I encountered a post on the PopCrunch blog this past week, The 15 Hottest TV Moms of All Time, which if you don’t remember what life on planet earth was like before there was television, might be forgiven its “all time” hyperbole.

We do know that casting roles of 30 to 40-something actresses for television fills in the entertainment media ‘wasteland’ in between honest-to-starlet status as a Sweet Young Thing and the usual grandmother roles older actresses can get if anyone in Hollywood remembers their names when they get that old. These glamorous middle-age women all radiated a certain ageless beauty from the small screen that made them memorable, and for some, allowed them to move gracefully into the older-lady roles.

The #1 pick is Florence Henderson as Carol Brady. And while that role was good for her after she grew out of the starlet stage she began with in Oklahoma!, I can’t say she was all that hot in the movie Shakes the Clown. Notables like Desperate Housewives’ Gabriella Solis and Married… With Children’s Peg Bundy are on the list, along with some whose TV shows I apparently missed altogether. Go on over to see if your favorites are included.

Meanwhile, one may wonder about those Hollywood types and how much of their long-lasting good looks, perfect skin and ageless beauty is mechanical – obtained via creative plastic surgery – and how much is attributed to outrageously expensive beauty treatments and cosmetics. We older ladies definitely know that one could spend a large chunk of annual income just trying to defeat wrinkles, dry skin, gravity, split hair ends, etc., and let’s be honest – most of us don’t bother anymore.

So it was with some sense of relief that I found a post on Brainz listing 10 Home Remedies for Beautiful Skin that just happened to include some tried-and-true ingredients this Granny swears by. The sugar and olive oil scrub is honestly the best way to soften tough skin anywhere that I’ve ever encountered, and olive oil is the #1 best general skin treatment out there so long as you’re past the acne stage. Oatmeal, honey, yogurt, lemon, cucumbers, avacado, chamomile and green tea… all the so-natural sounding stuff in the expensive treatments can all be used at home by YOU without having to spend a fortune.

Let us know your favorite at-home concoctions for staying beautiful, or at least less-than-mummified. One thing not on the list that my readers who live outside inner cities can try is a chickweed bath. I gather a good handful of fresh chickweed, rinse it in cold water and tie it into a muslin bag. Run hot bathwater over the bag, let it steep as the water cools to tolerable and take a liesurely soak. The chickweed will give you a slick feeling all over, moisturizes everywhere and stays with you. After drying off, go ahead and apply a little olive oil to make it last a bit longer, and you’ll be soft all over!

Three of my kids who will not be here for Thanksgiving have called in the past week to ask me what to do with the turkey carcass once everybody’s done eating the Big Dinner. So while there are about a million things you can do with the leftover chunks and slices of turkey meat (turkey sandwiches, turkey & gravy on a shingle, etc.), not that many young people these days know what to do with all those bones and the gelled goo and the fat and skin and stray bits of possible meat that may cling, other than to put the whole mess into a plastic garbage bag and toss it into the dumpster. Or bury it in the back yard. Heck, even the cats won’t clean it off well enough to bleach any bones, and you sure shouldn’t feed it to the dogs!

So here’s the basics to brew yourself up some good turkey broth from this leftover yuck, which in turn can be used to make future gravy, future soups (any kind), or just poured over the dry dog food and mixed to give Fido a feeling that s/he has a feasting holiday too. It’s not hard, you just need a stock pot (or canner) big enough to hold all the ‘stuff’ scraped off the platter and roasting pan.

1. Scrape the carcass, loose bones and leavings off the platter and roasting pan into the pot. Add enough water barely cover.

2. If you’ve leftover crudités (carrot and celery sticks, roasted garlic cloves, etc.) put them in the water too. If you’re planning future soup broth, chunk up an onion and put it in with the rest, along with ~2 teaspoons of salt. Also add 2 bay leaves, some rubbed (or fresh sage), rosemary if you like it, and 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper.

3. Let ‘er boil, turning the bones occasionally, for at least an hour. Add water if necessary.

4. Lift out the bones and bits, package for disposal. Strain the broth into jars and refrigerate. Use within a month or so, for whatever dishes need gravy or broth. This can include collards/kale, hopping john and other dishes you’re likely to cook for the rest of the holidays, make a white gravy with some broth for breakfast biscuits. If you’re just planning to use the broth to flavor up dry dog and cat food, leave out the salt, pepper, herbs and onion, but do include the carrots and celery.

