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Sea to shining sea.

Because we are Peo­ple of the Bor­der Zone, one of our projects this year was get­ting everybody’s travel doc­u­ments up to date. Kate got her first pass­port, Alan got his expired one renewed, and I merely hec­tored every­one to get pic­tures and birth cer­tifi­cates and get their butts down to the post office. (I have six years left on mine.)

They keep telling us that any day now, we won’t be able to cross the Cana­dian bor­der with­out one, only they keep extend­ing the dead­line, due to oner­ous delays at the pass­port office. NPR had a story a few months ago, inter­view­ing pan­icky peo­ple hold­ing non-refundable tick­ets to France but no pass­port, and they applied four months ago. (To these peo­ple, I say: Apply in Detroit. Ours arrived in three weeks.)

Any­way, our two newest pass­ports are cutting-edge tech­nol­ogy — e-passports. They have a chip inside so the U.S. gov­ern­ment can track our move­ments around the globe, or some­thing. Also, they appear to have Added Patri­o­tism for Extra Glares at the Bor­der. Really. The new design, which debuted ear­lier this year, is called “Amer­i­can Icons,” and looks like it was brain­stormed in Vegas. The time­less plea of diplo­macy — The Sec­re­tary of State of the United States of Amer­ica hereby requests all whom it may con­cern to per­mit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass with­out delay or hin­drance and in case of need to give all law­ful aid and pro­tec­tion. — has been moved from the ID pages to the inside front cover, and now the ID fac­ing page car­ries the pre­am­ble to the Con­sti­tu­tion, watched over by a fierce carrion-eater.

Behold:
passport

(It’s times like this I’m sort of sad Ben Franklin failed in his bid to get the wild turkey named as America’s offi­cial ornitho­log­i­cal sym­bol. That would be a sight to see.)

Most of any pass­port is the blank visa pages. In mine, there’s a sub­tle pat­tern of state seals. In the new one, it’s where the “Amer­i­can Icons” theme really shines. Mt. Rush­more, the Lib­erty Bell, a steamer on the Mis­sis­sippi, a farmer plow­ing with oxen. I think they should have embed­ded that chip with a lit­tle MIDI ver­sion of the National Anthem that would play when you open it, like a birth­day card. It really would have nailed the theme. An NYT story on the redesign gets the design flaw exactly right:

“It is like being given a col­or­ing book that your brother already col­ored in,” said Michael Bierut, of the design firm Pen­ta­gram in New York City. A pass­port, not unlike a scrap­book, gets its allure from grad­u­ally accru­ing exotic stamps, with the blank pages hold­ing the promise of future adven­ture, he and other design­ers said. But they find that the new jum­ble of pic­tures detracts from that.

I crossed the Cana­dian bor­der in 2004 with my fel­low J-fellow, Jay. (Say that last phrase 10 times fast. It’s fun.) Jay was a pro­ducer for “Night­line” and had a pass­port wor­thy of an inter­na­tional man of mys­tery, with stamps from Ara­bic and Turk­ish and Cam­bo­dian bor­der cross­ings, while mine had a sin­gle dumb mark from Heathrow. And now that would be dwarfed by the enor­mous heads on Mt. Rushmore.

Might as well stay home.

Since it’s Thanks­giv­ing week, how about a recipe in lieu of blog­gage today? Sure, you’d like that.

I know a lot of peo­ple out there have com­pet­ing con­stituen­cies sit­ting around the table on the big day, every­one from adven­tur­ous foodie snobs to dug-in tra­di­tion­al­ists, and nowhere do the two styles clash more obvi­ously than over the green beans. The first group wants to tart up the dish with sesame oil or some other exotic fla­vor­ing, while the lat­ter wants the kind made with cream of mush­room soup and fried onions. The fol­low­ing dish pleases every­one; it con­tains a major note of the Campbell’s ver­sion (onions), but sub­sti­tutes a tangy sweet-and-sour sauce that’s much lighter. You can also make most of it ahead of time, and just add freshly cooked beans right before serv­ing. It’s from Betty Rosbottom’s Amer­i­can Favorites cook­book, and Betty is, for my money, the best food writer you never heard of. A friend of mine, also a food writer, says, “I’d eat fried gravel if Betty had a recipe for it.” So buy the book, and enjoy…

Green beans with roasted onions

4 medium onions
2 T. unsalted but­ter
salt and pep­per
1 cup chicken broth (can use reduced sodium, fat-free, what­ever)
2 T. red wine vine­gar
1 T. plus 2 t. sugar
2 pounds ten­der green beans, trimmed on the diagonal

Pre­heat oven to 450.

