh vegetable often only need to be washed, cut, and stirred into hot food to be ready to eat. And let's not forget the delight of a crisp salad loaded with summer's bounty!

Planovers are a great hot-weather strategy. I cook big batches of whole (one-pot!) meals, some of which are quite tasty the second time cold from the fridge, and others of which can be reheated with a quick zap of the microwave or by stirring into a bit of hot liquid in a saucepan on the stove. I also precook batches of meat, such as a five pound package of ground beef, on a relatively cooler day and have cooked meat ready to stir into a pot of hot pasta and/or vegetables.

I make use of small appliances. I love to cook up the veggies and meat in the crock-pot and the rice in my rice-cooker. Oriental rice is the best suited to the rice-cooker, but we have found that regular long-grain rice works well enough if you first let the rice and water stand together in the cooker for 15 minutes. Do not fill it up full, because it may boil over a bit. Use one part rice to two parts water. Or you can buy the authentic Botan rice at Wal-Mart and follow the recipe on the label. (And never, never rinse enriched rice -- where do you think the nutrients are applied, if not on the surface!) You can replace a bit of the rice with rolled barley or brown rice for a different taste. With brown rice, soak for 20 minutes before turning on the cooker, and wait about five minutes after it is done before you open the cooker.

(If you are buying a rice cooker, choose one with an inner cooking chamber that is completely removable. This saves lots of time and trouble in washing it! The same goes for choosing a new crock-pot -- a removable "crock" simplifies cleaning.)

Then there's always soup and sandwiches.

Rose B, mother of three, in NC