See how easy that is? Sure, it’s a project, but worth it not to waste anything from your big feast. And don’t forget as we move into flu season that Mom’s Turkey Soup is every bit as soothing and phlem-clearing (this is true, look it up!) as Mom’s Chicken Soup. In fact, every time we get a whole chicken around here I do the same thing, and use the broth for soup.

As the world financial situation looks to be bad and getting worse, there may not be much consumerist excess for Christmas this year. So the traditional feasting and other such food goodies are going to be even more appreciated than usual. My mother’s generation lived through the Great Depression by not wasting anything, and the better able our generations today are to do much the same things, the better we’ll survive intact. When you can’t just jump into the SUV and drive to the store for a single item, your best bet is to process your own items from what you’ve got, then USE them.

Turkey Broth and Other Leftover Turkey Recipes

Since our daughter and grandson got back from their sojourn to Florida and Costa Rica, I’ve again had cause to prepare the kind of labor-intensive foods I didn’t bother with at all when it was just hubby and I here by ourselves. One of our favorite cold munchies are two-bite sized stuffed grape leaves, so I thought (since I made a big batch today) that I’d go ahead and give the details on this delicious delicacy.

The key ingredient, of course, are the grape leaves. These should be gathered in the late spring (May-June), when the vines are barely blooming. The newest leaves and the leaves near the bloom clusters are the best, they should be as large as your spread hand at the base. Wild fox grape leaves work too, though they are only about half the size of good vineyard leaves. They also have a tarter flavor of their own, so these can even be the preferred leaves if you’ve got some growing in your immediate area.

When the leaves are gathered, you can freeze or brine them. I usually freeze enough to add to every jar of dill pickles that I produce during the cucumber harvest (July-August), as they help lend crispness to the pickles. Those leaves that you want to preserve for stuffed leaves are best put into brine. For this, use kosher or pickling salt, 2/3 of a cup of salt to two cups of water. I use the “cigar” method, which is pretty easy.

Put your leaves into a flat-bottomed container (baking pan works well), stacked ten or twelve on top of each other. Pour boiling water on them to cover (you may need to weigh them down a little) and let them sit for five minutes. Lay out smoothly on newspaper to dry. Once they’re fairly dry and workable, cut out the base stem, fold the base and sides to a rectangular shape and roll the leaves loosely around a pencil to make tubes. Pack the tubes upright into canning jars (you should be able to get 35-40 in a single jar) and pour boiling brine to cover. If you’ve sterilized the jars and lids first, you don’t have to seal by water bath, the brine should preserve fine for 3 to 5 months. If you’re planning to keep them longer, go ahead and put the jars in a water bath for 20 minutes to seal.

The stuffing can be pretty much anything you can imagine. Our favorites are cous-cous and pine nuts or brown rice. If you make a mean tabouli, just omit the cucumbers (but keep the tomato), undercook the grain. To these add lots of herbs, the best being ground cumin, turmeric (with rice), fresh mint leaves and basil, parsley, and lots of chives. Cook the cous-cous, grain or rice to about half done (use half the water, don’t let it burn). Mix the herbs in, add any grated veggies you want to include – good choices are carrots, peas, bell peppers, eggplant or lentils – plus a healthy amount of roasted garlic and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

Rinse unrolled grape leaves well in cold running water, lay out to dry again on spread newspaper. Put a hefty spoonful of the filling at the stem base end and roll tightly. For this, I fold over the filling the base ends of the grape leaf to cover, roll up one turn, fold in the sides and then finish rolling to the tip. This makes a tight package. As I make the rolls I put them atop a lone (and inedible) grape leaf on the bottom of a soup pot overlap side down. Pack them together tightly and cover the bottom of the pot, then you can put a second layer on top of those. When the leaves have all been stuffed, put another large leaf on top of the pile and weight it all down with a small saucer and add your cooking broth.

The broth is just water, olive oil and lemon juice. To 2 cups water add 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 ounce of lemon juice (adjust this ratio to get enough broth to cover all your stuffed leaves). Bring to boiling over medium-high heat, then turn down to medium low, cover and cook for about 20 minutes (however long it takes to finish off the pasta/grain and/or rice) plus 5 full minutes. Remove grape rolls carefully with tongs, put on newspaper seam-side down to cool and drain. When cool enough to handle easily you can refrigerate them in a closed container or simply serve at room temperature as appetizers.