Peel onions with­out remov­ing roots. Halve onions length­wise, cut­ting through cen­ter of root. Cut each half into eight wedges, keep­ing some of root with each wedge, so wedge holds together.

Spray a large, flame­proof bak­ing pan with non­stick cook­ing spray. Arrange onion wedges, slightly over­lap­ping, in pan. Dot with but­ter, sea­son gen­er­ously with salt and pep­per. Bake until onions are browned and ten­der, 50 – 60 min­utes, check­ing after 40 min­utes, as ovens can vary.

When onions are cooked, remove from pan and set aside. Place pan over high heat and add broth, vine­gar and sugar. Whisk con­stantly, scrap­ing up brown drip­pings into sauce. Cook until sauce reduces to a thick syrup, about 4 to 5 min­utes. Return onions to pan and toss in thick­ened sauce. Remove from heat. (Can be pre­pared one day ahead. Cover and refrig­er­ate. Reheat, stir­ring, over medium heat when needed.)

When ready to serve, cook beans in a large pot of boil­ing, salted water until just ten­der, about eight min­utes. Drain well. Sea­son with more salt, if needed. Mound beans on a warm serv­ing plat­ter, and arranged warm browned onions on top.

(That’s the offi­cial text. My notes: My onions usu­ally cook in half an hour, not 50 min­utes. I’ve never suc­ceeded in get­ting the sauce to reduce to a thick syrup in under 20 min­utes, but it doesn’t really mat­ter — it tastes great even if the sauce is thin. Also, although the onion slices look great when they’re bound by the roots, that, too, is mainly a pre­sen­ta­tion thing. If yours fall apart, never worry.)

Have a great day. Mine will be a busy one.

Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 9:47 am
in Same ol' same ol'.

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35 responses to
“Sea to shining sea.”

  1. John C said on November 20th, 2007 at 10:17 am

    I’d like to add a recipe I learned a few years ago, when I made my first attempt at brin­ing a turkey. I put it in the base­ment fridge overnight, not think­ing a thing about the fact that the base­ment fridge is only used for beer and soda, and is turned up cold. The bird, unbe­knownst to me, started to re-freeze. This fact was unno­ticed until I took the thought-to-be-cooked bird out of the oven grandly, only to fig­ure out pretty quickly that it wasn’t done yet. It needed another full hour, at least. So this is my recipe for when things don’t go quite right and you want to divert atten­tion from your inep­ti­tude, or at least make it funny.
    I call this recipe .… wine.

    Ingre­di­ent:
    Wine

    Direc­tions:
    Open.
    Pour.
    Pass around.
    Drink.
    Repeat as many times as necessary.

    Happy Thanks­giv­ing to all.

  2. brian stouder said on November 20th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    Re — the updated pass­ports: My God!! Nance is becoming.…one of those cranky old ladies who call into local talk radio! (can’t remem­ber that woman’s name — Lucile?)

    A pass­port, not unlike a scrap­book, gets its allure from grad­u­ally accru­ing exotic stamps, with the blank pages hold­ing the promise of future adven­ture, he and other design­ers said. But they find that the new jum­ble of pic­tures detracts from that.

    Have you seen scrap­books lately?? Whole indus­tries have sprung up, sup­ply­ing caloo­zles and embell­ish­ments and designer papers and pages and so on and so forth, ad infinitum!

    OH! For the good ol’ days! When we taped snap­shots onto heavy paper, and bound the papers in three-ring binders! And when pass­ports were plain, and depended on peo­ple with travel expense accounts for any adornment!!

    Just kid­din’. Happy Thanks­giv­ing, every­one! (And travel safely, if you’re going to be out and about — even if not internationally)

  3. Cathy D. said on November 20th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    I’m kind of scared of any recipe that includes this phrase: “large, flame­proof bak­ing pan,” but also com­forted, because if there is such as a thing as a flame­proof pan, I’m going out look­ing for one, because I’ve set almost all of mine on fire at one time or another.

  4. LA mary said on November 20th, 2007 at 10:57 am

    I hate the usual sweet potato and marsh­mal­low glop, so I do a gratin of sweet pota­toes and granny smith apple slices, add a few but­ter pats and pour a lit­tle apple juice in the bak­ing pan. Cover it with foil and bake it for about an hour. Much nicer than the marsh­mal­lows, but still sweet.