It’s true that one of the many ‘important’ jobs Moms do is to direct the proper nutrition of their families. Some Moms do better at this than others, as the growing obesity epidemic demonstrates. There are a surprising number of working Moms out there who don’t cook, and families that somehow manage to survive on pizza and hamburgers.

I was a singularly lousy cook back when I got married. Knew how to make exactly one thing – Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup (add a pat of butter and a dollop of ketchup to the pot, eat it when it’s hot). I’ll never forget our first breakfast – I did so want to impress him! But I fried that bacon and fried that bacon until it shrunk to nothing and turned char-black, but it just never would get stiff! Brave and loving soul that he is, my hubby ate it anyway and even pretended to like it.

But pretty much all I heard while learning how to make Kraft Mac and Cheese, Tuna and Hamburger Helper and rice (reading the instructions on the box really helps!), all I ever heard from my husband and his mother was how great her steak fingers and French Fries were. Worse, I was fond of all sorts of vegetables, even Brussels Sprouts, and hubby wouldn’t touch anything green. My Mom was an excellent cook, always served meals with at least 3 or 4 vegetable choices, a bread (often her wonderful sweet cornbread), a salad and some meat. Only when she was mad at us did we end up with liver and onions, but I swear she could even make that taste good!

I did finally learn to cook. Even bought some cookbooks, and Mom gave me some of hers. When the kids got old enough to eat solid food, I decided it was the perfect time to introduce them to vegetables. Told hubby that if he got hungry enough he’d learn to like ‘em too. Surprisingly (to my Mother-in-Law), it worked! Before the kids started school we’d gone vegetarian – ovo-lacto, but no more meat main dishes. And managed to be both healthy and not obese anyway!

Of course, the teachers and administrator at the school my children went to didn’t think anything of informing them that we were trying to kill them – “everybody knows” you can’t live unless you eat processed meat 3 or 4 times a day! I actually purchased a great book on vegetarianism and nutrition, donated it to the school library after informing the teachers and principal that they should read it first – before saying another word to other people’s children about family food choices.

When the kids were teenagers they never seemed to be around for family dinners like they used to be, so I stopped cooking pretty much. Hubby or I would just open a can, throw something together quick, and eat it. I don’t know where the teenagers were eating, but since they weren’t dying I figured they must be eating something somewhere. Then I got grandchildren, and it’s been a regular cook-fest ever since. We sometimes have a house full of them (plus parents), and their favorite thing is the food – either eaten right there in the garden or made into some scrumptous dish.

All of them swear I’m the best cook on the planet, having figured out the best way to ensure Granny gives them extra helpings and lets them eat dessert first. The grandson who lives with us managed to get all the way to 6’3″ and about 155 pounds without ever having eaten meat as a regular part of his diet from the time he was born. He loves everything I make, never tires of telling me how much he loves my… sourdough bread, deep dish New York style pizza, clean-out-the-fridge veggie minestrone soup, black bean veggie burgers, grilled veggie kabobs, etc., etc., etc.

Daughter’s not much of a cook. She can heat up a can of beans , can read the instructions on a package of cake mix or pasta or red beans and rice, and can make some killer nachos. But basic cooking wisdom seems beyond her. How much salt per quart for a big pot of beans or soup, how to substitute what you’ve got for what the recipe calls for, how to add just the right herbs for just the right aroma and flavor are not things she’s ever paid much attention to. Probably because I do most of the real cooking. I know how that works, since I never learned to cook for as long as my Mom was doing it!

It seems like the older i get the more I enjoy trying new things. Plus, with hubby, daughter and grandson all here to give me kudos for the meal, it is a fine ego stroke.

At any rate, my newest granddaughter is due the first week of March. So while I’m working on the baby quilt and other goodies for the big day and its aftermath, I’ve also started collecting cookbooks to give my daughter. She is actually not a bad cook, at least for reading directions and being creative with ingredients. I do wish she liked vegetables more, or at least got more variety. So that’s what I’m going for, along with promises of exotics when she visits here with the baby. Baba Ganoush (eggplant) and pita with a side of serious tabouli and home made lemon and garlic hummus, creamed leek stuffed puffballs (or portobellos), fried kale and sage chips, lentils with olive oil and multi-colored peppers, boiled green peanuts on rice with piñon and saffron sauce, etc.

I don’t know about her husband, but my daughter eats meat very seldom and would like nothing better than to go vegetarian with her daughter. As I told my hubby all those many years ago, if he gets hungry enough, he’ll learn to like vegetables!

Links:

Gourmet Vegetables: Smart Tips and Tasty Picks

The Gutsy Gourmet: Vegetables

Organic Cooking Products

It’s Thanksgiving week. I’m of course hosting two dozen guests – family and friends – for the day, and nearly a dozen for the whole week. This means the younger generations will be coming here for the feast. Someday I’m hoping one of them will invite me for the feast and I won’t have to cook a thing!

We do share the cost, the cooking duties and the clean-up (I like to make the guys do dishes, but sometimes it’s more efficient to just do them myself). We’ll use paper plates and plastic cups for the actual meal, but there will be lots of silverware, inevitable plates and serving bowls, pots, pans, storage containers, measuring doo-dads, etc., etc. that should preferably be washed as they come empty or used. Washing down work surfaces, serving surfaces and eating surfaces is always a chore I give to the grandkids.

I will be cooking two large turkeys this year (that I know of). One brought from Florida, one from West Virginia. I’ll cook one a day early, slice it up and refrigerate it for seconds and thirds, pick it for doggy Thanksgiving. There will be at least 6 dogs here, and they’re family too. The other I’ll roast so that it comes out of the oven just in time for dinner, let one of the macho guys slice it up.

It’s a sort of pot-luck too, people will be bringing their specialties. I’ll bake whole wheat dinner rolls, the mashed potatoes and yams will be cooked here too. Then there’s the crackberry sauce no holiday meal is complete without. That’s your basic whole fresh cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries (can mix raspberries, strawberries and blueberries too) mixed it, sweeter than cranberry sauce and very tasty on the ice cream we’ll put on top of our pumpkin pie later.

Oh, yeah. There’s the pies. Have to bake at least 10 pumpkin pies to get through the weekend, as two of my grandchildren will eat nothing but pumpkin pie for breakfast and at least two slices before bed. The leftover turkey and gravy will get glumped in together as turkey “shit on a shingle” to ladle onto open leftover dinner rolls, good for at least two nights’ meals. Basic turkey sandwiches for lunch, and leftover mashed potatoes for potato pancakes at breakfast on Saturday. Yams make excellent pancakes too, for that matter, so long as they aren’t candied. If they’re candied and you’ve leftovers, heat ‘em up and put them on top of the potato pancakes instead of syrup!

There will be macaroni salad, always good for a quick snack. And the hopping john, which is a meal all by itself. That’s collard greens, black eyed peas and rice cooked in vegetable broth, a staple for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s around here. Of course you can’t serve hopping john without cornbread, so I usually bake up a couple of cake pans’ worth of that too. As leftovers just crumble the cornbread into a microwave-proof bowl and ladle the hopping john on top. Hit the Magic Minute button and voila! Lunch!

Once the turkeys have been fairly stripped you’ll want to pop those leftovers – including bones – into a freezer bag. If it’s cold in your area you could store it out on an elevated porch such as I have where animals can’t get to it and it won’t take up room in the fridge where bowls of this and that and the other compete with pies for space. As soon as the crowd thins out, put it all into that big ol’ enameled canning pot and cover with water. Boil it all the way down to broth. You can of course add carrots and celery and herbs and onions and such at this point, rough-chopped. After a couple of hours it’s ready to strain and put into jars. You can can these so they don’t have to be kept frozen or in the fridge, or not. Turkey soup stock is great starter for wintertime soups. Then discard the bones where the dogs can’t get at them. We usually hold them for a dumpster run the day I make the broth, just to make sure. They can kill your dog.

I am a big believer that you can’t have too much food for the feast. Anything that doesn’t get eaten Thanksgiving Day or evening will most certainly get eaten on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It’s the Feast that Keeps On Giving, and that’s just as it should be. That way Mom or Grandma doesn’t have to do more than one day’s worth of hard core kitchen-sitting, everybody eats well, and nobody goes home hungry!