  5. Marie said on November 20th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    “Added Patri­o­tism for Extra Glares at the Bor­der” made me laugh so hard, but in a sad sort of way for my lovely, plain pass­port with all its pretty stamps that I’ll soon have to replace with the Vegas model. Wow, those things are TACK-Y.

  6. MichaelG said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    I was liv­ing in SF the first time I applied for a pass­port. I got some pix and went down to the pass­port office. Filled out app, paid $$ left pix and went home. I got the pass­port in the mail in 3 days. The last time I renewed it (in 2000) I went to the office in SF and with a lit­tle whin­ing was able to get it while I waited. Guess those days are over.

    Green beans: French cut what­ever amount of gree­nies suits you. Steam to desired degree of done­ness. Saute briefly in but­ter with lots of sliced almonds. Sea­son to taste. Yum.

  7. nancy said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:15 am

    Jon Car­roll wrote a funny col­umn about get­ting his pass­port renewed in San Fran­cisco in a hurry-up sit­u­a­tion. I loved this part:

    It was still dark out­side. I sat on the nar­row steps of the pass­port build­ing. I guess I must have been loom­ing in the gloam­ing, because I alarmed passers-by who sud­denly rounded the cor­ner and encoun­tered my slump­ing form. I dialed the num­ber on the win­dow. I was placed on hold. I was on hold for quite a while. I began to real­ize that I looked a lot like an indi­gent per­son, hud­dled in a dark­ened door­way with an old cell phone pressed to my ear. Were a police offi­cer to come along, what would I say? “I’m on hold with the State Depart­ment?” Yeah, I bet that works.

  8. Dorothy said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    I’ve never under­stood putting marsh­mal­lows on top of sweet pota­toes or yams. To me they are sweet enough already — but we add a lit­tle brown sugar to the but­ter when cook­ing them. That’s good eatin’!

    I hate trav­el­ing on Thanks­giv­ing, but if the end result is being with fam­ily, then I don’t mind it a bit. We’re headed to my sis­ter Diane’s in Indi­ana, PA on Thurs­day early, early, early.

    Happy T’day everyone!

  9. Jolene said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    Oh good, recipes! I made an apple pie from a new and some­what unusual recipe last week and have been evan­ge­liz­ing on its behalf ever since. It’s Golden Raisin and Apple Lat­tice Pie. Easy, as pies go, and re-e-e-e-e-ally good.

  10. Connie said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    My daugh­ter applied for hers in Indy in Sep­tem­ber and it came in two weeks. I had heard that NPR story and we wor­ried she was apply­ing too late for her Jan­u­ary departure.

    My Thanks­giv­ing will mostly con­sist of a round trip to Flint and back where I will eat what­ever is served at my 87 yr old mother in law’s house. She is recu­per­at­ing from major surgery last week so who knows what to expect. Besides the usual Chinette.

  11. Connie said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:38 am

    And I was won­der­ing, can I renew a pass­port that has been expired for over 20 years? I would need a new pic­ture of course.

  12. Peter said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:56 am

    Sorry Con­nie, if it’s expired over five years you have to start from scratch, which, com­par­a­tively speak­ing, doesn’t take much longer.

    Our family’s favorite Thanks­giv­ing tra­di­tion returns this year — we serve jel­lied cran­berry sauce straight up on a paper plate, and the guest of honor gets to lop off the top with the imprint of the expi­ra­tion date stamp on it. Last few years, they’ve been putting the date on with ink, so Thanks­giv­ings were just a lit­tle less spe­cial, but yes­ter­day I found a bunch of cans with the old fash­ioned stamp, so we’re liv­ing large!

  13. nancy said on November 20th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    Con­nie, I think you can still use your old pass­port in lieu of a birth cer­tifi­cate — a doc­u­ment that becomes more dif­fi­cult to find every year — but I could be wrong.

    And Peter, that’s a tremen­dous tra­di­tion. I love cran­berry sauce at Thanks­giv­ing, prob­a­bly because it cuts through the sweet­ness of the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes.

  14. Mindy said on November 20th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    My trav­els haven’t yet required a pass­port, but I’ll be get­ting one some day. I have a his­tory of ter­ri­ble driver’s license pho­tos and am not look­ing for­ward to the one that’s bound to be on a passport.

    I bought the Betty Ros­bot­tom book the last time Nancy men­tioned it along with the fried gravel. Great stuff. As for a recipe to share, I can offer one that was on the box of Nilla wafers back in the late 50s and early 60s. It was lost and its exis­tence denied by Nabisco prob­a­bly because it calls for raw eggs. Found it stuffed in an old cook­book many years later much to the delight of my father. It’s his favorite and I am required to bring it at Thanks­giv­ing. I pre­pare half the recipe in an 8x8 square dish lest he kill him­self with it. Very, very sweet. Happy Thanks­giv­ing, everyone.

    Nilla Orig­i­nal French Pudding

    1 lb box Nilla vanilla wafers
    2 sticks but­ter, soft­ened (no sub­sti­tutes)
    2 cups pow­dered sugar
    4 eggs
    1 cup chopped nuts
    1 cup maraschino cher­ries
    1 pint heavy cream
    2 table­spoons sugar
    1 tsp vanilla extract

    Blot cher­ries dry and cut them into quar­ters; set aside. Crum­ble wafers and spread a lit­tle more than half on the bot­tom of a 9x13 glass bak­ing dish. Whisk eggs, add pow­dered sugar, but­ter and nuts. Stretch this mix­ture over the crum­bled wafers almost to the edge. Whip cream with sugar and vanilla until peaks form. Fold in cher­ries. Spread over egg mix­ture. Top with remain­ing crum­bled vanilla wafers. Refrigerate.

  15. beb said on November 20th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Green Bean casse­role. Ugh! The only green beans I ever liked where ones my mother make by sautee­ing green beans with a hand­ful of diced bacon in a heavy sauce pan for an hour or so.

    Another recipe the fam­ily likes is faux Lemon Rice Soup. Bba­si­cally it’s one can chicken with rice soup, plus one can of cream of chicken soup, a half cup of instant rice. Com­bine and cook until rice is done, add a cou­ple table­sp­pons of con­cen­trated lemon juice (adjust amount to taste) and enjoy. It’s not as good as the soup at Laikon’s which tastes like it was made from mut­ton stock, but our recipe makes a nice hearty soup in under a half hour.

  16. Dorothy said on November 20th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

    My brother noted years ago that you should not take a bite of cran­berry sauce, and then take a swig of water. He said it tastes just awful. I can’t remem­ber if it does or not cause I haven’t tried it in ages!

    I’m mak­ing a frozen cran­berry con­coc­tion to take to my sister’s. I have the recipe at home — oth­er­wise I’d share it here. It has cool whip, cream cheese, whole cran­berry sauce, and chopped wal­nuts. Maybe one or two more ingredients.

  17. ashley said on November 20th, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    Nance, on Mon­day, I, too will have an Ara­bic stamp in my pass­port. BTW, if you hit your new pass­port with a brick, you kill the RFID chip, and ren­der it use­less. Or so I’ve heard.

  18. 4dbirds said on November 20th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    My first pass­port was a fam­ily pass­port. The pic­ture included my mom and the six of us kids. Dad trav­eled on his mil­i­tary ID. We trav­eled to Oki­nawa and Ger­many on that thing. By the time we left Ger­many in 1965, the gov­ern­ment required indi­vid­ual passports.

  19. LA mary said on November 20th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    What­ever you do, don’t make that cran­berry recipe that Susan Stam­berg gives out every year on NPR. I’ve never tried it but it sounds nasty.

  20. Jolene said on November 20th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

    Try this cran­berry sauce instead. It’s made w/ tequila and jalapeno. I made it when the recipe was first pub­lished, and every­one thought it was ter­rific. Do, though, make it the day ahead or even this evening. At first, it had too much of a kick, but, after mel­low­ing a lit­tle, was delicious.

  21. harry near indy said on November 20th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

    beb likes bacon fla­vor in the green beans. i do, too.

    btw, does any­one else eat bacon or any pork prod­uct with green beans? for thanks­giv­ing, i’m going to my par­ents’ house, where my mother will cook, and i’ll bet she’ll have green beans with bacon and diced onions — a dish she learned from her mother.

  22. ashley said on November 20th, 2007 at 5:05 pm

    Pork is in everything…

    I’m try­ing a new tech­nique for my deep fried turkey this year: instead of fla­vor­ing the bird with an injec­tor, I’m going to fry 2 lbs of bacon in the peanut oil before fry­ing the bird. This is sup­posed to give the fry­ing oil all that bacony goodness.

    And man, green bean casse­role with fresh beans is just wrong. Lots of french cut canned beans, lots of french fried onion rings, and some­times I even add cream cheese to the dish for added bloatedness.

    And bacon.

  23. nancy said on November 20th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    And you’re get­ting an Arab pass­port stamp? They’re going to take one whiff of you in cus­toms and put you back on the plane. Your ass will def­i­nitely not be halal.

  24. joodyb said on November 20th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

    did any­one catch paula deen’s sons (food­net­work) mak­ing the deep­fried jel­lied cran­berry frit­ters? i’ve seen it all now!

    this year’s fes­tive addi­tion to the menu: red roost­ers (OJ, cran­berry juice and vodka frozen into a slush). yum!

    LA Mary: i’m mak­ing Mama Stamberg’s rel­ish this year! i have to do it and get it over with. it sounds dis­gust­ing (and looks even worse), but i’m bet­ting it’s pretty del­ish on a turkey sand­wich.
    be care­ful, all.

  25. Deborah said on November 20th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

    I love my sweet potato recipe and so do many oth­ers I’ve served. bake the potaotes (about 4 medium), remove them from their skins when fully baked (try to keep from burn­ing your fin­gers). Mash and mix with about a cup of sour cream. Put mix­ture in a casse­role dish, cover with a layer pecans and bake until hot and tasty. It’s del­ish. Not too sweet, but rich and creamy.

  26. Jeff said on November 20th, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    Susan Stamberg’s mauve wicked­ness is per­fect on a turkey sand­wich, but that’s the best use i’ve found, other than with roast beef if your Thanks­giv­ing swings that way.

    Robert Irvine on “Din­ner: Impos­si­ble” did a nicely bizarre ver­sion of “Nilla Orig­i­nal French Pud­ding” for his chal­lenge at Grace­land, with a trag­i­cally waxy Priscilla stiffly smiling/wincing her way through the events.

  27. alex said on November 21st, 2007 at 9:12 am

    Harry, beb–

    The only way to make green beans palat­able is bacon. First time I ever had any that I could stand was at a friend’s house. His mother, a farm woman, would put beans in a pres­sure cooker with a huge chunk of bacon and… presto! In fact, she’d have mul­ti­ple pres­sure cook­ers going, one full of chicken, one full of beef, and serve meals on any given day that would put most Thanks­giv­ing feasts to shame.

    All the men in that fam­ily either died or had quadru­ple bypasses by the age of 45.

  28. brian stouder said on November 21st, 2007 at 9:27 am

    All the men in that fam­ily either died or had quadru­ple bypasses by the age of 45.

    ha! Sounds a lit­tle Hitchcockian!

    (Didn’t he make a movie where the mur­der­ous woman whacked her fella with a frozen leg-a-lamb, then cooked and ate it — thereby dis­pos­ing of the mur­der weapon?)

  29. Dorothy said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:15 am

    My hubby makes fresh green beans with shal­lots and gin­ger, sautee­ing them in olive oil and about 1 tbsp. of but­ter or mar­garine. They are to die for.

  30. Cosmo Panzini said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:17 am

    No, it wasn’t a movie, it was a TV episode of his from the 50’s.

  31. brian stouder said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Ahh­h­hhh — thanks! Just that one ran­dom scrap of a mem­ory was all that remained (must have been a mis-file!), and it flit­ted across my con­scious­ness when Alex’s dead/bypassed farm hands blew past (and Dorothy, you made me laugh out loud with your ‘to die for’ pun!)

  32. LA mary said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:47 am

    I really like my green beans on the plain side, just some but­ter or olive oil and salt and pep­per, cooked so they’re still slightly crunchy.

  33. nancy said on November 21st, 2007 at 11:03 am

    aka, “Cal­i­for­nia fag-style.”

  34. LA mary said on November 21st, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Hey. I’ve been eat­ing that way back to my NJ years. It was a reac­tion to grow­ing up on my grandmother’s canned green beans cooked to mush. The in-house Brit likes the cooked to mush vari­ety, but no sur­prise there.

  35. basset said on November 21st, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    The one true way to make really good green beans: pick them on the same day as some new pota­toes, can them in quart jars with a lit­tle bacon, then when the weather gets good and cold that win­ter sim­mer ‘em in the slow cooker and make some cornbread.

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